December 11, 2019
By James Tarr
Tarr tested the LS10 with only a handful of loads, but the choices in 10mm ammo have never been greater. You can find everything from soft “10mm Lite” loads to hot offerings meant for hunting.
I have been in love with the long slide (6-inch) 1911 ever since seeing the movie Thief . This early (1981) effort by director Michael Mann, long before his classic Heat , features James Caan as a high-end safe-cracker. Mann, the king of firearms technical accuracy, sent Caan to Gunsite for weeks to learn proper gunhandling. In the movie, Caan uses three custom Hoag custom 1911s, including a 6-inch long slide during the state-of-the-tactical-art for the time house-clearing climax.
My attempt to actually get a Hoag custom long slide made back in the day resulted in a debacle with me out a thousand bucks, and no custom gun to show for it. The interesting thing to note is that, at the time of the movie, and well into the 1990s, apart from the AMT Hardballers (which were of dubious quality), the only place to get a long slide 1911 was from a custom gunsmith, who had to cut the end off one 5-inch slide and weld it to another. Heck, just about every part on those guns had to be handmade, from the extended thumb safeties to the beavertails.
Things have changed.
As for reliability, let’s talk inherent reliability first. The 10mm cartridge was specifically designed to be the same length as a .45, which means it tends to feed very reliably in the 1911 envelope. 10mm 1911s are not known for their reliability, but historically the reliability issue with the 10mm hasn’t been the feeding cycle, but rather the construction of the gun.
