Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns New to me Kimber 1911

Anyone familiar with the Kimber Custom Defender II? From what I've gathered so far it may be a small production distributor special from 2001. The seller and a couple of Internet sites say there were about 290 produced.

Picked one up at a gun show over the weekend. It's not a CDP. It's a 5" .45 ACP, stainless steel slide, black anodized oxide finished stainless steel frame, full length guide rod, single side safety, long aluminum trigger, beavertail grip safety, flat metal mainspring housing, typical Kimber odds and ends.

It's seen a little use and abuse, small signs of finish wear on blackened frame, some previous user added a custom idiot mark, but it was only $550. It came with one Kimber mag, I picked up a couple of cheap surplus mags and couple of boxes ammo while at the show (didn't have any .45 stuff with me), and stopped at an indoor range on my way home. 100 rounds of Winchester fmj and Federal HST hollowpoints later I'm pretty happy. Function was 100% with all three mags, no feed or extraction issues at all. Accuracy looks like it will be very good, but was really trying to check function and was rotating thru the mags as fast as I could load them. I know it was only 100 rds, but it's a good start.

That AL frame should make that a nice carry gun. Only 3oz heavier than the Pro-Carry which is my favorite 1911-pattern carry gun. Also thst might be pre-schwartz trigger safety, which I prefer.

If it’s a 2 series, then it’s got the firing pin block.

It's not aluminum framed, it's black anodized oxide finished stainless steel.
And kimber firing pin blocks operate off the grip safety, not the trigger.

Yes, not my first kimber

Only the series II.

You cannot anodize stainless; you can only anodize aluminum (alloy).
So if it's really anodize, then it's aluminum (alloy) & if it's stainless, like some version of their KimPro coating which is like cerrokote.

But you are correct that the grip safety drives the Schwartz safety by pushing up a small lever that in turn pushed the firing pin block out of the way, thus allowing the firing pin to move forward & fire the gun.

MM

You can anodize other metals than aluminum (including stainless steel), but that is the most common application. It is a steel frame, definitely not KimPro, BUT - I did find a couple of references that say its stainless steel with a black oxide coating, so not exactly anodized, but a similar process. So.... time to edit original post.

The Schwarz system works off of the grip safety. This is better, AND worse than the Series 80 "solution". When it all works right, it's perfect. But the timing of the grip safety has to be carefully balanced against the trigger. I have worked on SEVERAL S&W's with this system because the factory got it wrong.

The series 80 system is pretty darned good for a FP safety. A properly built Series 80 is almost indistinguishable from a pre-lock 1911.

As for the "black oxized" finish. Brownells (and Du-Lite) offers a "bluing" solution that gives a blued finish to Stainless Steel.

One of the shops I worked at, we "tried" to do this finish. Turns out, it's VERY persnickity about temperature, and much less forgiving than normal bluing for ANY inconsistencies.


Our end result was a DARK purple reminiscent of the loading gates on early Ruger revolvers. We were on the right track, and we would have nailed it, but the boss was impatient and pulled the plug before we could perfect things. Gave a VERY high end sniper rifle a purple barrel. The customer INSISTED on not only accepting the purple barrel, but he even paid full price for what we all thought was a screwup. I have to admit, it did look kinda cool.

Anyhow, it's actually a bluing process much like hot bluing...pretty slick.

Not to continue to argue with you but, no, you cannot anodize stainless, at least in the true sense of typical electrolytic anodizing; but yes, it can be black oxidized, & some people call that "anodizing" but that is a completely & totally different process.

Furthermore, conventional anodizing would degrade the stainless surface.

Anodizing is done generally, in an acid bath with sulfuric acid being the major component & it's done with an anodic DC current being passed through the part during the process.

Black oxide, whether for high ferrous materials or a special version for stainless (I've done stainless barrels), is a highly caustic bath with no DC current being applied...........it is immersion only & is done at very elevated temperatures.

In addition, the film or layer formed is dramatically different.

MM