June 06, 2019
By Sam Wolfenberger
You might say this is the year of compact Model 1911s. A bunch of major manufacturers have added the easily concealed Officer’s-size 1911s, and Ruger is the latest. Here’s a detailed look at Ruger’s short and sweet model.
Ruger began offering its new Officer’s-size models in .45 ACP and 9mm a few months ago, and the company calls its short-form 1911 the SR1911 Officer-Style. Shooting Times received an early-production model chambered for .45 ACP, and it features a 3.6-inch barrel, a stainless-steel slide, a stainless-steel frame, and textured G10 grip panels.
The 9mm SR1911 Officer-Style has a two-tone finish, with the slide being low-glare stainless and the frame being black ano-dized aluminum, but with its stainless-steel frame and slide, the .45 ACP Officer-Style’s finish is low-glare stainless, except for the sights, slide stop, thumb safety, magazine release button, grip safety, and mainspring housing, which are matte black. The grips on both models are black. Unloaded, the 9mm pistol weighs 27.2 ounces, and the .45 pistol weighs 31 ounces.
The pistol’s cone-shaped bull barrel is fitted to the slide, so there is no barrel bushing. The muzzle is precision crowned. The pistol’s stainless-steel bull barrel is fitted to the slide, so there is no barrel bushing, the muzzle is precision crowned, and the chamber is fully supported. The SR1911 Officer-Style uses a full-length recoil spring guide rod with a dual captive recoil spring. The slide has grasping grooves at the rear only, and the ejection port is lowered and flared.
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The pistol has a low-profile, drift-adjustable Novak rear sight and a post front sight. Both sights have white dots (two at the rear and one up front) and are dovetailed into the slide.
Slide-to-frame fit on my sample pistol was good. There was a small amount of side-to-side play but no movement at all when I pushed down on the barrel hood with the pistol in full battery.
The mainspring housing is checkered, and the beavertail grip safety has a grooved speed bump. The grip frame’s frontstrap is smooth, and the flat mainspring housing is checkered. The bottom of the mainspring housing is rounded, and the bottom of the grip frame is beveled for easy magazine insertion. The stainless-steel magazine holds seven rounds of .45 ACP ammunition. Each pistol comes with two magazines.
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The thumb safety is slightly extended and so is the striated slide stop. The hammer is a skeletonized Commander type. And the grip safety is a beavertail type with a grooved speed bump.
The trigger is a three-hole aluminum speed type with a striated surface and an overtravel adjustment screw. My pistol’s trigger pull averaged 4 pounds, 4 ounces, and letoff was crisp, clean, and consistent.
The low-profile Novak rear sight is dovetailed into the slide, is drift-adjustable, and has two white dots and a square notch. I put five types of .45 ACP factory ammunition through the SR1911 Officer-Style during a full afternoon of shooting. The bullet weights ranged from 185 to 230 grains, and the overall average accuracy for three, five-shot groups at 25 yards with each load was 3.33 inches. The details of how each load averaged are listed in the accompanying chart.
After shooting for accuracy from the bench, I did a little action shooting, drawing the pistol from a Galco Avenger holster and firing it on swinging steel plates and a stationary man-sized steel silhouette. The SR1911 Officer-Style functioned perfectly, and double-taps were easy to make.
