1st preliminary report on the Tisas, .45 ACP

It’s been heard that the best reason to buy a new handgun is because you’ve found a holster in the chest of drawers that you don’t currently have a gun for.

That being close to the case, and being in the market for a Commander sized 1911, I was at the one of the gun stores in the local flying area and espied one of the current versions with the full steel frame by the Trabzon Silah (TİSAŞ) c0mpany, imported from Turkey.

Well, the gun looked good. The fit and finish were excellent, but of course, the proof is in the shooting, which I managed to do last week, during the Shootist’s Holiday at the NRA Whittington Center just south of Raton, New Mexico.

I am currently underwhelmed, but final judgement will be held in abeyance until I determine what may be necessary to fix the problems I had with the gun,

First, it wouldn’t reliably feed Black Hills Ammunition’s standard 230 gr hardball fmj ammo in any of the several different magazines, which included twin sets of; Check-Mate military issue, Metalform stainless round follower, Triple K round follower and even Wilson-Rogers.
Each time, the round would feed halfway into the chamber, then hang up and tie up the gun, necessitating pulling the magazine out and cycling the slide to clear the jam. I didn’t attempt to fire a group for record.

Trying CCI’s Lawman brand of same load however did work and at 50 feet on the Sight-In Range, holding 6 O’clock with elbows rested on heavy concrete benchrest table, I could keep the shots in the black of the target, but the group size was rather disappointing.

(click on all pictures for a larger version.)

I think I’ll do some comparison measurements of the cases of the different brands and see if the rim thickness might be the cause but in any case, it looks like I’ve got a bit of extractor tuning and maybe feed ramp polishing ahead of me.

Remington factory was similarly underwhelming but this was older ammo back when nickeled brass was being used.

However, I did find one bright spot when I tried one of Dad’s reloads of the same Remington 185 grain jhp loaded with 7.5 grains of 700X.

This group came in under 3 inches and with a little sight adjustment would be perfectly satisfactory.