Personal Defense World
  • News
  • Guns
    • Handguns
    • Rifles
    • Shotguns
    • Class III & More
  • Gear
    • Accessories
    • Ammo
    • Holsters
    • Knives
    • Optics/Lights
    • Safes
    • Suppressors
  • Lifestyle
    • Concealed Carry
    • First-Time Shooters
    • Home & Self-Defense
  • Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • PDW Videos
    • Free Gun Friday
    • SCCY Brand Videos
    • Video Series
      • Everyday Carry
  • More
    • Sweepstakes
    • Subscribe
    • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Personal Defense World
  • News
  • Guns
    • Handguns
    • Rifles
    • Shotguns
    • Class III & More
  • Gear
    • Accessories
    • Ammo
    • Holsters
    • Knives
    • Optics/Lights
    • Safes
    • Suppressors
  • Lifestyle
    • Concealed Carry
    • First-Time Shooters
    • Home & Self-Defense
  • Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • PDW Videos
    • Free Gun Friday
    • SCCY Brand Videos
    • Video Series
      • Everyday Carry
  • More
    • Sweepstakes
    • Subscribe
    • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Personal Defense World
No Result
View All Result
 
New Year, New FREE GUN FRIDAY! Enter to WIN the Smith & Wesson and Black Hills package.

Handgun History: 1911 Legend Bill Wilson

Personal Defense World by Personal Defense World
November 24, 2014
in Guns
0
Handgun History: 1911 Legend Bill Wilson
0
SHARES
38
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Before founding Wilson Combat, Bill was an avid competitive shooter. His less-than-perfect experiences shooting ’70s-period 1911s encouraged him to begin building his own.


Turning a hobby into a business hasn’t diminished Bill’s love of shooting


The steel plates must have cringed. When Bill stepped to the line, they had to know bullets would follow. Lots of them. And fast.

Wilson drew the .45 ACP fluidly, as he had thousands of times before. The compact pistol emptied its magazine in quick-step, chattering without pause as it swept across the bank and back again. Every shot rang metal, the lead smears crowding each other.

I could have done the same. It just would have taken me six times longer.

“Speed is easy. Accuracy is easy. Combining the two gives you fits,” smiled Bill. He knows. He’s been at it since 1976. That’s when he strapped on a Colt Python revolver to shoot a new kind of pistol match. That year, the Police Pistol Combat (PPC) competition shared the spotlight with the nascent International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC), which appeared after a conference of pistoleers in Columbia, Missouri. Using stopwatches to “factor” a score and a ballistic pendulum to keep power levels both reasonable and uniform, IPSC delighted shooters. It would soon spawn the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA). Bill Wilson threw his energy behind the movement as a volunteer—and threw his Python onto the shelf. “I could see right away I’d need an autoloader to compete.”

His first auto, a Browning Hi-Power, was soon replaced by a 1911. “But though I could hold my own with revolvers,” he says, “I had to relearn to shoot to shoot a .45 well.” The standard 1911 of the early ’70s gave him no help. Top shooters modified it extensively, changing sights, lowering the port, throating the barrel for 200-grain wadcutters. Triggers got attention, too. “By then, you’d invested hundreds.” Wilson started to work on his .45, then on others. His training as a jeweler (“My parents were in the business 50 years!”) may have helped him tune pistols. Along the way, he saw a promising market in 1911 parts. By 1978 he was tapping it, peddling triggers, sights and accessories. Two years later, Bill added magazines. Such was the start of what’s become a multi-million-dollar firm headquartered in Berryville, Arkansas. While Bill is still active in the business, he has turned daily operations over to his son, Ryan, who supervises 96 employees.

Bill and his wife, Joyce, a competitive shooter and an airplane pilot who flies cross-country Powder Puff races in her Cessna 182, now spend most of their time in rural Texas, short hours from the Wilson Combat plant. “We found this ranch in 2004, a couple of years after we’d built a new home in Arkansas,” says Bill. “We began improving it then.” That meant rifle and pistol ranges, a reloading facility, a lodge with a huge room to display Bill’s prodigious collection of big-game trophies and a stable for Joyce’s horses. The ranch has grown as Wilson added parcels. He has “excellent hog hunting” and, of course, deer and turkeys. Feeders and ponds make it a wildlife Mecca.

