I have often joked how one of my specs a custom gun has to pass before I ship it is, I can hardly bring myself to box it up because I want it for my own….. it was very much the case with this one. I was lucky here to be able to put this one together just the way I'd do it, were I doing it for myself.
Some people turn up their nose at the OACP as unreliable. I will agree that, comparing guns that are in all other ways properly set-up, the OACP’s window of function is smaller than that of a 5” gun, just as a Commander’s window is reduced to a lesser degree, and other micro-compact 1911s’ windows are reduced to a greater degree.
Keeping a few factors in mind, the OACP can be 100% reliable. Just use good magazines with good springs, maintain reasonable recoil spring vitality, and select your ammo with a little care, and you’re good, assuming all other areas are as they should be, so rarely the case out of the box, unfortunately.
From the factory my own OACP in 1985 was not reliable and not accurate, but it sure is both now. This one, I never even shot it in factory condition but it has been 100% reliable from round one since finished and I have shot some targets with it at 28 yards that have been nearly shocking….. thanks to a Wilson barrel. I was tempted to do a slide/frame weldup on it as OACPs tend toward loosey-goosey, but in the end I didn’t and no regrets. With a bank-vault barrel fit and EGW flat-wire recoil spring setup, you really have to want to find the clearance. I managed some very satisfactory groups, six of six into 1 5/8 to 1 9/16, at 28 yards, a couple of them with three touching or nearly so.
I wound up modifying the EGW flat wire recoil spring setup. Their stuff is among the best but the OACP spring setup they offer was going to shorten the slide stroke a bit and I was not willing to go along with that.
In my own OACP I have taken to using the Asym loading of the Barnes 185 copper bullet, as it is (or at least was) the mildest loading of this bullets. Barnes will tell you that beyond a certain velocity, its performance will actually be diminished—so in exchange for more noise, flash and recoil, you get—less effect. Bumping it up that high also takes us to the edge of function in a shorter gun—not where we want to be. Mild is where it’s at in the Officer’s ACP.
Accuracy wise, this OACP did not appreciate the Barnes 185 as much as mine does, but it sure took a shine to 230 Gold Dots.
This pistol is stainless with Robar NP3—it ought not rust for a while! NP3 is as slick as they say and in my several dealings with Robar over the years there has never been a glitch. They are easy to deal with and I have a high level of confidence in them and their processes.
Being stuck with my old OACP is not all that bad, I have a lot of history with it, rounds through it, and confidence in it. But I would upgrade to this one in a heartbeat if I could!
The old-timer and the new one. Mine features one of the very first Shield Driver sights, ca. 1986.
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