TexasCHLforum.com

I met v-rog at Elm Fork today, and we chronographed some handloads in our bolt rifles. I got respectable results with my favorite load: 175 grain Sierra Matchking over 42.6 grains of Varget, yielding an average of 2600 fps.

Next stop was the 50 yard bay where I shot 30 or 40 rounds through the M1 Carbine my son gave me for Christmas. What a hoot. It's a pretty light rifle.....I'm guessing around 6-7 lbs......shooting a bullet twice the weight of a 55 grain .223 at 2/3 the velocity of a .223, so the recoil was pretty comparable to that of an AR carbine. It's not any where near a sub-MOA gun, but it was never meant to be. However, it is very much minute of softball at 50 yards with my aging eyes and iron sights—which is plenty good enough for me. I had minor issues with the magazine and the magazine release button....I think that the afternarket Kahr magazine might not be made perfectly to spec. It did not quite lock into place, forcing me to manually push the magazine release button back into position from the off-side so that the magazine would properly lock into place. That's no big deal. Magazines are cheap, and I'll just get some more.

The final stop was the Cheaper than Dirt store in Fort Worth, which I hit before going home from the range. There, I picked up a brand new Kahr CW45. I couldn't beat the price: $399.00. The best previous price I had seen for one was at the Dallas Market Center gun show where I saw one for $404.00, so $399 seemed like a good number. (Now, this is where all of you chime in and tell me I got screwed because you saw one at Bud's Gun Shop for $56.98. ) Anyway, I've been wanting to pick one of these up for a while now, and it is a nifty little .45. I'm planning to break it in tomorrow, and I've already got the holster and a spare magazine on the way from Kahr Arms. Oh, and I also picked up a box of Corbon 185 Grain +P "flying ashcans" for it. This will be my carry gun on my trip to California next week.

It was a good day.

Let me know how that CW45 works out. And can yOu post pics showing size for me? I'm curious about this little gun over my G30...

Congratulations on the new gun. Have fun breaking it in.

The Annoyed Man wrote:There, I picked up a brand new Kahr CW45.

TAM, knowing your affinity for Kahrs, I'm eager for a full range report. Does it feel much larger than the PM9, etc.? I've only recently been exposed to and become a huge fan of Kahrs. Congrats on the new gun!

hpcatx wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:There, I picked up a brand new Kahr CW45.

TAM, knowing your affinity for Kahrs, I'm eager for a full range report. Does it feel much larger than the PM9, etc.? I've only recently been exposed to and become a huge fan of Kahrs. Congrats on the new gun!

I hope to have a range report later today. Yesterday morning, I ordered a Mitch Rosen holster and a spare magazine for it by phone from Kahr. Those arrived this morning (I had requested next day air so that I would have everything before leaving for California), and I have been carrying it around the house for a little while today. It is definitely flatter and lighter than my 3" Kimber but it is also definitely larger than the PM9. The CW45 would be roughly comparable to the single stack Glock 36—pocketable if you had to, but not really designed to be a pocket gun. If you have seen a CW9, that would be the next size up in the Kahr 9mms from the PM9/CM9. The CW9 has a half inch longer barrel, and a half inch longer grip, and one more round of capacity than the PM/CM9. So the CW45 would have a similar relationship to the PM45—longer, taller, and one more round of capacity.

The CW45 feels real good in the hand, and it has the typically smooth light Kahr trigger. I'll try to post a picture later of my PM9 next to my wife's CW9 next to my CW45 next to my 3" Kimber, so that you can see the relative sizes, one to the other.

