ImperatorGray
Member
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2011
- Messages
- 177
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.)
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.)
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