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

This morning I shot the pistol. It's a mixed bag of good and bad.

I proved no load to be stellar. My loads were the Nosler 180-grain ASP JHP over various charges of both W231 and Universal. Five loads of each powder were fired, ranging from 5.4 to 6.2 grains in 0.2-grain increments. The single exception was 6.2 grains of W231 which clustered four shots in 1-1/4 inch. One of the shots was high out of the group, opening it up to about 3-1/4 inch. I was using some Ginex Large Pistol primers I'd acquired a few weeks ago. I don't think I'll fiddle with either of these two powders anymore...I've ordered a four-pounder of Silhouette as Son of the Gael suggested. I like the low flash aspect of it and I know it will meter beautifully, and the velocities will be there. I doubt I was getting much over 1000 fps this morning (I was too lazy to chronograph, though), and there was a LOT of vertical stringing. My fault? Maybe...but I don't think so.

The gun was evidently pretty tight when I started. The slide locked back on my twice, the first two shots. After that, it did not happen again except when it should have done so. There was one failure to go completely into battery and I think that was probably my 11th or 12th shot. All it took was a little help to finish chambering the round that one time. It did not happen again.

Now for the UGLY.

I intended to shoot some cast loads also after the jacketed loads were fired. I have tons of Missori cast 180-grain IDP #5s on the shelf and have used them for years for .40 S&W plinking and practice loads, and I figured they should be okay for 10mm also. When I loaded up a mag with these cast loads and tried to chamber a round, I found the the gun would not go into battery even with a little help. I also found that I could not retract the slide. Try as I might, it was jammed up about a tenth of an inch from going into battery. So there I sat with a live round in the chamber thinking about what I should do. I could not engage the safety and I could not remove the slide stop. Keeping the gun pointed downrange, I punched the mainspring housing pin out and removed the sear spring. My sear pin fell out, but I found it. I managed to get the hammer out, too. After fiddling with the gun a few minutes, I bagged it all up and brought it home. I was thinking I had a broken link. I was also thinking about a warranty that would be void because I'd shot handloads. I was thinking about dollar bills.

At home, with the recoil plug & spring and the bushing removed, I tapped gingerly on the nose of the slide with a plastic hammer and the slide began to open and I managed to get the live round out. Further disassembly and inspection showed no damage anywhere. Huh. I reassembled the pistol and attempted to chamber another of the same cast bullet load, and you guessed it---locked up. I went through the same moves again to get the slide to open up, which it did---but when it opened the case fell out without a bullet, which remained lodged in the leade of the chamber. The light finally turned on, and I was glad to know it was my handloads tying the gun up and not a mechanical failure that I had not detected yet. The thing is, I've loaded and fired thousands of this same bullet for my XD40 and never had an issue with chambering so I seated the bullets for the 10mm loads about the same as my .40 S&W loads. Seating the bullets a little deeper solved the problem. I uttered a great big "DUUHHHH" to myself.

So it really wasn't so ugly, after all.







So...I'd say this may be the most inconclusive range report ever given here. I'll have time to fire the now chamber-able cast loads sometime in the next month or so, but I'll most likely just move on to the Ramshot Silhouette. I gotta go see about putting a buck in the freezer this coming weekend.

I'll give this all another try in a few weeks. Maybe something really good will happen.