The rail made light mounting a snap.

High-end 1911s, like high performance engines, are known by their components. Of those components, the barrel is perhaps the single most important; and of the aftermarket barrel makers, Bar-Sto is arguably the best known. And for good reason; with some 40 years of business under their belt, and a list of customers that runs the gamut from bullseye shooters to the USMC, they’ve pretty much been there and done that. What Bar-Sto had not done, until recently, was produce their own 1911 pistol.

Introduced in 2006, their competition-oriented California-legal widebody .40 S&W 1911 first caught my eye at the SHOT Show, where I was suitably impressed with the sample I handled. Since I tend to prefer the biggest bullets I can get, and wasn’t looking for a match pistol, I asked Bar-Sto president Irv Stone if they could do something a little more, shall we say — tactical. During the next few weeks, we discussed the project over the phone, and in the due course of time, I got a call from my dealer I had gotten a nondescript aluminum hard case from Twentynine Palms, California.

The finished pistol was all business. In place of the polished slide flats and massive aluminum magwell of the California .40, the gun was flat black, and Novak night sights took the place of the adjustable Bo-Mars usually found on the .40. Although the three-dot pattern is very popular on tritium night sights, I opted for the bar-dot pattern. The reasoning is simple, when shooting a pistol, you want your eye to focus on the front sight, and not the rear. If you’ve got twice as much tritium at the rear (read: two dots instead of one), your eye is going to be more quickly drawn there and you’ve got to stop to refocus on the single dot on the front. The single horizontal bar, while still plenty bright at night, throws off a lot less light than the front sight, keeping your focus where it needs to be.

 The slide itself was slab-sided, without the stirrup cuts usually found at the muzzle of a 1911, and had cocking serrations at both the front and rear of the slide. The controls consisted of an ambi-safety and beavertail, both dehorned and well-blended, along with a smooth, slightly extended magazine release and the customary slide-stop set into a machined recess in the sides of the wide hi-cap frame. The lightweight skeletonized trigger, which had no takeup, came back smoothly in its raceway, and dropped the Cylinder & Slide hammer crisply somewhere in the neighborhood of three pounds.

Poly Frame

The STI-style polymer receiver, of course, is the gun’s biggest departure from the status quo. Instead of being either a machined piece of steel, or a molded piece of plastic, the STI-style receiver (versions of which have also been made by McCormick and SVI/Infinity) mates a machined steel upper containing such things as the slide rails and fire control parts, with a molded polymer lower receiver. The lower, with a squared trigger guard and molded in checkering on the grip panels and frontstrap, reduces both the size and weight you would otherwise expect from a pistol holding a double-stack .45 magazine. Although the feel is definitely different in the hand — it’s squarer, and top-heavy when empty — the grip is no wider than your average single-stack .45.
The steel part of the modular receiver came with a light rail machined into its almost-full-length dustcover, a feature I had requested for this gun. While it’s not always possible to have a flashlight mounted on your pistol, and it’s not always a good idea to ID something by pointing a gun at it, there are still times when having the light actually on the gun is far superior to trying to hold it in one of your hands. Whether you use the Harries technique, the SureFire, Neck Index, FBI position, or whatever, a gun-mounted light is one less thing to think about (or drop) under stress.
I’ve become quite fond of SureFire’s X-series weapon-mounted lights, and used three different variants of them on the Bar-Sto .45: the X200A and B, and the X300. The original X200 (which is now called the X200A), has a tight, diamond-shaped beam that’s good up to 75 yards or so, making it a good choice for outdoor work, as well as rifle use. The X200B, on the other hand, casts a broader beam that’s more useful in close quarters, such as indoors, while SureFire’s recently released X300 is intended to be the best of both worlds. Beware, though; in close quarters, the brilliant center of the X300’s beam may affect your vision more dramatically then the softer corona of light offered by the X200B.

Tough Tests

When Irv and I talked about the gun, he told me to shoot it mercilessly, and that’s exactly what I did. In addition to the two mags that came with the gun, I got additional mags from Brownells and Bar-Sto, winding up with five hi-caps and one ten-rounder. With these in hand, and with my Dillon 550 warmed up from loading several hundred 200-grain Hornady XTP JHPs into my handloads, I was ready.

