10mm Ronin Springfield 1911 inspection

[ImperatorGray]

After making the rounds for a 10mm and watching counter clerks abuse the used 1911's in their charge, I decided to grab a good deal on a factory-fresh one.

The Springfield Armory Ronin 10mm didn't quite match up to the specs I had in mind, but it was the closest on the new market shy of sending one of the Nineteen-eleven Heaven semi-custom shops $3730 to get me a painted pistol. (Ceramic enamel is fine, but for that money I'd rather have old-fashioned blue. When blue scratches or wears off in a holster, I can patch it with a $10 bottle of Oxpho rather than bead blasting and re-painting.)

I waited for distributors to get the Ronin back in stock and then pounced on one for just under $825 out the door. After that, I have a little change left over to get it closer to what I've been hunting.


Trigger
The trigger is... a mess.

I'm not talking about the trigger pull (which, for a 1911, was not great). I'm talking about the actual trigger.

The trigger bow has been punched out of a sheet and then either not dressed at all or inadequately dressed. The proud edges were not conducive to ideal function.

Then there's the trigger shoe, which is black nylon. Together, these two concessions to inexpense added a lot of unnecessary drag.



So, trigger had to go.

Quickly fitting a more traditional trigger from the parts box, with an aluminum shoe, immediately dropped the trigger pull from 4lb14oz to 3lb10oz.

The break still had some creep to it, but after the first 100 rounds or so of live fire, that smoothed itself out pretty well. It has a gratifying, tactile reset.


Frame

The front strap has a lot of good meat on it that's just begging to be checkered for better handling. At 0.092" thick, it should be good for any of the common checkering resolutions, including 20LPI to match the mainspring housing.



Then again, this being a two-tone, it's also singing for the "Combat Special" treatment of black Pachmayr wraparound rubber... Decisions decisions.

Unlike the Pachmayr Combat Special, the Ronin accomplishes the light-under-dark look with a stainless steel frame, rather than hard chrome over carbon. The look isn't as sleek, but it's more practical: The stated purpose of the chrome was to give extra sweat protection to the part where your grubby mitts go, but once rust starts on a chromed piece (whether due to a ding or to chrome's porosity) it can migrate under there and make a right mess.

The frame rail lacks the "Delta Elite delete" (below).



When Colt introduced 10mm 1911's, the hefty recoil sometimes cracked the frame at the arch over where the slide stop's six o'clock sits. The simple solution was to delete that weak spot in the rail altogether. (It's worth noting that if the crack does develop, it's still really not that big a deal.)

Given that I bought this specifically to run honest-to-goodness 10mm loads, and not the ".40 S&W in a longer case" that is so prevalent on ammo shelves, it may be prudent to run this with a shock buffer installed to head off that potential. Fortunately, slide travel is such that this pistol can be operated with a Wilson Combat Shok-Buff installed... or even the thicker, off-brand recoil buffer TTI once offered that has choked about every other 1911 I've ever seen it in. This pistol will "sling-shot" from lockback with either.

The pistol ships with thin grips and bushings. Grips are pictured below, flanked by traditional wood stocks.



They are laminate, and not cut for ambi safeties if those are your jam.

The slim bushings will be getting pulled to better support thicker grips. They'll be replaced by another set of blued carbon bushings, as stainless-on-stainless can cause adhesive wear to the contact surfaces.

The Torx T15-head screws are also on the way out. With old-school slotted screws, even if you're working out of a 20ft ocean container at al-Ladhiqiyya you can still detail strip your 1911 with a toothpick and the follower of your pistol's own magazine.




Barrel

The barrel is of the Wilson/Nowlin ramped variety.

You'll hear folks call a ramped barrel a "fully supported barrel," and you'll see them seek it out for a 10mm because Delta Elites didn't have enough head support to allow for massively overcharging 10mm loads.

The reality is that ramped barrels vary in how much they support the case (the fabled Glock .40 kabooms were ramped barrels, after all). And if they did "fully support" the case, the pistols wouldn't feed.



This one has less support than some, but after pushing a few hundred 180-grain bullets downrange at 1,250 fps there have been no bulged cases. Keep what you feed her within SAAMI pressure specs and she'll do just fine (just like the Delta Elite will).

Out of the box, the barrel stopped on the link. This is normal in mass-produced 1911's. At some point, the link either stretches to allow better fit, or it shatters. On the Tisas .45 that I inspected in April, the link fitted itself by the 100-round mark. I expected the extra recoil of the 10mm (117% of the momentum of the .45 slugs the Tisas was pushing) would have this one broken in just in as quick.

Nope. After 400 rounds, it got a lot closer though. We'll see how many it takes to do the trick, and how that impacts locking-lug engagement.

For the last 100 of that 400 rounds, I used layout fluid to call out where the slide contacts the barrel during lock/unlock.



Modern pistol barrels are fine to lock on a single lug, and this one passes the dowel test, demonstrating the the lugs are not being abused during unlock.

