I also want to talk about the 4.25 inch barrel of the Commander style pistols. Im mostly going to touch on accuracy of the Commander barrels. Sometimes you see 4 inch barrels too but mostly in the Springfield Armory and Kimber variety and most of those will be bull barrels. Which leads me to my next subject.

Bull barrels??? What are they? What do they do? And do they do things better? A 1911 Bull barrel has no bushing. The fat barrel itself works as the "bushing" to lock up the gun in the front of the slide. Supposedly they claim to aid in accuracy. So far I think more or less that is a true statement. They are probably more easy to manufacture since there void of having to match up a bushing to them. Either way I like them and the only drawback I could possibly see with them is they can tend to be more difficult to take down since they are usually accompanied by a captured recoil spring that needs a special take down tool. Thats not always the case though. Some do and some dont need a tool. Overall I like them and I think they should work well for anyone. Also there maybe the possibility of more environmental contaminants to get into the pistol via the front of the gun due to and depending on the design. Depending on the application they can do things better for you. I see lots of "fancy" target guns with them so that leads me to believe they can do things better for some people.

Match grade barrels? Are they worth it?? In many ways the barrel makes or breaks a gun so when a barrel is "shot out" usually it means it has become a paper weight. I do like match grade barrels and I think there worth the extra money to buy that feature in a Commander. Ive had good luck with normal milled barrels however every match grade barrel I ever had in a gun did there part of accuracy very well as long as I did my part. Regular barrels can be hit or miss. Ive had very accurate "regular" barrels and Ive had some that cant hit the broadside of anything properly. If I was looking for one thing in a gun it would probably be the "match grade" featured barrel. Wilson Combat and Nighthawk Customs makes a very nice aftermarket match barrel.

"Regular" 4.25 bushing barrel. In my experience with the 1911 the best "regular" barrels in the accuracy department seem to mostly be of the Colt design. If you have a Colt barrel you cant go wrong and in my opinion seems to be the "best" option on the Colt 1911s. HOWEVER everything else can be upsetting on the Colt pistols. One being the multitude of machining marks I tend to see on the inside of the Colt 1911s. Dont get me started on that!

Polygonal barrels???? Umm sure lets talk about those. This refers to the grooves and lands inside the barrel and how there cut. Poly cut barrels are different than straight cut barrels. The easiest and quickest way I can explain them is a poly groove is more of a rounded hump cut instead of the traditional sharp straight cut if that makes any sense? Im not really going to go into length on them because good luck trying to find one for a 1911 however Ive had them before and they seem every bit as accurate as they claim to be.