High-End Pistols
Though a highly respected rifle-smith, Wilson is best known for his pistols. Still enamored of revolvers, he collects fine Colts while his shop turns out superb 1911s. You can order plenty of options, but Bill concedes an affinity for pistols “you might carry.” Invited to the 15th IPSC shoot after serving on the USPSA board for most of a decade, he recalls shooting a match dedicated to the “guns of 1976.” Subsequently, he and John Sayle helped launch the Limited Division in 1992. Later, Bill led a move within USPSA to form the International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA). “It emphasizes practical handguns, even those you’d wear concealed,” he explains. The clean, Spartan profiles of many Wilson pistols reflect that focus as they show off the fine machining and exquisite fit and finish Bill demands.

Besides refining the iconic .45 ACP, Wilson has won accolades for mating it to the .38 Super cartridge. Remembered by some as a Depression-era solution to bulletproof vests on bootleggers, the .38 Super has an indisputable edge on the .45: it’s smaller. A standard 1911 magazine holds 10 .38s. The additional two or three rounds amounted to “high capacity” in 1986, when a Safariland poster showed Wilson, as a member of the USPSA team, firing a single-stack .38 Super. “The Super got a bad rap when the case headspaced on its modest rim. Headspaced on the mouth, it does just fine. The 9x21mm is essentially the .38 Super without a rim. Its base is the same as the 9mm’s.” Incidentally, as Bill dominated scoreboards with his .38, Brian Enos and Rob Leatham were also winning with Wilson pistols!

Wilson didn’t jump to follow the “high-cap” crowd in the early 1990s, staying with the single-stack design that had fueled his growing firm. “But we’re a custom shop,” he says. “We try to serve a variety of tastes. Our gunsmiths have the skill and equipment to build superior pistols, no matter what the need.”

Going the Distance
Bill no longer fires 100,000 rounds a year in practice, but he’s still keen to produce cutting-edge 1911s. “We insist our 5-inch guns deliver 1-inch groups at 25 yards,” he tells me. The standard for 4-inch pistols: 1.5 inches. I fired both on his pistol range, at combat distances out to 100 yards. Clearly I’m no threat from the far end of a football field. But both Bill and his son, Ryan, stung the steel at long range. They fired off-hand and from behind a barricade, not from a bench. “A pistol should be easy to aim and fire, as it was meant to be aimed and fired,” maintains Bill.

Though he adores the .45 ACP, Bill parts company with shooters who deem the 9mm inadequate. “I’ve shot it enough to count on it in a carry gun,” he says. He favors the 115-grain Barnes XPB and the 124-grain Hornady XTP. “My load of Vihtavouri 3N37 kicks the Hornady out at 1,250 fps.” Like the .38 Super, the 9mm trumps the .45 in the recoil department. “You can shoot more often without flinching. In rapid-fire strings, you spend less time recovering from recoil.”

Wilson Combat catalogs both steel- and alloy-frame 1911s. “Steel is most popular, but I carry an alloy Compact,” Bill tells me, “Alloy frames should last 10,000 rounds. We’ve never had to replace one.”

The Wilson line now includes four main versions of the 1911. Full-size pistols have the standard grip, slide and barrel measures of original 1911s, but you can add many refinements to your order. The Professional model has a 4-inch slide on a full-size frame. Compacts combine a trimmer grip with a 4-inch slide. The Sentinel is a subcompact, with a small slide and frame. All pistols come with a host of features and the attention to detail that have set Wilson Combat pistols apart since Bill Wilson began working on 1911s more than 30 years ago.

For More Information
Wilson Combat
800-955-4856
wilsoncombat.com

BUY NOW! www.personaldefenseworld.com/subscribe/combat-handguns.

Didn't find what you were looking for?

CLICK HERE FOR COMMENTS

Related Posts

The Wilson Combat SFX9 3.25.

Wilson Combat SFX9 3.25: Refined 1911 for Personal Defense

pistols, pistol, 1911 pistol, 1911 pistols, concealed carry, concealed carry pistol, concealed carry pistols, pocket, pistols, pocket pistol

Top 5 Compact 9mm 1911 Pistols [2022]

The Wilson Combat 45th Anniversary Special Edition CQB.

Wilson Combat Celebrates Its 45th Anniversary with a Special Edition CQB

The Wilson Combat EDC X9.

VIDEO: The Wilson Combat EDC X9 is Now Available in 3.25” Subcompact

Load More

PERSONAL DEFENSE WORLD VIDEOS

Discussion about this post

FEATURED POST

Study Proves the Good Guy with a Gun Theory.