Just over the final half-inch of barrel is enlarged, à la the original Series 70 pistols. After the collet bushing was axed, some manufacturers realized this was still a nifty step to achieving proper lockup.



(Continued in first reply.)

 

[ImperatorGray]

Extractor
No fitting seems to have taken place during installation of the extractor.



It protrudes conspicuously out the back. It rotates freely ("clocking") which, combined with its fore-aft wiggle, makes reinstalling the firing pin stop after a detail strip truly maddening.

More interestingly, it has absolutely no measurable tension when the barrel is removed from the slide. Weigand recommends tuning to 25-28 ounces, but I've been happier with significantly less tension - enough to keep a live round in place while shaking the slide to and fro. Out of the box, a live round could simply be dropped vertically through the ejection port of this pistol, without the extractor hook ever contacting brass.

The spacing was so far apart that I retrieved a .45 ACP case from the other room, just to confirm Springfield hadn't shipped this pistol with a .45 breech face. (They hadn't.)

I fired 120 rounds through the pistol in this condition, with no stoppages. There was one instance of "10mm crush."



This could theoretically happen with other cartridges, but it's more common in 10mm because the brass is roughly two and half millimeters longer than that of the .45 ACP the 1911 was designed around.

When it happens, it's because the case has reversed direction and has been pinched by the slide as it closed.

Here's a reconstruction:



The recoil spring had to be removed to create that picture, as it's not actually a great angle for the slide to arrest the brass: This particular act of eating brass doesn't typically turn into a "stovepipe" or a "jam." Instead, the mangled case simply drops gently at the shooter's feet as the next round proceeds into the chamber.

A loose extractor may contribute to this event, as will shortening the slide travel by, say, adding a shock buffer as I did on this pistol.

After running 120 rounds through the firearm with no other incident, I proceeded to mildly tension the extractor. The pistol promptly began failing to put roughly one round out of 20 into the chamber over the next 200 rounds, until I detensioned the extractor again.


Sights

Everybody will know from the stock photos that the Ronin ships with a hook rear sight for one-hand problem-solving, plus a fiber-optic front.

From the factory, the red front is flanked by white-paint dots. Putting these together will slow the brain's visual processors down less than will having to line up three white dots, but it's still not how I'd set up my own pistol from scratch.




Guide rod

Good ole G.I.-style recoil system.




Magazine

The issued mag is an 8-rounder.

As is typical of 8-round 10mm 1911 magazines, there's enough room to stuff in a ninth round as long as you don't try to insert it on a closed bolt. This means you can load your 8+1 for full-capacity carry without actually ejecting the magazine to top it off.

There's an extended floorplate to help you get the magazine all the way in on the first try, which is an old-school weakness of the 1911 experienced by some new users. But I'll be relegating this mag to the parts box in favor of a flush-fit 8-round for carry and an extended 9-round reload.

 

[TinNePa]

Thanks for the review. Based on your experience, I think I would pass on buying a Springfield. The plastic trigger (on a 1911) would have pissed me off. I passed on a nice used staccato because of a plastic mainspring housing. That, and I had a lemon of a 1911 subcompact from Springfield in the past. Makes me kind of want to avoid them altogether.


I don’t yet have a 1911 in 10mm, but it’s on the list. I do have an Sig 220 legion and an xdm in 10. The Sig is a pleasure to shoot because of the weight, and is the reason my next 10 will be in 1911. The xdm is a bit snappy, but who doesn’t want a high cap 10mm?

 

[ImperatorGray]

The plastic trigger (on a 1911) would have pissed me off.

The nylon trigger is, um... unacceptable.

I (kinda) forgave its existence because (1) the price difference vs the other options I considered paid for it and the rest of the small parts I'll be replacing many times over and (2) I knew that the trigger was on the way out just from aesthetics before I even put hands on the pistol.

Based on what I saw inside the Tisas 1911's I've torn down, I likely would have bought one of their 10mm pistols instead - if they made one that was practical to turn into what I wanted. (E.g., it's a lot harder to turn a Bomar cut into something else, or to undo lightening cuts in a slide, than it is to swap out a trigger.)

 

[Balrog]

I have been thinking about getting a 10mm 1911 and had been looking at the Ronin. It’s a good looking pistol, in my opinion, but sounds like it has some shortcomings. Kimber is making a good number of 10mm 1911s now, but I have had bad luck with reliability of Kimbers in the past so am reluctant to give Kimber another shot.

Who is making the best stock 10mm 1911 these days for under $1500? I havent seen a new Colt Delta Elite in a long time. Are they out of production? Occasionally I see a Dan Wesson. How are they?

 

[Russ57]

Great review. Very well written. I'd be embarrassed to let an extractor fit like that out the door. Ditto on the trigger!

I'm curious, what are you looking to turn it into?

 

[ImperatorGray]

Kimber is making a good number of 10mm 1911s now, but I have had bad luck with reliability of Kimbers in the past so am reluctant to give Kimber another shot.

