New to me... Brand new vintage Les Baer Prowler III

I'm super pumped and can't wait to "melt that barrel" tomorrow! No worries, I'll get back with pics & report. One things for sure, this is the tightest 1911 I've racked. More so than my regretfully gone Springfield Pro.
 
I went with a ultimate tactical carry.... You really can't beat les baer for the price point. Nighthawks and Wilson's are 1000 plus more and I think the difference is negligible
 
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264magnum said:
Any opinions on how these compare to the Dan Wesson Valor? Thanks for any info!!
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Had a Valor with the duty treatment about 2 yrs ago. Actually had two duty treated Valors, the full size & VBOB. They were great guns but not in the same league as a Baer IMO. For example, the checkering on the Valors is CMC made and is perfect in every way. The checkering on a Baer in hand made, so you can see the difference right there, there's no way human hands can be as precise as a CMC machine.

Valors are also very tight and supposedly have better small parts vs. Baers but Baers frames, slides & barrels are better quality and is completly hand built by master smiths.

DW's were a bargain till 2010 but they now cost way more and the quality isnt better than it was when they introduced the 2010 models with the 10-8 sights. Check out gunbroker and you'll see that you can get the Baers Custom Carry/Premier II/UTC and even the Tunder Ranch models for less money than the duty treated Valor ($1800 for the LB vs $2000 for the Valor).

Valors are top of the line production 1911's while Baers are top of the line semi-custom 1911's... Witch one would you rather own? There's no wrong answer here, just personnal preference. They both are great 1911's. I will still put my money on an handbuilt LB any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
 
okcorral1881 said:
Mine was perfect out of the box...
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I'm sure it was, I was just interested to see the volume of rounds Harry intends to put through his pistol. Not many guys on this forum would spend that kind of cake on a pistol then run that many rounds through it in one day.

I believe I only saw one Les Baer post on the pistol-Foum.com 2k challenge. It passed with no problems, but it was a well broken in pistol with I think 7k through it before it started the test.
 
Clobbersauras said:
I'm sure it was, I was just interested to see the volume of rounds Harry intends to put through his pistol. Not many guys on this forum would spend that kind of cake on a pistol then run that many rounds through it in one day.

I believe I only saw one Les Baer post on the pistol-Foum.com 2k challenge. It passed with no problems, but it was a well broken in pistol with I think 7k through it before it started the test.
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On a Baer I would expect a couple of failures to return to battery. I have a super low-round Baer and tried it with a bunch of different ammo as an experiment during the first 200 rounds. Softer ammo would occasionally fail to return entirely to battery, solved with a light tap to the slide. Pretty minimal. I didn't find the problem to get worse as the gun got dirty and ammo that was borderline on cycling it at first is fine now. It hasn't been cleaned yet but I lube it pretty liberally.

They're built very tight so the couple of FTRTBs is not unreasonable IMO. More importantly, I ran a 64-round ejector test on the same gun with no problems. Parts quality is pretty good. Finish is pretty thin which is normal for Baers. It's no Wilson but it's a nice pistol and I am very pleased with it. I'll probably get it up around 2000 rounds, then order a BP extractor, fit and tune it, put the original in a drawer in the shop in case I somehow wreck the WC, and call it a day.
 
Well guys I just came back from the range... Interested in more details??

Stay tuned, I'll post a new thread with a review & range report topped with some pics later this evening.
 
misanthropist said:
On a Baer I would expect a couple of failures to return to battery. I have a super low-round Baer and tried it with a bunch of different ammo as an experiment during the first 200 rounds. Softer ammo would occasionally fail to return entirely to battery, solved with a light tap to the slide. Pretty minimal. I didn't find the problem to get worse as the gun got dirty and ammo that was borderline on cycling it at first is fine now. It hasn't been cleaned yet but I lube it pretty liberally.

They're built very tight so the couple of FTRTBs is not unreasonable IMO. More importantly, I ran a 64-round ejector test on the same gun with no problems. Parts quality is pretty good. Finish is pretty thin which is normal for Baers. It's no Wilson but it's a nice pistol and I am very pleased with it. I'll probably get it up around 2000 rounds, then order a BP extractor, fit and tune it, put the original in a drawer in the shop in case I somehow wreck the WC, and call it a day.
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Do you mean the extractor test (Re: Hackathorn, LAV, YAM)? If so, 64 rounds is a lot of testing, typically isn't it usually a 16 round test?
 
Yeah, that's the one. It's totally excessive testing.

I did it because:

A) I had a few different types of ammo kicking around and I thought it would be interesting to try them all, and

B) One thing about The Extractor Test is that if you happen to want to work on your draw or your first shot off the draw, or even slowfire accuracy for that matter, to my knowledge there's no particular downside to doing it with the mag out. So you can test the living f### out of the extractor while doing draws to one shot. For useful practise on the cheap I think it's kind of a good trick. Finally,

C) I overkill everything. That is because:

1) The opposite of overkill is underkill.
2) Anything that is underkilled is underdead.
3) Anything that is underdead is potentially still a threat, problem, or other sort of issue.
4) When I encounter a threat, I'm going to overkill that threat, because: 1).
 
misanthropist said:
Yeah, that's the one. It's totally excessive testing.

I did it because:

A) I had a few different types of ammo kicking around and I thought it would be interesting to try them all, and

B) One thing about The Extractor Test is that if you happen to want to work on your draw or your first shot off the draw, or even slowfire accuracy for that matter, to my knowledge there's no particular downside to doing it with the mag out. So you can test the living f### out of the extractor while doing draws to one shot. For useful practise on the cheap I think it's kind of a good trick. Finally,

C) I overkill everything. That is because:

1) The opposite of overkill is underkill.
2) Anything that is underkilled is underdead.
3) Anything that is underdead is potentially still a threat, problem, or other sort of issue.
4) When I encounter a threat, I'm going to overkill that threat, because: 1).
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A) Probably a wise thing to test everything you can, when the opportunity presents itself.
B) Tend to agree, ammo is ####ing expensive and range time is not abundant, well for me anyway.
C) LOL!
D) Thanks for the response.
 
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