Stubby

Well, I’ve been shamefully lax in making blog posts lately. I’ve started a few and discarded them because I was apathetic and uninspired. The apathetic doesn’t really matter, as I’m usually fairly apathetic. The uninspired is more critical. Anyhow, that’s all over with for now. Expect more of the usual sort of deranged babbling you’ve come to expect from the louder, less sane half of YPS.

So today we’ll review the weekend’s primary purchase. We bought 35 pounds of rock for the turtle tank, but that’s a minor purchase. The major purchase was a Springfield Armory GI Champion Lightweight. The intent walking into the gun show was a Baby Eagle in .45. The Colt Lightweight Commander was also a possibility, but unless I saw a great deal on that, it wasn’t happening. However, Northwest Houston Tactical was at the show and made us an offer I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t realize SA made a lightweight version of the Champion, and at the price I got, I couldn’t pass it up. The intent was to get J a pistol that was lighter than my .45 that was comfortable in her hand. The Lightweight Champion is a half-pound lighter than a full-size 1911 and lighter than the Baby Eagle. The deciding factor came down to accessory choice as well as price. The Champion is the SA version of a Commander. For the uninitiated, this means a shorter slide and barrel on a regular Government model frame. Virtually every accessory that is not slide specific which fits a Gov’t model will fit the Champion. Plus, other accessories like holsters are more readily available than for the Baby Eagle. One of the benefits of the 1911 platform is the array of aftermarket parts and accessories available. The number of people competent to work on a 1911 is also exponentially larger than it is for any other handgun platform out there. In these respects, it shares a lot with the AR platform in rifles. The SA Lightweight is about $350 less than the Colt Lightweight. I’ve never drank the Colt kool-aid, so I don’t see the point in paying the extra money for the dancing horse. I’ve had a number of SA products and they’ve never failed me. So now J has a short stubby black version of my pistol.

So having said the accessories are available, we also ordered some over the weekend. The first accessory is an S&A magwell and the internal giblets to replace the Springfield ILS parts. While I have no burning hatred for ILS, I don’t see it as necessary. I do see a magwell as necessary, so the ILS loses. Brownell’s is also sending a skeletonized trigger from Chip McCormick that I should be competent to install. The next step is getting a nicer pair of grips than the stock ones. We are currently exploring that option. Let me just say for the record that more companies need to make the square bottom grips for use with magwells. I’ve seen some grips that were very nice, but once you install the magwell, you really need the square bottom. It looks funny otherwise. In the meantime, the black grips that came off the Mil-Spec will look better. Pictures and updates when all the parts are here and installed.