by John Markwell | Contributing Editor
The CCO pistol from Guncrafter Industries combines the Commander slide’s 6½-inch sight radius with an Officer’s-sized frame for a more reliable and shootable concealment pistol.
My first thought upon opening the zippered case was “man, this is a pistol meant for serious business.” The CCO (Concealed Carry Option) pistol is starkly black and it lacks any of the self-promoting slide logo/roll marks, or lawyer driven liability warnings, so common in this day and age. The Guncrafter Industries’ CCO is quite plain. It has an unassuming look and to the uninitiated would be just another “black gun.” Beneath that black Melonite finish is the high performance, precisely fitted mechanism of a serious defensive pistol, built by shooters for the “knowledgeable end user.” Meant to protect you and yours, this is not the pistol for someone who wants a flashy slide logo to impress the guys at the range.
For many years the .45ACP Colt Commander was the gold standard in carry guns for serious armed citizens, be they professional gun toters or not. The Commander, with its 4.25” barrel and aluminum frame, was easier to carry than the Government Model, yet the butt of the gun still made concealment problematic for some folks. With the introduction of the Officers Model 1911 pistol with its shorter butt, reduced cartridge capacity, and shortened slide and barrel, 1911 fans had a more concealable pistol but one that was a bit more difficult to shoot due to the shortened sight radius. Early Officers Models were also plagued by reliability issues.
The magazines tested in the CCO pistol: Metalform, sans bumper pad, in pistol, Wilson Combat Compact 9mm magazine with thin steel floor plate, and Metalform with fat rubber pad.
We don’t know who first stuck a Commander slide on an Officers Model sized frame but it was an awfully good idea. Alex Zimmermann and the guys at Guncrafter Industries have taken the concept to a high form of the gunmaker’s art with their hybrid CCO pistol.
It took a while to get a CCO in 9mm into our hands, as lead time on Guncrafter pistols is 9-10 months. As this is written, we’ve had the CCO for about a month now and we have carried, shot and fondled the pistol almost every day. The CCO is indeed a shooting machine of the highest order. Our GI CCO is a 9mm and before anybody starts ragging; yes, we also think the .45ACP is a better defensive cartridge. However, with our beat up elbows and wrists, we’ll make do with the 9mm and count on modern bullets, good shot placement and more, but less painful, practice shooting, to carry the day.
The CCO pistol is available in either .45ACP or 9mm and can be had with either a steel or aluminum frame; ours is an alloy-framed gun. As most 1911 shooters know, alloy-framed guns are prone to wear or suffer “dishing out” of the feed ramp over time, especially so, it seems, if the gun is fed a steady diet of hollowpoint ammo. The solution is a ramped barrel, which Guncrafter Industries uses in their 9mm 1911s, or, in the .45s, a steel feed ramp insert. The steel feed ramps also enhance reliable feeding.
CCO frames and slides are forged and barrels and slides are hand fitted, the old fashioned way. In fact, the CCO even has its magazines hand tuned before being shipped. The stainless Commander length slide is topped off with GI’s U-Notch fixed rear sight and their .120” wide front sight with its .078” brass bead providing a superb sight picture. The rear face of the GI rear sight is finely serrated to cut glare and the front face is vertical, allowing it to be hooked on the belt, holster, or other surface for one-handed slide racking. The top of the slide is slightly flattened with bold serrations adding a very nice touch. Like all the exposed steel parts of the CCO, the slide has a Melonite finish. This is a black nitride finish that is extremely wear- and corrosion-resistant as well as having a very low coefficient of friction.
Note the almost seamless fit of the beavertail grip safety to the frame, the round butt and the 15 LPI checkering on the MS Housing.
The compact-sized alloy frame of the CCO pistol is finished in a deep black anodizing which really brings out the beauty of the 15 lines per inch (LPI) checkering on both the front strap and mainspring housing of the pistol. The checkering, which is machine cut and then hand finished, is absolutely flawless and it’s even, with exactly three lines on either side of the mag well recess where the mag’s floor plate extension fits at the bottom of the front strap.
