Colt Combat Commander electroless nickel..

Xfuzz · Oct 30, 2017

Made a trade for this couple weeks ago
at a local small show I set up for.
Found the small card in with the paperwork.
Don't know how accurate the information is.

Anyway, very clean Colt.
Any of you Colts guys up on these ?
I have seen the Electoless in Gold Cups and a Python
First commander I have come across.

SAFireman · Oct 30, 2017

I had one years ago.....I see them at the LGS and shows, so I think that the 250 number is probably way off. They are a neat gun, but easily marred.

apollo99 · Oct 30, 2017

I had a Colt Combat Commander in the same finish, it does get scratched and marked up pretty easy. Mine was a series 70 so it had no firing pin block safety. I could never cozy up to the finish, and I sold it as opposed to getting it shake and bake coated. Not too sure of the number made but 250-350 seems very low.

Xfuzz · Oct 30, 2017

SAFireman said:
I had one years ago.....I see them at the LGS and shows, so I think that the 250 number is probably way off. They are a neat gun, but easily marred.

This is not be confused with the Satin Nickel guns.
They are common and your right about the finish.
These are supposedly out of the Colt custom shop in
the early eighty's.
The green tag is from the custom shop.

The stain nickel guns were regular production.

22hipower · Oct 30, 2017

Nice, I like it. Have never had an electroless nickel 1911 but did have several of the satin nickel Series 70 Commanders and while nice, as noted the finish doesn't stand up well at all. I did have an electroless nickel Python once but let it get away; didn't know what it was until it was gone. I believe the electroless nickel finish is much better than the satin nickel. Anyway, nice gun and I think you were wise to grab it. Enjoy.

Jeff
SWCA #1457

Lonestar57 · Oct 30, 2017

Very nice and one of my favorite finish offerings from Colt back in the day. I've got a few other examples but no Commander models. The gun looks correct to me. In the very, very late 70's to the early 80's would definitely be the time Colt Custom Shop was doing the ENick guns but then eventually started calling it "ColtGuard" on some later mid '80 cataloged models (I've got two Colt Mustangs; 1986 and 1987 in the Coltguard; Electroless Nickel finish). Your Box and Custom Shop label also looks age appropriate and legit to me but the manual looks a little suspect; maybe too fresh and new looking for the 30+ years? I seen a few Commander Models in Enick but not very many over the years. I would highly recommend acquiring a Colt Archive Letter to verify the gun but I'd bet money it is what it says it is.

bdGreen · Oct 30, 2017

I bought this one new in the box way back when. Came out of the Colt Custom shop. It is a beautiful piece of machinery. Has all the whistles and bells they offered from the shop. I remember it being called 'Colt Guard'.

enjoy,
bdGreen

Lonestar57 · Oct 30, 2017

bdGreen said:
I bought this one new in the box way back when. Came out of the Colt Custom shop. It is a beautiful piece of machinery. Has all the whistles and bells they offered from the shop. I remember it being called 'Colt Guard'.

enjoy,
bdGreen

Nice Government Model. Really like those MMC (Miniature Machine Company) sights that were offered by the Colt Custom Shop back then too.

SuperMan · Oct 30, 2017

VERY nice find...!

A satin nickel Combat Commander was my first 1911 back about 1974. I now have the same gun in .38 Super. Nice but as stated several time it was probably the worst finish Colt ever put on a gun. A friend had one in .45 inside a canvas gun case in his gun safe. The next time he looked at it there were "pimples" popping out of the finish...

Although an "80" prefix on the serial number I believe from the roll marks that this is a pre-Series 80 firing pin safety gun. Series 80s guns have Series 80 on the slide...

Bob

SAFireman · Oct 31, 2017

Xfuzz said:
This is not be confused with the Satin Nickel guns.
They are common and your right about the finish.
These are supposedly out of the Colt custom shop in
the early eighty's.
The green tag is from the custom shop.

The stain nickel guns were regular production.

I guess that I must be confused.....I was under the impression that the satin nickel was derived from the electroless nickel process. What makes the two different?

Mine was a Satin Commander and had a serial number 70SCxxxx. It was one of my favorite carry guns that got traded off for a vehicle more than 20 years ago....I do miss that old Colt.

Your example is VERY nice. And many thanks for the education.

Lonestar57 · Oct 31, 2017

SAFireman said:
I guess that I must be confused.....I was under the impression that the satin nickel was derived from the electroless nickel process. What makes the two different?

Mine was a Satin Commander and had a serial number 70SCxxxx. It was one of my favorite carry guns that got traded off for a vehicle more than 20 years ago....I do miss that old Colt.

Your example is VERY nice. And many thanks for the education.

Satin Nickel was an electro Nickel plating process then gets sand/ or bead blasted for the Satin finish. Electroless Nickel is a non-electro plating process but rather a chemical based adhering process whereas finish is only lightly polished. It died due to the cost and the popularity of Stainless Steel in the firearms industry. It was actually developed by a Texas guy, Ed House which created the Nitex Company. Interesting story. It's always been rumored that his company did a lot of the ENick plating for Colt.

Jessie · Oct 31, 2017

Plus, the satin nickle had a slight bronze tint to it where as yours looks more silver.
Maybe that's just the lighting.

iPac · Oct 31, 2017

I'm don't have much "expertise" in the auto arena, but I have picked up some info on the e-nickel finish Colt used to do.

The part I don't know about is the actual "satin" nickel finish which is the same as bright nickel but applied to a satin surface. Meaning the gun gets a different polish to create a satin nickel gun. I'm not sure if Colt ever offered their autos in "satin", but revolvers never were.(Although I wouldn't discount a custom request)

With that said, the e-nickel or electro-less nickel finish was originally started in the Colt Custom Shop around 1978/79. It wasn't cataloged until 1982 (at least in Python terms), so pretty much any gun prior to that was done in the CS. The neat thing is, they used regular blued models already produced, then stripped the finish and e-nickeled them "on demand". This is why all of them have the CS label stating the finish.

Now, I have heard internet conjecture state the e-nickel finish is actually more durable than regular nickel, and this being one of the reasons Colt switched to it. From what people say here, it sounds like it's not that great on durability, so I imagine it was just to produce more "hype" for an already scarce variation. My theory is, Colt started using the e-nickel because it was simply cheaper than bright nickel, and it started at a time Colt was actively cutting costs and increasing production. E-nick started to replace bright nickel, but then both were phased out in favor of STS. Which I believe ended up being even cheaper in terms of "overall" production cost, but could be wrong.

For the Python, Colt called the e-nick finish "Royal ColtGuard". Nothing special except the higher degree of polish that Pythons always got. The other models were just called ColtGuard or e-nickel.

Colt Combat Commander electroless nickel..

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