Kimber three-gun test: 6,000 rounds and a surprise or two

American Handgunner, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Charles E. Petty

Ever since Kimber made their first 191 l-style pistol I've been watching and studying their guns. I have no idea how many of their pistols I've tested, and while they haven't all been perfect, the quality has been consistently excellent. One of the real drawbacks of gun tests as we normally do them is that we are dealing with a sample of one. And while we fervently hope every other gun is going to be the same, it's safe to say there will always be exceptions. The famous Mr. Murphy loves to hang around the gun business.

I'm a firm believer in using the Ransom Rest whenever possible to measure accuracy for a bunch of reasons, but laziness isn't one of them. In fact when I test guns in the Ransom Rest I always shoot more groups and a wider variety of ammo than I would if I was shooting by hand from a bench. The Ransom Rest lets me do a more thorough job and give you better information. Sure I could sit down and pop off two or three groups and go home but I don't think that is in keeping with American Handgunner's "be the best" philosophy.

The Point

All of this leads up to a point. Not long ago I tested Kimber's new TLE Stainless and was truly amazed by the accuracy. Over all these years I have tested hundreds of 1911 s and that off-the-shelf Kimber shot better than many custom guns. That pistol made me wonder if they were all that good nowadays and planted the seed of an idea that comes to fruition with this story. After His Editorship Roy and I hashed it around awhile, we decided to try testing three identical pistols.

What we wanted--and got--were three guns built consecutively on the same day. It's important to know this does not mean consecutive serial numbers, for pistols are not assembled in order of serial number. In fact serial numbers are assigned to frames early in the manufacturing process and they go into inventory to be completed as needed. Kimber VP Dwight Van Brunt assured me that we could get the guns.

The next step was to talk with Jeff Hoffman of Black Hills Ammunition and discuss what sort of ammo to use and how much to shoot. I'm sure you've seen the "torture" test stories that involve shooting five or ten thousand rounds through a gun. In this day I'm not sure that proves much so the plan that emerged was to shoot 1,000 rounds each of Black Hills 230 gr. FMJ and JHP ammo through each gun. The work would be divided between myself and staff of FMG's flagship magazines. Then, the Ransom Rest test was repeated with the same ammo after the 2,000 round test. We'll present all of that data in table form.

The Test

This is one of those things that can be as much of an ordeal for the tester as the testee. When one of these comes along the first thing to do is mention "free ammo" to enough people. Sure enough at 9:30 on a rainy March morning six friends showed up at the range. Two of them were new owners of .45 pistols and badly needed brass, and all were curious. One allowed as how he thought the gun would never make it through four cases of ammo.

The plan was simple. We would shoot in 100-round increments so there would be one shooter, several magazine loaders and one tally keeper. There were eight Kimber magazines and all were loaded to the 7-round capacity. The tally keeper would just make a tick mark on a piece of paper for each magazine fired so we could pinpoint the round count should there be stoppages. It took about 5 minutes to fire the 100 rounds and by the time that was done the pistol was pretty hot. In doing these tests I've gone to the point where the frame around the grip was too hot to touch but this wasn't that severe. All but the rearmost portion of the slide was too hot to hold but the frame never got that warm.

When the string was finished the pistol was put on a concrete shooting bench to cool. Ambient temperature was 45 degrees. Within about 10 minutes the slide was only slightly warm to touch and shooting resumed. A drop of Break Free was placed on the barrel bushing area and on top through the ejection port at the start of each 100 round string. We shot a case (500) of ball then hollowpoints and so on. The first 500 rounds of ball went without incident, but at around 700 rounds we experienced a failure to teed on the last round. The cartridge was sticking nose-up between slide and barrel. This was noted and we carried on but kept that magazine separate.

About 100 rounds later the same thing happened with another magazine. Both were removed from service and the remainder of the 2,000 rounds was fired with no stoppages of any kind. The only care the pistol received was the lubrication. There was no cleaning of any type. In hindsight we probably didn't need to lube that often. By the time we finished a 100 round string there was a little smoke rising from the pistol but it never got hot enough to burn off all the lubricant.

After the guns in California were fired their allotted 2,000 rounds they came back to me. All were cleaned and inspected. There was no appreciable wear, nor any shooting-related defect to report. One interesting observation was that the trigger pulls of all three guns improved after shooting. Pulls were somewhat lighter after use, but in no way would they compromise safety.