Kimber is on my do-not-buy list.

And that's for both pre- and post-relocation Kimbers. My experience with them suggests that the idea that quality went down after the move to Yonkers is likely a myth.

The fact that Kimber has been unable to cut feed ramps correctly is an absolute dealbreaker for me. Here's Hilton Yam talking about that back in 2010. Mr. Yam is far more of an expert on 1911's than I am, and I suspect his prolonged experiences trying to make Kimbers run right for the LAPD kinda turned him off on the whole platform. (Being Hilton Yam, he's remained very even-handed about the whole experience.) If you consistently have to recut the feed ramp on a maker's pistols to make them run correctly, I want nothing to do with that product.

I could tell other stories and list other nitpicks about Kimber - they gave MIM a bad name, not the other way 'round, for instance - but the most humorous may be the fact that their barrels famously rust so often. And, less famously, that those "stainless" barrels will readily take a bluing in order to fix that issue.

That said, if you specifically want a 10mm in order to abuse it with overpressure ammunition, Kimber tends to maximize the head support. That's about the only argument I have for giving a Kimber a chance on anything.

Who is making the best stock 10mm 1911 these days for under $1500?

Mark Regenauer of Evolution Armory said something nice about current-production Dan Wessons, and when he speaks I listen.

I believe Delta Elites are still officially a production item (could be wrong), but I'm not sure how often they hit the distributors these days if so. Demand definitely seems to be outstripping supply.

I'm pretty darn happy with the Springfield for the money, as the stuff that's labor- and/or money-intensive to change (frame dimensions, barrel fit) is good for a production 1911. And as mentioned above, I'd be happy to give Tisas a shot based on what I've seen of their 1911's for the price point (the 5" .45 example I went over outdid pistols I've dealt with that were many times its price). Not being made domestically will be a dealbreaker for some.

 

[ImperatorGray]

I'm curious, what are you looking to turn it into?

Hopefully I'll have tweaks made within the week and can throw some pics up. Will include a parts list.

 

[JTQ]

And that's for both pre- and post-relocation Kimbers. My experience with them suggests that the idea that quality went down after the move to Yonkers is likely a myth.

For what it's worth, the Clackamas to Yonkers "move" was a headquarters move. There never were Kimber 1911's made in Oregon. They were a rifle company in Oregon until they bought the Jerico Factory in Yonkers and started making 1911's there. They just moved their company headquarters there when 1911's became their signature product.

Current 1911 production moved to Troy, Alabama over the past year or two.

 

[ImperatorGray]

There never were Kimber 1911's made in Oregon.

Good call out. If I remember right, some folks seem to think Kimber was a better pistol when some quality control was conducted in Oregon, pending a company range going up in NY. /shrug/

 

[ImperatorGray]

I've taken glamour shots, as promised.

Here she is wearing Pachmayr Signature GM-45C / 02921 Combat grips:




Front sight: Heinie #9055GF 14k gold bead for Springfield's oddball .340x60 dovetail.
Rear sight: 10-8 Performance 0201-375-140 U-notch.
Thumb lock: Colt SP572401 teardrop.
Flush magazine: Ed Brown 849-10 eight-round.
Reload: Wilson Combat 47NX nine-round.
Misc: Aluminum trigger (long). Full-size grip bushings (carbon). Full-size grip screws (slotted). Wilson Combat 2B buffer.

I'm still tempted to break out the checkering file and guide to throw on some G10 grips. Either Simonich Gunner style (golfball)...




Or "dress whites" (ivory-ish) from Cool Hand:




Stray thoughts:
1. The Heinie front came with a card stating it should be driven in from left to right. I did it right to left, as the missing finish inside the slide's dovetail demonstrated that's the direction the factory front had been installed. I love a 14k bead, and in the past I've installed SDM's into white-dot fronts using a drill press. I actually prefer the flatter mirror of the SDM Fabricating bead ($30 for the bead by itself), but I'm happy with Heinie's work.
2. 10-8 Performance makes the best-thought-out rear sights in the business. The "NM" U-notch they make for GI cuts is stunning. And the little extra machining they do to the front-left corner of their "low mount" sights (like this one) is a godsend when it comes to actually installing the blamed things.
3. The Wilson Combat mag pictured is, in fact, fully loaded. That final witness hole is empty because they use the same body for the 9mm (with rear spacer and different guts) as for the 10mm, and in 9mm it holds a tenth cartridge.
4. We'll see how the Wilson Shok-Buff holds up to 10mm recoil long-term. Buffers are a wear part anyway, but the extra oomph of the 10 could be better suited to the thicker option mentioned in the first post above.
5. It's a shame that Pachmayr puts a medallion in their wraparound grips these days. For me, the Pachmayr swoosh is all the branding it needs, and the medallion adds unnecessary visual complexity.

 

[Heir Kommt Die Sonne]

I like the Pachmayr medallions.

The wrap around look is really sharp actually. Goes well with the slide.