I've long admired custom M1911 style pistols from afar, but I wasn't sure if I'd ever spend the money to buy one or have one built. For me, most of the struggle was figuring out what I really wanted. I eventually reached that point.

It's a STI International Trojan 6.0 (six-inch barrel) in 45 Super caliber. This is the only STI pistol that I'm aware of which was issued from the factory in 45 Super. I stumbled across this one on Gunbroker.com, otherwise I would never have known such a thing existed. I've never seen STI advertise this caliber, nor have I ever seen another one like it. Given the problems I experienced with mine, I doubt they will ever be inclined to make another one. . . but that is getting ahead of my story.

I should take a moment to explain why I got a 45 Super. I really wanted a 10mm Auto with a six-inch barrel. I shopped around, but nobody was making one. If I got one it would have to be a fully custom gun, and that raised a whole bunch of other uncertainties that I didn't feel comfortable dealing with. The 45 Super seemed like a pretty decent second option, so when I found this one up for auction, I saw my chance and went for it.

After getting the pistol, I had problems immediately. The recoil spring was extremely stiff, so much that I had a struggle to cycle it by hand. I also found it was not reliable and had serious feeding hang-ups. I began to think I had made an expensive mistake and was saddled with a lemon. After fiddling with it a while, I sent it to STI for warranty service.

STI may have thought it was a lemon too. I waited weeks, then weeks turned into months, and all STI could tell me was that they were still struggling to make it work. "It's a tough one," I was told. They replaced at least the barrel and I don't know how many other parts, then finally returned it to me. Incidentally, the original factory barrel had "45" stamped on it. The replacement barrel has "45 ACP".

My first reaction when testing it was that I didn't see much improvement. However. . . They also included an alternative recoil spring, a much lighter spring. So, I began tinkering some more.

Putting in the lighter spring made a big difference. Now I was able to cycle the action without a struggle and the feeding improved markedly. I found it didn't like the 8-shot magazines that I was accustomed to using, but 7-shot magazines worked much better. I also found that it didn't like any ammo with truncated-cone shaped hollowpoint bullets (like Federal Hydra-Shock for example), but most other types fed much more reliably.

I got some 7-shot Wilson Combat stainless magazines, stayed with the lighter recoil spring, and avoided the truncated-cone HP ammo. From that point forward there were no more malfunctions! It became completely reliable.

There's probably a lesson in all this. You just can't expect these high-performance pistols to be as tolerant as a military-style M1911 that rattles when you shake it and has "minute of barn door" accuracy. I have a Colt M1991A1 that works 100% with any ammo and any magazine that I can shove into it. I sort of naively expected an expensive, target-grade M1911 style pistol would do the same. Nope. . . It just doesn't work that way. It's more like a turbocharged sports car, they require premium gas.

Incidentally, my Trojan came with a heavy barrel and a bushingless design. This makes it a bit of a pain to field strip and reassemble, but the extra mass helps control the recoil and the slide velocity when firing hot loads, particularly 45 Super loads. More recent product photos from the STI website show a traditional M1911 design with a barrel bushing, so it is possible that STI have changed it since I got mine.

Now I had a gun that worked reliably, but that wasn't the end of the project. I still wanted to customize it more to my own preferences. I sent it to a gunsmith (Hank Fleming of Austin, Texas) to have some parts swapped. I had the factory extended thumb safety replaced with a standard safety, the factory standard slide release replaced with an extended release, the factory flat steel mainspring housing replaced with an arched plastic mainspring housing, the factory slim-profile grip screws and bushings replaced with standard bushings and hex-key screws, and the grip front strap re-contoured so that it would accept a Hogue wrap-around grip -- or a Crimson Trace Lasergrip, which is also a wrap-around design.

This last point warrants some explanation. The STI grip frame is not the same as a standard Colt. It is relieved under the trigger guard to allow a slightly higher hand position, and the front strap is thicker. It's thick enough to prevent most wrap-around grips from fitting properly.

