Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Rock Island 45 1911's?

Its not my fault...when you grow up in a family that has 1911 parts business in it you tend to not be overly worried about breaking something.....you go and get the parts and fix it.....LOL

ScottF here has one and really likes it. He competed with it in the Bowling Pin Shoot that we did at the Washington 24hourcampfire Get-Together last summer. As I recall, he was in the Final Four (even though he is right-handed but severely left eye dominant and takes aim through bifocals!) His RIA 1911 functioned as well as any of the other guns present, which included a Wilson Combat and numerous Kimbers.

Going off on a tangent a bit, but here's a pic of Scott shooting his RIA. This pic just doesn't do justice to his diagonal head tilt as he gets the sights in his left-side bi-focal:



That was a FUN day!

In other words, if Scott cocks his head at ya, look out!!! (grin)

No doubt! If you're standing to his right when shooting pins, it's almost as though he's watching you. You kind of look over at him and say, "What?! Watch your own pins!"

It is what works but I am guessing it could prove extremely valuable to me. Say I was have lunch with some friends at a restaurant and a bad guy walks in with a shotgun and yells something about a holdup. My shooting stance alone walk cause him to drop the shotgun and fill his pants, and drop face down on the ground saving be the cost of a 45 round.

Wade, you forgot to mention that many of the pins on my table jut fell over from laughing at the crazy guy shooting at them.

I may try a patch over the left eye and see how that works. At 63 there is little chance of changing hands.


My Rock Island is showing signs of wear after a year of all day, every day carry but I thing it looks better than new out of the box.

Forgot to add, somewhere I have a picture of my RI with new grips but I cannot remember where I put it.

Scott, Are those your Mariners grips???

I had not thought of that.

They are compass rose grips and we are Compass Rose Farms. These grips were owned my two other Campfire members before they came to live with me.

My only complaint about the RI 1911 is the grips are to ugly for words. I did a trigger job and replaced the grips and other than wear off a little finish and clean it that is all I have had to do to it. It does a great job of knocking down pins in spite of me weird shooting stance.

Ol' Chocolate allowed Scott to do some trick shootin.

He nonchalantly evenly laid down five pins at the back of the table just to taunt us with his skills and ol' chocolates performance.

Was a day and shootin performance to remember...

Where is Mr. Bricktop when you need him?

Fixed it.

Things legends are made of...

My, my, aren't you a salty f*cking dog. Shilling and hawking more Wal-Fart caliber bullshit, as usual.

You are late. I expected you right after I posted.

I have Bricktop on ignore. I see I haven't missed anything.

So, he has one eye fishing & the other looking for bait?

There was a time in my life that was a lot closer to the truth than you could guess. As a kid I developed a lazy eye and would often look two directions at ones. Fortunately that was before my shooting days or no one would have been safe.

Time, glasses and eye exercises corrected it so that both eyes work together now but I was ended up left eyed and right handed. All my shooting life I have used my right eye for shooting but after bifocals I returned to try somewhat serious iron sighted handgun shooting. If I use my wearder than heck stance I can hit what I want sometimes.

Looks funny, feels really strange but occasionally pins fall and once in a great while they even fall off the table and I am having fun.

I guess the best advice would be if you were sitting around a fire with me and I looked at you real funny I may be getting ready to shoot. If you hold still you will have a 99% chance of not getting hurt but if you start running around then anything could happen.

That's what I was alluding to.