New Les Baer TRS - First Impressions

I just took ownership of a new Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special.  My God she's pretty.  Here's a picture with her older brother, my Kimber Custom II.  This will be kind of a lead in to a full comparison of these two pistols.  I'll add a more detailed, side by side comparison - complete with range visit - once the Baer is broken in.

I'm going to leave the TRS stock.  It's just too perfect to mess with it.  The Kimber, on the other hand has been worked over a bit.  It has the following parts from Ed Brown:  Mainspring housing, mag well, thumb safety, and slide release.  I also tried an Ed Brown firing pin stop but it was so loose and sloppy I sent it back.  Truth be told, the Ed Brown parts I've used have been only OK in quality.  In addition to the very undersized FPS, the slide stop is bead blasted, and the thumb safety is polished stainless.  When you order two parts you would think the finish would match, but they don't.  Anyway, so I replaced the Ed Brown FPS with one from EGW.  That puppy took a while to fit, but now it's perfect.  The extractor was replaced with a Wilson Bulletproof unit, the sights are three-dot night sights by Trijicon, and the grips are the diamond back G10 from VZ grips.  I love them.  I also added a small piece of grip tape to the front strap.  All of those replacements were in response to something that went wrong with a Kimber factory part.

I keep thinking with the Kimber that the next parts to replace are the hammer, sear, and disconnector, but I never get around to doing it, because it means I'll most likely need to replace the thumb safety as well.  The Kimber came to me with a decent trigger - it had a tiny bit of creep and broke at about 5.25 lbs.  After I smoothed some internal parts and adjusted the trigger bow and leaf spring it now breaks at a consistent 4.5 lbs.  The creep is diminished but still there, I suspect the last bit comes from the engagement of the hammer hooks to the sear.

Now, after 250 rounds through the Les Baer, I can say that the Kimber trigger pull needs to be fixed, like, yesterday.  I feel like I've finally been treated to a truly world class 1911 trigger, and there's no going back.  It's like eating steak au poivre and then trying to go back to dog food.

Anyway, more comparison stuff.  The Kimber is older, has way more rounds through it, but has always been looser than the TRS.  No big surprise there, as Les Baers are known for being extremely tight.  This one wasn't so tight that I had trouble racking it, but I definitely need a bushing wrench to take it down.  Here's a pic of the rear of the TRS's slide.

And for comparison, the Kimber.

Other random musings about these two:  I don't know what the finish is on the Kimber, but it has been really durable.  There has been no rubbing off, peeling, or flaking even though it's been in and out of a kydex holster thousands of times.  Of course, there is some of the blackness worn off on the slide rails, but that's to be expected.  The bluing on the Les Baer is gorgeous.  We all know bluing is sort of out of date, and that there are all kinds of modern finishes that are supposedly better at resisting corrosion.  I considered that, but then I also considered that most old hunting rifles were blued, and their finishes stood up to worse abuse than I ever plan to subject my Baer to.

I think I mentioned that today I put 250 rounds through the Les Baer.  Standard break-in is 500 rounds without cleaning.  You just lube it up from time to time and blast away.  I did have three FTF's, but none were the gun's fault.  I brought the three factory 7 round magazines, and just for fun brought a Wilson 47D 8 round magazine.  The three FTF's were all on the 8th round out of the Wilson magazine.  All three times the round skipped into the chamber before the extractor hook could grab the rim.  That's a magazine problem, not a reliability problem inherent to the gun.  So I'll either think about replacing the spring on that magazine, or I'll just stick to the factory magazines with this pistol.  Accuracy was great, and the gun was very shootable.  I ended my session with some Mozambique drills, and had no problems staying fast and accurate.  I put a lot of that on the excellent trigger job they do at the factory.

I absolutely love the slim grips that come standard on the TRS.  I'm now rethinking what grips to put on my Fusion build.  Luckily, I have a lot of time to decide.

It will be interesting to see how the two compare once I get them to the range together.  The Kimber weighs more (with the mag well and its full length guide rod), but the Les Baer is tighter and has a better trigger.