The Continuing Evolution  of the 1911   

STI International of Georgetown, Texas, has established itself as a respected purveyor of high-end 1911s. The company’s latest offering is the Legacy, a full-size number with undeniable visual appeal, thanks in part to several features. First off, the very attractive Cocobolo grips are smooth (the pistol sports a checkered frontstrap).

The deep-black finish is described as “physical vapor deposition:’ said to be exceptionally hard. The sides of the slide are nicely polished. The lone set of rear cocking serrations are in the classic GI style, nothing fancy or overdone. A master line runs the length of the flattop slide. The Tactical Adjustable Rear Sight is about as unobtrusive and snag-resistant an adjustable unit as we’ve seen.

Our range session involved an ammo selection that included Hornady 200-grain JHP/XTP and 230-grain TAP, Magtech 230-grain SWCFMC, Federal Classic 230-grain JHP, Winchester Supreme 230-grain SXT and Black Hills 200-grain lead SWC.

The Legacy proved to be exceptionally accurate from a sandbagged rest at 25 yards. Good sights and a good trigger (which broke at a marvelously clean 4 1/2 pounds) certainly helped in that respect. The top-performing load from the gun turned out to be Federal Classic 230-grain JHP, followed very closely by Winchester Supreme 230-grain SXT (see accompanying table). Both loads stayed under two inches, while everything else stayed between two and 2 1/2 inches.

If, in the looks and accuracy departments, the STI Legacy did extremely well, the issue of reliability was just that an issue. We had several instances of failure to go fully into battery and failure to feed. The battery business often crops up before a new gun is thoroughly shot in. The failure to feed could have been a magazine problem. The Legacy, however, comes only with a single magazine, which is a bit annoying
for a gun in its price range. And since we didn’t have any spares with us (our mistake), it just wasn’t possible to switch out and try to help things

Things improved considerably once we stopped trying to employ the slide stop and simply sling-shotted the slide manually — which is something a lot of instructors recommended.

The STI Legacy is good-looking and accurate. What cycling problems we encountered could, no doubt, be simply rectified by burning more ammo or popping in a new magazine or recoil spring. Still, for the price we would have hoped for at least one spare mag. —Payton Miller

STI - Designed to Perform    

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