The 15LPI checkering on the front strap of the CCO pistol is straight, true and even. Checkering doesn’t get much better.
We didn’t know if we’d like the 15 LPI checkering or not, fearing that it might be too aggressive. With the diamond’s sharp points dulled ever so slightly, the 15 LPI checkering is not at all hard on the hands and is more durable, the diamonds being bigger, than finer checkering. John May calls this “Guncrafter Tough Checkering.” A nice detail, often overlooked by some 1911 builders, is the unobtrusive yet effective dulling of the checkering at the front of the beveled magazine well. If left sharp, this area of the front strap checkering can be awfully hard on clothing and hands. The mainspring housing is nicely round-butted and the checkering stops short of the rounded-off bottom so as not to snag on clothing.
We bench tested the CCO just a bit. However, once we found the gun shot to the sights (with everything we put through it), we mainly shot drills from contact distance out to about 20 yards. Most shooting was done in the 5-15 yard range typical of defensive encounters. The CCO showed no ammo preference whatsoever and flawlessly digested everything we fed it. Carefully fired hand-held groups at 15 yards were typically in the 2-inch range (and often smaller) but, more importantly, regardless of ammo brand, bullet weight or type, or velocity, the little gun shot everything to the point of aim. The photo of the Q-Target, containing 50 holes (5 paced shots with each of 10 different high performance defense loads fired at 15 yards), illustrates the point.
The author used these two rigs for carrying the GI CCO pistol. The Badlands Leather #1 holster with single mag pouch is on the left. The Galco Royal Guard and Concealable single mag pouch is on the right.
Accuracy without reliability in a defensive handgun isn’t worth much. During our first month using the GI CCO, we strolled down to our range and shot two to five magazines through the pistol almost daily. We fired just north of 900 rounds of 9mm through the gun and pronounced it “good to go” for daily carry. The CCO fed, fired, extracted and ejected every single round without any malfunctions of any sort except one which was caused by a fat-headed reload that prevented the gun from going fully into battery.
The CCO arrived with a 12# progressive recoil spring installed and there was another 11# spring enclosed for possible use with lighter loads. We never needed the lighter spring as the pistol functioned perfectly with everything from our light practice load (115-gr.FMJ /4.4-gr.Win. 231) to NATO 124-gr. ball and Speer 9mm+P 124-gr. Gold Dot HPs; the latter being REAL +P. Other ammo used in the testing of the CCO was Hornady Critical Defense with Hornady’s 115-gr. FTX bullet and their Critical Duty ammo with the 135-gr. Flexlock bullet in both regular and +P varieties. We also shot Nosler’s 115-gr. JHP, CorBon’s Thunder Ranch +P 115-gr DPX load and Federal’s BallistiClean 100-gr. jacketed CQT and 124- and 147-gr. Hydra-Shok hollowpoints. The CCO also consumed a considerable assortment of both factory and handloaded ball ammo.
Guncrafter’s CCO pistols normally ship with two Metalform Springfield Armory type magazines; ours came with four. Thoughtfully, two of the mags were sans bumper pads for daily carry and fit flush with the gun’s butt. Each magazine is tuned to the pistol before shipping and the four we received fed ammo perfectly, locked the slide back on the last shot and ejected from the mag well easily. Guncrafter Industries also recommends Wilson Combat’s 9mm Officers/Compact magazines for use in the CCO with minor modification.
The 50 holes in the Q-Target were made by firing five rounds each of these high performance rounds at 15 yards. Any would be more than adequate for daily carry.
We ordered up two WC 9mm Officers 8-round mags from Brownells and after trimming a few coils from their springs and lowering the fronts with our handy Dremel, as per Guncrafter’s instructions, they functioned just fine until, after a couple of weeks use, one of them developed the problem of the follower over-riding the slide stop. This caused a failure to lock the slide back on the last shot and required manually removing the empty mag from the gun. This kind of minor problem (which could prove terminal) is why we “test before we carry.” The Wilson polymer follower can’t be “tuned” like the Metalform followers. We cannibalized a full-sized WC 9mm magazine for another follower, installed it in the shorter magazine and the problem seems to be solved. Testing of the WC magazines in the CCO will continue for a while before depending on them.