First off, the gun was accurate, which came as no surprise at all. I have more than one pistol fitted with Bar-Sto barrels, and all of them are exceptionally accurate. I had no trouble shooting groups in the 2" range at 25 yards, and was able to make hits out at 100. Very fun.

In some thousand-plus rounds through the gun, there were very few malfunctions, and those I did have were virtually all magazine-related. Mags have long been the curse of the 1911, and with hi-caps, spring tension is a crucial consideration. With new magazines, hi-cap and ten-rounder alike, the gun functioned flawlessly. After they were left loaded for a few weeks, though, the magazines ceased to feed as smoothly; while disassembling them and stretching the springs helped somewhat, they really needed to be re-sprung in order to achieve maximum reliability.

Lest you instantly wring your hands, single-stack .45 mags do the same thing with time, and prudent concealed carriers rotate their mags and regularly replace springs and followers. I even go so far as to download my single-stack mags, if that tells you anything. Replacing the stock 16-pound spring with an 181⁄2-pounder also aided feeding. The ultimate lesson is this: the Bar-Sto .45 is a high-performance pistol designed to do things a stock 1911 isn’t — like carry a bunch of bullets — so it should be shot, and maintained, accordingly.

More Lessons

Matt Helps

With this in mind, I contacted Matt Del Fatti, leather-maker guru. Since I have an easier time hiding a pistol on my waist than anywhere else, I ordered one of his SLP holsters, to be finished in matte black rough-side-out leather, along with a matching belt and one of his SM-LP pancake-style mag cases. Since the Bar-Sto has a light rail on it (and most STI-style pistols don’t), I shipped the gun to Del Fatti so he could fit the holster directly to the gun’s distinct contours. It was back in the due course of time, and the leather was a true work of art. From the regular, even stitching (double- or triple-stitched at the important places) to the precise, detailed molding and well-finished edges, the holster was exceptionally well-crafted, and its non-reflective black finish went well with the matte black pistol.

Once the Del Fatti carry rig arrived, I duly qualified with the Bar-Sto .45. Shooting with the local Sheriff’s Office, it came quickly on target, and I stayed at the head of the pack in speed. If the weight of the gun caused any reduction in my draw time, I didn’t notice it. Fully loaded, it weighs a mere two ounces more than a 5" Government Model. When I carried it on the job, it concealed neatly beneath a sports coat, and packed easily and comfortably.

Yes, if you’re in that line of work, you can take the Bar-Sto .45 on raids, where its big 13-round magazines and light rail would be most welcome, but you can go about anywhere else with it, too. From the firing line to the boardroom (yes, I took it there, too), it should do just fine.

For more info: Bar-Sto Precision Machine, (760) 367-2747, www.bar-sto.com; Brownells, (800) 741-0015, www.brownells.com; Del Fatti Leather, (715) 267-6420, www.delfatti.com.

It was 1970 or so when Irv Stone Senior and his brother decided to make a hand-crafted .25 auto. It was modeled after the classic Baby Browning, and was actually made by hand, on manual milling machines and lathes. This is prior to CNC stuff, so it was gun-making the way it was originally done — part by part, one at a time, all by experienced machinist’s eyes.

Irv Stone, Jr. told me he thought his dad wanted to make something “a woman could carry in her purse.” After only about 125 were finished, they found the barrel business was really taking off — and it was much easier to make barrels than entire guns. So, the little .25s went by the wayside.

And that’s too bad, if you ask me, since the one I had in my hands was simply lovely in execution and function. It was tiny, elegant and beautifully machined. And the fact it was done by hand and not by computer-controlled machinery only adds to the appeal. Irv Jr. said they still had some slides and frames on-hand and perhaps enough parts to build a few more of the guns, so I leaned on him hard to do it. Cross your fingers, but until that happens, you can only look and wish — like I’ve been doing ever since I handled our photo sample. Hey Irv … please?

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