Here's a video comparing it to the Glock 36:
[youtube][/youtube]

And here's a Gunblast test of the CW45:
[youtube][/youtube]

Sweet. I like the cheaper price for sure. Congrats

No range report yet, but here is a picture comparing the PM9 to the CW9 to the CW45 to the Kimber Ultra Carry II:



From top of the slide to bottom of the magazine, the Kimber is a little bit taller than the CW45, but the CW45 gives you more grip length to hold onto. The slide on the Kahr is a tad longer than the Kimber's, but the Kahr's barrel is also a 1/2" longer. The grips on the Kimber are wider than the Kahr's, but the Kahr's slide is just a smidge wider than the Kimber's—but without the safeties and other appendages, the Kahr feels narrower in the hand.. The Kimber feels heavier in the hand, both loaded and unloaded. The Kimber's grip frame is longer front to back. People with smaller hands will definitely find the Kahr easier to hold onto.

Just an FYI that you can put a pair of Chip McCormick slim-line grips on the Kimber, which reduces the grip thickness by about 1/8 inch. The ambi-safety width situation still remains, though, unless you replace it. I kept thinking about replacing the ambi on my Ultra CDP; never did, and I guess I'll just stick with it now.

So, TAM, with the growing stock of Kahrs, does this mean you're thinking of getting a place near Pebble Beach and moving back to California? Or maybe relocating to a suburb of Indianapolis?

Skiprr wrote:Just an FYI that you can put a pair of Chip McCormick slim-line grips on the Kimber, which reduces the grip thickness by about 1/8 inch. The ambi-safety width situation still remains, though, unless you replace it. I kept thinking about replacing the ambi on my Ultra CDP; never did, and I guess I'll just stick with it now.

So, TAM, with the growing stock of Kahrs, does this mean you're thinking of getting a place near Pebble Beach and moving back to California? Or maybe relocating to a suburb of Indianapolis?

Oh good Lord no. I could never move back to California. I am still a 1911 guy at heart, but I wanted to have a single stack .45 with Glock-like simplicity with more grip length than the Glock 36. The CW9 is my wife's, and the PM9 is one of my two pocket guns. However, I am going back to California next week for my brother's wedding, and I'm going to travel with the CW45 because if something arises, I can better afford to lose it than I can afford losing the Kimber.

I was just ya.

That and semi-vague references to Carmel, CA and Carmel, IN...just to keep the theme of the Topic title.

Loookin' forward to the range report. I could always find room for a CW45 to with PM9, too.

Hopefully I'll be able to provide the range report tonight some time. We're celebrating The Annoyed Boy's birthday today (it's actually on Tuesday), and I'm going to see if he wants to run over to DPC with me. Kahr calls for a 200 round breakin, so I want to try to get that many rounds through it before I leave. It'll be fun.

Ok, here is a brief preliminary range report.....

This gun really does require a breakin period. I ran about 125 rounds through it at DPC this afternoon. I was just shooting and reloading as fast as I could so that I could get it over with, so I was more concerned with function than really testing the accuracy. I was shooting mostly at standing steel plates of varying diameter, at a distance of roughly 7-10 yards (I wasn't really paying attention), and at a couple of cardboard silhouette targets left by the previous shooter, one of them a zombie Bart Simpson, also at the same distance.

Accuracy:
I spent part of the time just getting used to the sights, which are sort of "front white dot on top of a rear white vertical bar" kind of like Heinie sights. At first, the gun tended to shoot high, but on further shooting, that was due strictly to my not making the dot "squat down" right on top of that bar. Once I got the hang of the sights, it shot just a little bit lower than point of aim using 230 grain ball ammo of various manufactures. I will be carrying it with 185 grain +P JHPs, so I'm assuming (I still have to actually shoot some) that it will shoot to a point just a bit higher with the hotter loads powering lighter bullets. Deviations to the side were predictable based on a bad habit I have which causes me to sometimes push shots to the right just a bit. I did not shoot it as well as I can shoot my 3" Kimber (roughly the same size of gun), but unfamiliarity with the sights were, I think, the major reason for that. Otherwise, I would say that accuracy was plenty sufficient for self-defense use. The next time I go to Elm Fork, I'll set up a B27 at various distances and see what the gun's actual capability is.

