Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Tisas ZiG 1911 D10 / 10mm / review

For quite some time I've thought I might enjoy owning a pistol in 10mm Auto. I can't say I needed one, but I can say there sure was a hankering. I initially thought I wanted a Delta Elite because there's something about the 1911 platform that tickles my fancy, but looking around on the web and reading what many different people had to say about the Delta Elite alerted me to some potential problems with it. Of most concern to me was hit-and-miss accuracy out of the box. I believe that any 1911 should be a viable candidate for accurizing...after all, it's an assembly of many different component parts---but I do not have a desire to go down that path. I began to consider other manufacturers, among them the Philippine-made guns and those of Turkish origins. I decided to go with the Tisas brand, which I understand to be the same as the Girsan branded 1911 pistols but imported by a different firm. The price on the day of purchase was about $630, but only a day or two later it went up to about $720. At this point I still think it's a good buy even at the increased price, but we'll see if that opinion holds up.

The pistol arrived packaged in the ususal polymer pistol case complete with a bore brush, a cleaning rod, a chamber flag, a bushing wrench, and an owner's manual.






I was pleasantly surprised with the overall feel of quality and the appearance of the pistol. Upon disassembly I was pleased with the dearth of machining marks and the nice fitting of the slide to the frame---smooth, and very little slop. The bushing fits the slide snugly and the barrel is fairly well held stationary in the slide when the pistol is in battery.












I like the adjustable rear sight on the gun. The sight notch is a little deeper than the one on my Springfield Range Officer and it seems to me that this makes it easier to keep the front sight centered in the notch.





The checkered front strap is a nice touch as well as the checkered mainspring housing. The workmanship may not be as impressive as a Colt or Wilson Combat, but it's not bad at all and certainly very functional.









The trigger pull out of the box was not horrible, but of the half dozen or so 1911s I have owned I never was satisfied with the out-of-the-box trigger. Since I have a 1911 sear jig, so I put it to work. The sear jig is great...pretty straightforward in use and quite effective, but the back-cut is always challenging. I screwed up the sear on the back-cut but had another brand new, unmolested sear on hand. With this one I was much more careful, and after adjusting the sear spring found that I had a very nice, clean trigger pull. I don't have a trigger scale and never saw the need to know what it would tell me because I know when I like the feel of any trigger, and I know when a trigger is unsafe. I estimate this one came out to be about three pounds or so..I don't really know, but I know that I like it so I don't care what the number is.





So, the next step of project was ammo. I rarely shoot factory ammo of any kind and do not intend to buy any for this gun. I have handloaded .40 S&W for about 15 years for practice use and I have a bunch of Missouri Cast IDP #5 on hand, and that's what I'll use for general practice and plinking. I also found a good deal on a 250-piece box of Nosler 180-grain ASP hollow points, and those will be for carry while hunting and occasional concealed carry. I have never used the cast IDP #5 on any animal so I have no idea how well they would work on a charging boar hog. I could be wrong but I think the 180-grain hollow-point would be a much better choice. At some point I may test the theory. I am still kicking around the idea of buying a mold, but I'm busy enough with this gun at the moment and have decided nothing. Suggestions are welcome, but I do want to stick with the 180-grain weight class.

I have three powders on the shelf which I consider to be suitable candidates for the 10mm: W231, Hodgdon Universal, and pound and a half Alliant Bullseye which I had forgotten about. I'd rather not get into the Bullseye so I loaded up 50 trial loads for the cast bullets and 50 for the hollow-points, incrementing by 0.2 grains on each, using Universal and W231.

I had not loaded jacketed bullets for a handgun cartridge since the early 80s (I cast for everything except the .40s). When I seated the JHPs I couldn't help but admire them. They're just so purdy.






At this point, my only reservation is that the gripping surface of the grips that come installed on the pistol is pretty rough in texture. I'm writing this up as things progress, so I do not yet know if I like them. I expect fairly snappy recoil with the pistol, and the texture may be hard on the hand. I have yet to fire the pistol, so I'll probably have more to say about that.

Next step will be a range report. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and I'll be able to finish this up in a timely manner.