Observing Eclipse: Kimber has set the 1911 World on Fire with Its Great Shooting, Good Looking Pistols. The New Eclipse only Fans the Flames Higher

Guns Magazine, Feb, 2002 by Massad Ayoob

The first thing that strikes you about the Kimber Eclipse is its appearance. There's no way around it. The flats of the pistol are silver in color and brush/polished in texture. The rounded surfaces -- the underside, the valleys of the slide grooves, the distinctive lettering -- are a charcoal gray that's only a shade or two away from jet black. The result is a light and shadow effect that an artiste might call chiaroscuro. Kimber's laminated double-diamond-checkered grips (sold separately for $55.95) finish the eye candy element with a stunning earth-tone medley of subtle brown and green shades. The overall result is a pistol that just reaches out and grabs you by the eyeballs.

The kid here ain't no artiste, but he knows a good lookin' gun when he sees one. The concept is traceable to Dennis Medonia and Winslow Potter, assigned to Kimber's Custom Shop operation, and Scott Gibbs from the sales side of the Kimber house. Dwight Van Brunt, the company's head of marketing, was the one who came up with the Eclipse designation. "All that light and shadow just reminded me of an eclipse of the sun," Van Brunt told me.

But beauty is as beauty does. The Eclipse is part of the Custom Shop series. Unlike other firms, Kimber doesn't put its custom shop in a separate place. Rather, Van Brunt explains, it exists as a series of hand-picked top craftspersons along the assembly line who are assigned to pay extra attention to the guns that will bear the Custom Shop logo. Each Eclipse's trigger system is individually worked to a crisp, clean 4- to 4.5-pound pull. The ambidextrous thumb safeties are installed for smooth, easy, but totally positive functioning right out of the box.

Two sizes of Eclipse are currently available, each all-stainless steel in construction and with full-length grip frame. The Government size pistol with 5-inch barrel uses a conventional bushing. The Pro series, one of which GUNS received for testing, has a 4-inch "cone" style barrel. This does away with the bushing and allows for a bull barrel configuration up front, which some believe adds just enough weight to help dampen muzzle jump. I personally can't tell the difference, but some swear they can. The spring guide rod that comes with the Pro model requires a tool Kimber supplies with the gun, which resembles a large, glorified paper clip, for takedown. It's an inconvenience, but probably a necessary safety precaution to prevent a careless gun cleaner from being nailed by a 22-pound recoil spring that could otherwise go flying.

Accuracy

Half a dozen .45 ACP loads - 1/3 practice-type, 2/3 duty-type - were tested at 25 yards from a hand-held beach rest position. Five-shot groups were fired, and two different measurements were taken of each group to the nearest .05 inch. Each group was measured twice, with every measurement being center-to-center, farthest shot to farthest shot. The first measurement was of all five shots. This determines what the gun could do if you were braced and shooting over an auto hood or something similar.

The three-shot measurement was something I started doing several years ago to factor out human error. Observation had shown me that the best three hand-held shots from the same gun would roughly equal all five out of a Ransom machine rest with the same gun. Senior Field Editor Cameron Hopkins recently assigned Charles Petty and me to test this hypothesis, with each of us firing four guns, comparing my "best three" handheld, to Charlie's "all five" from the Ransom Rest. One pistol we both tested was Charlie's Kimber Custom Shop Super Match .45, enhanced by Charlie and equipped with a Kart barrel. We averaged .37-inch difference, which is similar to the difference between one and another test of the same gun and ammo in a machine rest on two different days.

The load with which we differed the most, less than .5 inch, was Federal's famously accurate and effective 230-grain Hydra-Shok. Charlie's five-shot measurements averaged 1.09 inches at 25 yards with the Kimber Super Match .45, while my "best three" measurements averaged 1.57 inches. The difference was .48 inch. It showed two things: The "best three" concept worked for giving a rough idea of the gun's pure mechanical accuracy, and the Federal Hydra-Shok and the Kimber Super Match made one hell of an accurate combination.

With the Kimber Custom Shop Pro Eclipse II, I took some ammo from the same lot of 230-grain Hydra-Shok Charlie and I had used and ran it from the bench at 25 yards. The results: 2.10-inch group for all five shots, and 1.35-inch group for best three.

Now, I'm not gonna play the statistics game with you and say the Kimber Custom Shop Pro Eclipse II concealment pistol is more accurate than the same custom shop's famous Super Match. But I am gonna tell you this: The carry gun shot better for me with the same ammo than the top-flight tournament target pistol.

As you scan the above figures, notice the extraoridnary consistency. Half a dozen different loads, delivering five-shot groups less than .5 inch different from one another. In a world where you can't always find your first choice in ammunition, that consistency means a lot.