It seems that the extended thumb safety has become standard on most M1911 pistols these days. I think it's based on the theory that the shooter is going to keep his thumb hiked up unnaturally over the safety while shooting. It's a popular technique, but in my opinion it has no place outside of IPSC competition. In speed contests it might provide a slight advantage in shot-to-shot recovery times, but the awkwardness and compromised grip on the pistol can in no way be justified in "real life" shooting situations. On the other hand, the extended slide release lever is really useful. With it I can effortlessly release the slide without having to shift the pistol in my grip at all.

When the gun came back, I found a slight disappointment with the grips. Even though I could now put wrap-around grips on the pistol, they didn't feel right. The relieved area under the trigger guard really changed the spacing, so the "hump" of the wrap-around grips didn't naturally fall between my first and second fingers as it ought to. It may seem like a trivial matter, but it didn't work for me. I finally decided to put the Lasergrips on my Colt M1991A1 and use a set of Hogue, rubberized, two-piece grips on the Trojan.

I still wasn't done! Next I sent the pistol off to M1 Tactical for a two-tone Duracoat finish. I chose "snow gray" for the frame and grip screws, and matte black for most other parts. The barrel and hammer were left in the white, and the sights were left blued. The results exceeded my expectations and made this pistol look 100% better. The Trojan was a reasonably good looking gun when new, but with the new finish and grips it now looks deadly serious.

Load selection and development went pretty smoothly. When shooting standard 45 ACP hardball, the cyclic rate is slow and the empty cases tumble out of the ejection port in a leisurely manner, but it still works reliably. It works superbly with 185gr +P Remington Golden Saber cartridges, developing an impressive 1220 ft/sec and 610 ft-lbs energy. The six-inch barrel really wrings the most out of +P ammo.

I haven't shot much factory 45 Super ammo, but I have developed a load I'm quite fond of. I am using Rainier Ballistics Leadsafe bullets, which are solid lead bullets with copper plating. My pet load uses the 250-grain flat-nose bullet that was intended for 45 Colt revolvers. In the 45 Super I can get it up to 960 ft/sec and 510 ft-lbs energy, which is closely comparable to the 45 Colt revolver with its original 255gr bullet and 40 grains of black gunpowder. The Trojan then becomes like a semi-auto peacemaker. Oddly enough, the six-inch barrel makes it almost identical in size to a Colt SAA revolver with a 5-1/2" barrel. These loads feed and cycle very smoothly, which was a pleasant surprise because their profile appears similar to the HP bullets that hang up in this pistol.

I am proud of how this pistol came out. It wasn't exactly cheap, but I got a gun that meets my personal preferences and cost a lot less than some of the fancy-schmancy engraved 1911's that I've seen paraded across magazine covers.

After having a few custom guns built, I've learned at the end of the project one question always comes up. If I were doing it again, what would I do differently? Every custom gun is a learning experience, and by the time I reach the end, I always have learned some lessons that I wish I could go back and apply.

If I were doing it again, I'd probably go for a frame with more Colt-like dimensions, so it could accept wrap-around grips and be comfortable with them. The STI Trojan has been a good platform in most respects, but I still really like the Lasergrip.

More importantly, I think I would hold out for 10mm auto. The 45 Super is cool and certainly is impressive from the "bigger is better" standpoint. It's also nifty (at least to me) that I can duplicate the ballistics of a military 45 Colt SAA. However. . . On paper it looks like the 10mm Auto would be the perfect cartridge for this gun. The heavy mass of the long slide and bull barrel would nicely tame the hot 10mm's recoil impulse. Because of its dimensions, and because it's a true rimless cartridge, it should be much easier to make the 10mm feed reliably in this platform. I'm sure it would be practical to use a 9-shot magazine. And of course, the 10mm can attain much higher velocity and flatter trajectory, so it would be a winner in all respects. But again we come back to the fundamental problem: nobody makes a six-inch barreled 1911 pistol in 10mm Auto. It would call for a lot more extensive custom work to have one cobbled together by somebody.

Comments are welcome, as I always love chatting with other gun cranks. You can return to my home page and find my e-mail address there.