{"id":7192,"date":"2020-01-07T07:10:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T15:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=7192"},"modified":"2020-12-03T14:40:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T22:40:49","slug":"a-gripping-1911-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/01\/07\/a-gripping-1911-story\/","title":{"rendered":"A gripping 1911 story…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two 5-shot groups I shot with my Compact RIA 1911 at 50 feet this weekend. I love the load, I love the Rock 1911, and I love the Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips. These little snubbie 1911s are surprisingly accurate.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s no secret I’ve become a big admirer of the .45 ACP Rock Island Compact 1911.\u00a0 I worked through literally thousands of rounds and a number of personal preferences on mine and about the only thing left to mess around with was the grips.\u00a0 The standard wood grips on the Compact are okay, but I wanted better. \u00a0\u00a0 The best grips I’d ever tried on any 1911 are the ones made by Pachmayr<\/a>\"\", and that’s what I wanted for my Rock.<\/p>\n

It had been quite a few years since I bought a set of Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips, and when I searched for them online I found that they appeared under the Lyman site.\u00a0 So I called Lyman.\u00a0 I learned Lyman acquired Pachmayr about 20 years go (shows how much I know, I guess).\u00a0 The guy on the phone was nice and he was able to answer my question, which was would their shorter grips fit the Rock Island Armory Compact’s frame (and the answer was yes).<\/p>\n

Good buddy Greg had also purchased a Rock Compact based on my raving about it, and after Greg shot mine, he immediately purchased one for himself.\u00a0 Greg’s 1911 is completely unaltered (it has not had the custom work I had done on mine by good buddy TJ), but it shoots just as well.\u00a0 I had a few issues on mine; Greg’s had no issues or failures of any kind with his Compact 1911.<\/p>\n

I told Greg a couple of weeks ago that I had ordered a set of Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips for my Rock, and he ordered a set, too.\u00a0 I was out of town, so Greg got to shoot his Pachmayr<\/a>\"\"-equipped Compact first.\u00a0 One of the Pachmayr grip emblems fell off on Greg’s gun his first time at the range with the new grips.\u00a0 That was not a good start. \u00a0 Greg has another full-sized 1911 with Hogue<\/a>\"\" grips and he likes those, so he ordered a set of Hogues for the Compact.\u00a0 The Hogue<\/a>\"\" grips have finger grooves in them, and Greg likes that feature.\u00a0 I don’t, but hey, different strokes for different folks.<\/p>\n

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Greg’s RIA Compact with Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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On his first range session with the Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips, one of Greg’s grip emblems popped out.\u00a0 Mine hasn’t done that.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Greg’s Compact 1911 with Hogue<\/a>\"\" grips. Note the finger grooves.\u00a0 Note also that there’s no emblem to fall out.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve been shooting my Compact 1911 with the Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips and I love them. \u00a0 They give me a better grip on the little 1911 and I think they make the gun easier to shoot.\u00a0 And wow, it sure shoots well, especially with that 185-grain SWC bullet and the Bullseye load. \u00a0 That’s my go to load for this gun.<\/p>\n

Where I’m going with all this is that this weekend I was able to try both Compact 1911s; one with the Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips (that’s my gun) and one with the Hogue<\/a>\"\" grips (Greg’s gun).\u00a0 Both feel great, but for me, the Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips get the nod.\u00a0 They’re what I’m used to, I don’t care for finger grooves, and I like the checkered texture of the Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" style. \u00a0 My grip emblems are staying put, so I haven’t had the issue Greg (and others, if you poke around a bit on the Internet) have had with theirs.<\/p>\n

I shot a few targets on this past cold and windy Sunday morning at 50 feet, and I continue to be amazed at just how accurate the Compact 1911 is with my newly-discovered accuracy load (and that’s a 185-grain cast semi-wadcutter bullet over 5.0 grains of Bullseye with a CCI 300 primer).\u00a0 Surprisingly, Greg’s Compact fed the SWC bullets just as well as mine (my gun is throated and polished; Greg’s is in “as delivered” factory condition).<\/p>\n

The bottom line?\u00a0 Either set of aftermarket grips is good (both the Hogues and the Pachmayrs).\u00a0 You wouldn’t be making a mistake with either.<\/p>\n

One more thought:\u00a0 I think it would be cool if Rock Island offered the Pachmayr<\/a>\"\" grips as an option with an inlaid Rock Island Armory emblem.\u00a0 That would work for me, and I’d buy the first pair if they ever offered them.<\/p>\n

\n

Want to see more on the Rock Compact, reloading .45 ACP ammo, and other shooting topics?\u00a0 There’s more good stuff here:\u00a0 Tales of the Gun<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret I’ve become a big admirer of the .45 ACP Rock Island Compact 1911.\u00a0 I worked through literally thousands of rounds and a number of personal preferences on mine and about the only thing left to mess around with was the grips.\u00a0 The standard wood grips on the Compact are okay, but I … Continue reading “A gripping 1911 story…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[1020,1022,1021,1023,1019,699],"class_list":["post-7192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns","tag-armscor","tag-hogue","tag-pachmayr-grips","tag-pachmayr-vs-hogue","tag-ria-1911","tag-rock-island-compact-1911"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7192"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11275,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7192\/revisions\/11275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}