Function:
I'm not going to lie. I had four malfunctions during the 125 round course of fire—all of which occured toward the end of the session. Three were all of the failure-to-feed variety which all seemed to be magazine related. Although the magazine followers are pretty slick polymer and seem well designed, the finish on the underside of the feed lips seems just a tad coarse, and cartridges don't seem to slip out of the magazine as smoothly as on some of my other pistols. This may just be a breakin issue, and I think that is what caused the failures because the rest of the pistol came already fairly well-lubricated with gun oil right out of the box, and I had field stripped it and added a little more along the slide rails just to make sure before taking it to the range; so the gun was plenty wet.

The other failure was that I discovered—fortunately before it became catastrophic—that the slide stop had started to back out of the frame on the left side. I think that one is my fault. I've had the very same thing happen to a 5" 1911 of mine caused by my inadvertent pressing on the end of the slide stop pin from the right side. I am left handed, and I tend to use a "both thumbs foreward" grip. If I'm not careful, my right thumb will press against the end of the pin as my thumb exerts pressure along the right side of the frame. I plainly saw it happen with my 1911. I wasn't paying attention when it happened to my Kahr, but I suspect that is what caused it.

Miscellaneous:
Perceived recoil was pretty much exactly the same as shooting my 3" Kimber—that is to say that it was stout, but not at all unpleasant and fairly easy to control. I was able to shoot it one handed without difficulty hanging on to it. The grip frame has a lot of quite pronounced checkering on the front and back straps, and the grip panels are nicely textured, so controlling the gun under recoil is fairly easy.

Kahr recoil springs are notoriously stiff toward maximum compression, and this gun is no exception.....so manually locking the slide back is a bit harder than with some other guns. The owners manual calls the lever a "slide stop," but it also specifically instructs you to use the slide stop to release the slide, with the warning that releasing it by pulling back on the slide may cause the slide to fail going into battery. I tried it both ways. There really isn't any "overtravel" in the slide movement....meaning that when it is locked open, it really is pretty much as far back as it can go. So trying to release the slide by pulling back on it is actually pretty difficult. OTH, the slide release lever (or slide stop or whatever you want to call it) seems to require a considerable amount of downward pressure to release the slide into battery. I am hopeful that further breakin will loosen the gun up a little bit in that regard.

In summation, the gun seems well made and is reasonably accurate, but it definitely requires some breakin—perhaps more so than some other semiautos. As I recall, my M&P45 required exactly 0 breakin. It ran like a champ from the first round with nary a hiccup since. My 3" Kimber required no breakin, and neither did my old USP Compact. My Kahr PM9 was purchased used and was well broken in when I bought it and it runs very smoothly. My wife's Kahr CW9 was purchased new in the box and has been perfect from the get go. I guess I was expecting the same for the CW45. I suppose that desiging a tiny gun around a big fat cartridge means that tolerances have to be pretty close to make it all work. I won't say that I am disappointed, but I guess that this is the first gun I've owned that really needed to be broken in. Time will tell, and I think I'm going to want to run at least another 150-200 rounds through it before I travel with it. That means another trip to the range in the next 3 days. Dang it all.

Skiprr wrote:I was just ya.

That and semi-vague references to Carmel, CA and Carmel, IN...just to keep the theme of the Topic title.

Loookin' forward to the range report. I could always find room for a CW45 to with PM9, too.

...now that's just Korny...

My pm9 required a fair amount of breakin, probably about 200-250 rounds. Did 200 in one session as you said trying to just get it done quick. It just about killed my hand.

After the breakin it was smooth and no more fail to feeds, so I'd expect the same with your 45

rentz wrote:My pm9 required a fair amount of breakin, probably about 200-250 rounds. Did 200 in one session as you said trying to just get it done quick. It just about killed my hand.

After the breakin it was smooth and no more fail to feeds, so I'd expect the same with your 45

That's good to know. Like I said, my PM9 was already well broken in when I bought it, and my wife's CW9 did seem to need a break-in.