Good Guy with a Gun: Study of CCW Holders Stopping Mass Shootings

Following the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, gun control advocates have taken the anti-gun narrative to a fever pitch. They insist...

Read more

TRENDING

Handgun History: 1911 Legend Bill Wilson

Handgun History: 1911 Legend Bill Wilson

...

Taurus 605 TORO and 856 TORO Revolvers.

Taurus Releases New Optics Ready 605 TORO and 856 TORO Revolvers

...

pocket pistol, pocket pistols, concealed carry handguns, concealed carry handgun, concealed carry pistol, concealed carry pistols

Best Pocket Pistols for Personal Defense [2022]

...

concealed carry, concealed carry handguns

Top 13 Compact 1911 Handguns for Concealed Carry

...

PICK A CATEGORY

CONCEALED CARRY SPOTLIGHT

gun drawing tips techniques

Tips & Tricks for a Fast Gun Draw

You have the right gun. Your cutting-edge holster is made with some lightweight, futuristic material. Your belt is even specially made to carry your...

CONCEALED CARRY SHOWCASE

21 Red-Dot Optics at SHOT Show 2023.

21 new Red-Dot Optics Sighted at SHOT Show 2023

A Perfect Example of Why Gun Control Doesn’t Work.

15-Year-Old in St. Louis Proves Why Gun Control Doesn’t Work

Concealed Carry Holsters and More for Women from SHOT Show 2023.

Concealed Carry Holsters and More for Women from SHOT Show 2023

The Beretta 80X Cheetah.

The Beretta 80X Cheetah: Rounds Downrange Before SHOT Show 2023

The FightLite SCR Bandito Pistol.

Shot at SHOT Show: The FightLite SCR Bandito Pistol in 5.56 or 300BLK

Are Switchblades Illegal?

Are Switchblades Legal to Carry in the United States?

Two New Concealed Carry Pistols from Rock Island Armory.

Two New Rock Island Armory Concealed Carry Pistols at SHOT Show

The GPO Spectra Reflex Sight.

GPO Debuts Spectra Reflex Sight at SHOT Show – Its First Reflex Optic

AMMO SPOTLIGHT

Getting a Jump on SHOT Show 2023.

7 Personal Defense Related Products to Start SHOT Show 2023 Early

SHOT Show 2023 is almost here and the anticipation is killing us. Of course, the staff of Personal Defense World...

site logo
Gun News, Gun Reviews, and Self Defense Tips

Tactical

  • tactical-life.com

Magazines

  • Tactical Life
  • The Complete Book of Reloading
  • Guns of the Old West

Facebook

  • Tactical-Life Facebook
  • Guns of the Old West Facebook

Twitter

  • Tactical-Life Twitter

Self Defense

  • PersonalDefenseWorld.com

Magazines

  • Personal Defense World
  • Combat Handguns

Facebook

  • Personal Defense World Facebook
  • Combat Handguns

Twitter

  • Personal Defense World Twitter

Shooting Lifestyle

  • BallisticMag.com

Magazines

  • BallisticMag.com

Facebook

  • Ballistic Magazine Facebook

Twitter

  • Ballistic Magazine Twitter

Alpha Lifestyle

  • SkillsetMag.com

Magazines

  • Skillset

Facebook

  • Skillset Magazine Facebook

Twitter

  • Skillset Magazine Twitter

Instagram

  • Skillset Magazine Instagram
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • California Privacy Notice
  • Cookie Policy
© Athlon Outdoors, All Rights Reserved.
You use of this website constitutes and manifests your acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and awareness of the California Privacy Rights. Pursuant to U.S. Copyright law, as well as other applicable federal and state laws, the content on this website may not be reproduced, distributed, displayed, transmitted, cached, or otherwise used, without the prior, express, and written permission of Athlon Outdoors.

Manage your GDPR consents by clicking here. Manage your CCPA consents by clicking here.
No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Guns
    • View All Guns
    • Handguns
    • Shotguns
    • Rifles
    • Class III & More
    • Sponsored
  • Gear
    • View All Gear
    • Accessories
    • Ammo
    • Holsters
    • Knives
    • Optics/Lights
    • Safes
    • Suppressors
  • Lifestyle
    • View All Lifestyle
    • Concealed Carry
    • First-Time Shooters
    • Home & Self-Defense
  • Videos
    • PDW Videos
    • Free Gun Friday
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Contact Us

© 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.