andrew17
August 31, 2004, 10:22 AM
Spent a nice day with dear ole Dad and a buddy at the range Sunday afternoon. We headed to the range in order to fine tune the zero on a couple of 22 rimfire rifles because squirrel season in VA opens this Saturday. Well the range was uncommonly busy and we decided to shoot a couple of handguns we had brought as a backup plan incases the benches were all busy.
I had brought my mark11 comp model with scope and Dad brought his single six hunter model and we began to plink the falling plates for fun. Suddenly, My buddy unzips his gun case and low and behold, laying there in all of its battle scared glory was his Rand.
Needless to say I had an even better time shooting this ‘ole warhorse.
There’s something special about these USGI guns that is hard to describe. At first I thought it was mainly due to the guns history but that’s not it. Not all of it anyway. They feel different in you hand. The dimensions are the pretty much the same as any 1911 but there’s a different feeling you get when you shoot them. Something maybe just a little magical about the experience. That’s about as close as I can describe it.
Now, purists will balk at the fact that his gun is not a pure bred having an aftermarket frame but that doesn’t matter to me. His gun was built by a US Army armorer and given to his father when he retired from active duty. My buddy has commented that he was thinking about getting the gun customized a time or two until I threatened to beat him with a wet noodle if he even so much as changed the tiny little mil sights on it.
We did have 2 failure to feeds with the gun that day. A light rap on the back of the slide and the gun returned to battery. When I stripped the gun to clean it for him I got a good idea why we got the jams as the extractor had a metric ton of tension on it. That coupled with the fact that the recoil spring was made thirty years before I was born were likely candidates. I also noticed the slightest little burr around the firing pin hole on the breachface. All this and the gun was still 99% reliable. I can only imagine How well this gun would run if it was looked over by somebody like Tuner.
Accuracy was more than adequate and we had no problem killing 6-inch plates from 25 YDS. POA was dead on.
I have an open invitation to shoot this gun whenever I want and I think I’ll return the favor by ordering him a new recoil spring.
Here’s a pic of her freshly cleaned after the session:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v408/andrew217/rand1.jpg
I had brought my mark11 comp model with scope and Dad brought his single six hunter model and we began to plink the falling plates for fun. Suddenly, My buddy unzips his gun case and low and behold, laying there in all of its battle scared glory was his Rand.
Needless to say I had an even better time shooting this ‘ole warhorse.
There’s something special about these USGI guns that is hard to describe. At first I thought it was mainly due to the guns history but that’s not it. Not all of it anyway. They feel different in you hand. The dimensions are the pretty much the same as any 1911 but there’s a different feeling you get when you shoot them. Something maybe just a little magical about the experience. That’s about as close as I can describe it.
Now, purists will balk at the fact that his gun is not a pure bred having an aftermarket frame but that doesn’t matter to me. His gun was built by a US Army armorer and given to his father when he retired from active duty. My buddy has commented that he was thinking about getting the gun customized a time or two until I threatened to beat him with a wet noodle if he even so much as changed the tiny little mil sights on it.
We did have 2 failure to feeds with the gun that day. A light rap on the back of the slide and the gun returned to battery. When I stripped the gun to clean it for him I got a good idea why we got the jams as the extractor had a metric ton of tension on it. That coupled with the fact that the recoil spring was made thirty years before I was born were likely candidates. I also noticed the slightest little burr around the firing pin hole on the breachface. All this and the gun was still 99% reliable. I can only imagine How well this gun would run if it was looked over by somebody like Tuner.
Accuracy was more than adequate and we had no problem killing 6-inch plates from 25 YDS. POA was dead on.
I have an open invitation to shoot this gun whenever I want and I think I’ll return the favor by ordering him a new recoil spring.
Here’s a pic of her freshly cleaned after the session:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v408/andrew217/rand1.jpg
