New product announcements are coming fast and furious, including Ruger’s announcement of the SR1911 Competition Pistol. Over the past year, the Ruger Custom Shop has worked closely with professional shooting team captain and world champion competitive shooter Doug Koenig to develop the first Custom Shop SR1911, a full-sized 9mm pistol suitable for competitive shooting in IDPA, IPSC, USPSA, Bianchi Cup, Pro Am Shooting, and Steel Challenge disciplines. This SR1911 includes a Koenig Shooting Sports low-mass hammer and competition sear and a custom flat-faced trigger shoe, precision-machined disconnector and hand-tuned sear spring. Also, the Ruger Custom Shop hand-fits the slide and frame.
Other features include a black-nitrided stainless-steel frame trimmed with a 25-lines-per-inch checkered front strap, matching checkered mainspring housing and Hogue Piranha G10 grip panels, a competition barrel featuring a polished feed ramp, fitted barrel lug, target crown, and an unusual 1:16 slow rifling twist to increase accuracy with lighter-weight match bullets. There’s also a fiber-optic front sight and adjustable serrated rear target sight and a bunch of other stuff.
Brownells is offering a unique DIY project that beats putting shelves in the garage. The HK 416 Project is a parts kit offered by the Iowa-based retailer that allows a shooter to build an HK 416 — the type of rifle used by U.S. Navy SEALs in the 2011 raid against Osama Bin Laden. Disassembled from German military machine guns, the parts kits were available to all Brownells customers in November. The HK416 kits, listed as #100-026-983 at Brownells.com, contain all factory original parts except for the lower receiver, bolt assembly, and barrel. The kits retail for $3,300.
The Browning X-Bolt Micro Composite rifle is tailored to give younger and smaller-stature shooters the performance benefits of a top-tier firearm in a compact size. The chamberings include the 6mm Creedmoor and 6.5 Creedmoor, two rounds hunters are looking closely at to replace harder-kicking rifles but still have satisfactory downrange performance. This compact bolt-action rifle features a black composite stock with a shorter 13-inch length of pull that is paired to the X-Bolt action. The receiver has a matte-blued finish and is drilled and tapped for scope mounts. A 20-inch barrel keeps weight low. Other chamberings include 243 Win., 7mm-08, and 308 Win. MSRP is $960.
Magnum Research, Inc., maker of the Desert Eagle pistol, has launched the new 429 DE pistol cartridge. The .44-caliber pistol cartridge has a 25% velocity increase and 45% energy increase over a 44 Magnum. It has a velocity of 1600 fps with 240-grain bullets and 1750 fps with 210-grain bullets. The 429 DE features a 30-degree shoulder and a neck long enough to hold and crimp a 240-grain bullet without set back under recoil. Based on the 50 AE cartridge, the 429 DE is made with Starline brass and is loaded by HSM in Montana with Sierra bullets. The 429 DE rounds are available in boxes of twenty ($42) and are distributed by Magnum Research. Pistols are coming soon.
