Delightful diversion: testing Kimber's new rimfine was a tough job, but someone had to do it

Guns Magazine, March, 2004 by Charles E. Petty

This is a good time to talk about a firing pin related subject: dry firing. Here is another of those old wive's tales that just won't go away. "Dry firing will hurt the gun," quoth the gunshop sages who read that somewhere or heard it on the grapevine. The truth is that the huge majority of pistols or revolvers could care less. "You can dry fire it until the cows come home," said Kimber designer Nehimiah Sirkis. The otherwise excellent instruction manual doesn't mention dry firing so we asked.

Magazines are always an issue for any automatic pistol and many conversion units have used the Colt Ace magazines as an expedient. Kimber took another approach and designed an injection molded, 10-round magazine made of Nylon reinforced with fiberglass. This is a strong and durable material and the magazine proved easy to load to full capacity. One of the magazines used in this test didn't like to function when filled to capacity although it worked perfectly when downloaded to eight rounds. The other two didn't mind being full. That's Kinda' how magazines are.

The only other point to mention is that the Kimber does not provide a hold-open device to lock the slide back when the last round is fired, It's certainly possible to do this, since the Ace has this feature, but it does complicate the design and would probably increase cost substantially.

Hold-open devices work by having a part of the magazine follower engage and lift the slide stop on the last round. The issue, as I see it, is that molded magazine followers can be difficult, and fragile, in this application. My preference would be for an economical highly functional, magazine such as Kimber's over something that might be less durable.

No Cherry Picking

Any time a new gun comes in it gets a thorough inspection and my first finding should lay waste to the idea that writers get special. "cherry picked" guns. The trigger, right out of the box, was the crispest 6 1/2 pound pull I've ever seen. No creep at all, just heavy as the dickens. In fairness this is not typical for Kimber triggers which are among the best you'll find as a rule.

VP Dwight Van Brunt called it an "anomaly" and told me that their standard is a pull between four and five pounds. So before it went to the range it went to the shop and got the trigger adjusted to a more manageable four pounds.

I often talk about the gong at my range for it has become an informal arbiter of accuracy. After all if a handgun can consistently hit a 14-inch diameter plate at 70 yards accuracy probably isn't going to be a big issue. And that's exactly what the little Kimber did. The first shot hit the gong and so did most of the others.

At one point with the gong freshly painted, a spotter estimated that the majority of bullet strikes were within a 4-inch square. This was done offhand with the back of my hand rested against a steel pole that supports the roof.

This is the old "barricade" position from PPC and it gives quite a bit of stability without having to go to all the trouble of rests or sandbags, I shoot this way a lot. So much so, in fact, that this roof support is labeled, "Petty's Prop Pole."