Kimber .22 fun gun: 23 ounces of tack-driving accuracy

American Handgunner, March-April, 2004 by Charles E. Petty

Many years ago pistol-smith Bob Day had a small quantity of aluminum Government Model frames made by an aftermarket manufacturer, He used them to make a lightweight plinker out of his well known .22 Conversion Unit. He only made a few because most people wanted a heavy gun for bullseye pistol competition.

Now Kimber has put the fun-gun back oil the 1911 map with their Rimfire Target pistol. It's a whopping 23 ounces, is deadly accurate, reliable and an absolute joy to shoot.

We've had conversion units for the Government Model since 1935. There have been quite a few different versions starting with Colt's. Their original Conversion Unit used a floating chamber designed by the famous Marsh "Carbine" Williams. It was used first on their Service Model Ace pistols with the object of increasing recoil to the point where the steel slide of the old Government Model had enough oomph to function reliably. The downside was that the floating chamber pretty well wrecked any chance of decent accuracy. The problem was lead and bullet lube build up between the floating chamber and the rest of the barrel. When it was clean it shot fairly well but went downhill when dirty.

There have also been quite a few other conversion units, mostly based on the units sold by Ceiner. In fact. Kimber had a brief fling with those and this may well have provided the motive for them to design their own. One of the flaws of most of the conversions was that they didn't look like the 1911. Many had an abbreviated slide that looked more like the S&W Model 41 than anything else. Colt's unit looked good, and so does Kimber's. In fact if you don't look at the muzzle or pick it up, it looks just like Kimber's latest models with the external extractor. And, it field strips just like them too. You depress the recoil spring plug, rotate the bushing, pull the slide back and pop out the slide stop pin. But the parts you remove are very different.

Tough To Do

One of the difficulties of any conversion unit was the design of the ejector. The .45's is too far to the left to work with the rimfire case. Colt and others used a separate part that complicated field stripping. Kimber's is similar but they cleverly cut a small slot in the left side of the stainless steel barrel and permanently stake the ejector in place. Another giveaway for the observant would be the lack of an ejector slot on the slide and a frame that is missing an ejector.

The barrel has a lug attached to the bottom to hold it in place via the slide stop pin. Unlike many conversions the Kimber uses a standard barrel bushing, The fit of barrel and bushing follows the pattern of good accuracy jobs where the foremost portion of the barrel is about .005" larger than the rest of the barrel. This allows the bushing to be a bit tighter without interfering with function. Since the operation is straight blowback there is no other locking mechanism although the fit of the slide stop pin to the barrel is also a bit snug. When you field strip the pistol it will take just a little effort to pull the slide stop out. Both of these combine to produce accuracy that compares very favorably with many more conventional .22 pistols.

One of the hassles faced by other conversions is the magazine. Actually magazines are a hassle for all automatic pistols but when the cartridge is a .22 Long Rifle, the small case size and rim makes it even trickier. Many conversions relied upon Colt Ace magazines, but Kimber's is injection molded of reinforced nylon. The Achilles heel of steel magazines is the necessity for feed lips. The springy things can get out of whack and yield nightmarish feeding problems but Kimber's are a solid part of the magazine. There isn't anything to get out of adjustment. The only downside is the magazine does not lock the slide open when the last round is fired. All pistols that have this feature rely upon the magazine follower to push something up and catch the slide on the last round. The original Ace units did this but Kimber probably would have had to have a very different magazine and more complicated design to do it. This one is reliable and easy to load, which is a pretty good trade. All we have to do is remember to count to 10.

Of course most of us don't do that very well, so we may end up with a click instead of a bang. This is a useful training aid for it shows very clearly if we commit the sin of trigger jerking or flinching. This involves dry firing the pistol and contrary to some conventional wisdom, that doesn't hurt a thing here. The Kimber has an inertia firing pin which does not protrude far enough to contact the breech face. You may dry fire as much as you wish. That's a training hint more than a mechanical thing.

Shooting the little Kimber is one of those like-wow moments. It looks and feels like a .45--operates exactly the same way--but has truly negligible recoil. Everyone says the primary rationale for conversion kits is to permit economical training. Yeah, that's true, but my sneaking suspicion is most folks will shoot it 'cause it's fun.