It is our opinion that fine firearms are judged by small details. We assume a high quality 1911 has all of its small parts machined from forgings or bar stock and the CCO does. On 1911 custom pistols, we first look to see how closely the beavertail grip safety, if present, is fitted to the frame’s tang. This juncture on the GI CCO is almost seamless. The guys at Guncrafters obviously took the considerable time required to precisely fit this part. Secondly, we try the trigger; the CCO’s trigger broke consistently at a crisp 3lb 12ozs. as measured with my Lyman trigger pull scale. For a street trigger, this was heavy enough to be “safe” and yet it was crisp and clean allowing for precise shooting. The CCO’s slide to frame fit is superb, as is the barrel fit. When the pistol’s slide is hand cycled it has that smooth or slick feel about it that all 1911 guys love; if you’ve felt it, you know what we’re talking about. Barrel lock up is rock solid.
We’ve already mentioned the CCO’s flawless 15 LPI checkering which is another indicator of the care and pride taken in the construction of the pistol. The CCO’s checkering is straight and true and aligns perfectly with the lines of the front strap and the pistol’s stocks. The CCO’s stocks are aluminum, by the way, and are very thin. We find these thin stocks very comfortable in the hand. They also allow easy access to the slightly extended magazine release as well as enhancing concealment somewhat. More subtle, especially for a pistol that is destined to be carried and really used, is the elimination of all sharp edges and corners (dehorning). This is often overdone by some builders and not addressed at all by others. The CCO is smooth to the touch with all edges and corners lightly, and, quite frankly, almost un-noticeably, beveled. John May told me that everyone at Guncrafters has a “Loop” for looking at details and this ongoing attention to detail is what sets the Guncrafter Industries CCO apart from much of the 1911 pack. The GI CCO is one finely crafted pistol that the smiths in Huntsville have obviously taken pride in building—and it shoots!
We carried the CCO pistol every day in either a Galco Royal Guard IWB holster or a Badlands Leather #1 straight drop belt holster; both for Commander-sized guns. A spare magazine was sheathed in a Galco Concealable Magazine Case. The shorter Officers/Compact butt of the pistol certainly made concealment of the pistol easier when the need arose; like during trips to town. The shorter grip frame still offered plenty of purchase for all the fingers of our medium-sized hands and the slightly shorter magazines presented no problems in the manipulation/reloading department. The all-up weight of the CCO is just a tad over 32 ounces when stoked with 8 Federal Hydra-Shoks, making it light on the hip compared to a loaded full sized Government Model pistol. After shooting a full sized 9mm Govt. Model in IDPA’s ESP class for several years, we found the recoil of the alloy framed CCO to be a bit “snappier” than the full size steel gun. It is, however, by no means objectionable. All in all, the GI CCO is a very user friendly everyday pistol. MSRP is in the $3,000 range.
During all of our testing, shooting a wide variety of drills and the IDPA Classifier Match a few times, the CCO was a stunning performer in both the accuracy and reliability departments. It’s certainly a gun I’d bet my life on. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the stark business-like appearance of the Guncrafter Industries CCO belies any notion that this pistol is not special. Designed for the discriminating gun carrier, who places high value on the safety of self and others, this may not be the pistol for everyone. However, anyone would be pretty “hard put” to find a better option in an easily concealable and shootable defensive pistol than the CCO from Guncrafter Industries, which is the sole source of the Concealed Carry Option 1911. If you get a chance, you should try one.
For more information, contact: Guncrafter Industries, LLC, 171 Madison 1510, Dept. TGM, Huntsville, AR 72740; phone: 479-665-2466; online: guncrafterindustries.com.
