Nighthawk T3 – A Perfect Pistol?

If you hand me a pistol I’m going to check to see if it’s loaded. I assume all guns are always loaded (Rule 1) except for those I have personally checked. With the pistol pointed in a safe direction, I pull back on the slide and examine the chamber, and right then and there can tell you how well the pistol is put together. You see, in the best examples the slide moves with a silky smoothness indicating a high degree of fitting, craftsmanship and attention to detail. Handling 1911 pistols with these qualities brings a smile to my face, and some, like the Nighthawk T3 I have been testing, leave me grinning with joy. Then there’s the trigger. People who haven’t experienced a proper 1911 trigger don’t know what they’re missing. These days, with plastic guns and triggers that go “sproing” it’s understandable that some shooters may not have felt a really good trigger and discovered how well it contributes to their shooting. If you’re one of them, I urge you to try the trigger on a 1911 like this T3. A 1911 trigger should have a bit of take-up we refer to as slack and then it should “snap”, releasing the hammer, with no perceptible movement (over-travel) after it breaks. A 1911 trigger on a fighting pistol should break at 4 pounds and that is exactly what I measured on the Nighthawk T3.

A master craftsman builds the Nighthawk Custom T3 pistol with great care and attention to detail. The T3 mates an Officer’s model frame to a Commander slide so you end up with a pistol that’s a little shorter in both height and length than a full-size 1911 pistol. Some folks, and I’m one of them, feel this is an ideal size for a concealed carry 1911 pistol. At Nighthawk each pistol is fitted and built by one of 15 gunsmiths, who then stamp their initials in the frame under the left stock panel. My pistol was built by Joey Lehr and prepped by Justin Farnan. You can order one of Nighthawk’s standard designs or specify what custom features you would like on your pistol and it will be built according to your specifications.

Building pistols one at a time is an expensive proposition and the Nighthawk T3’s suggested retail price reflects this at $3400. You might ask, and rightly so, what you get for the money you won’t get with an off-the-shelf pistol and the answer is, an attention to detail you won’t find in a production gun. The fit and finish of my sample T3 is nothing short of perfection. From the checkered front strap to the serrations on the flat mainspring housing and rear sight, the aforementioned fit of frame, slide and barrel and the overall finish of the pistol, I am unable to find a single flaw. Although you can’t see these improvements, Nighthawk has spent considerable effort re-designing and perfecting many of the parts that go into the pistol such as the extractor, the tool steel correctly dimensioned sear, and the fully machined bar stock parts like the slide stop, magazine catch, beavertail grip safety and thumb safety. And while my pistol has a single safety lever, the folks at Nighthawk tell me they have re-designed one of the weak points of some 1911 designs, the ambidextrous thumb safety, and have not had a single one break since the new design was put into use.

The barrel is stamped NM, National Match, and it is fitted with great precision to the slide and barrel bushing. The trick in getting a 1911 to shoot into the same hole is the way the barrel is fitted fore and aft. This is done by properly fitting the front of the barrel to the barrel bushing and the rear of the barrel to the slide by means of the barrel link and locking lugs. When properly set up the gun should not be so tight it won’t function but there should be no perceptible movement of the barrel hood when the slide is forward and the pistol is ready to fire. This way, the barrel returns to the same position every time and the pistol shoot more accurately than most of us can appreciate. Needless to say, this T3 locks up perfectly.

The sights on my sample pistol are the excellent Heinie night sights with a dot on the front sight and a single dot on the rear. This setup allows for a sight picture that is dead on when the front dot is stacked on top of the rear dot. Many of us prefer this night sight setup over three dot sights and find it to be faster and easier to use. Richard Heinie, who consults with Nighthawk, is one of the legendary 1911 builders and he has been influential in the development of Nighthawk Custom pistols.

Other features of the T3 include grippy VZ stocks and a magazine funnel at the bottom of the pistol grip. When I saw this I was a little put off – What the heck was a magazine funnel doing on a carry pistol? Normally used on competition pistols, I didn’t “get it” until I took the T3 to the range, where I instantly appreciated that the mag funnel added just enough length to the abbreviated Officer’s size frame to give me a full and comfortable grip on the pistol that aided in control and shooting comfort. Since the frame is shorter on Officer’s model pistols they are designed to use shortened magazines. The T3 came with two 7 round magazines, one a blued mag that looks like an Act Mag and the other a stainless magazine that looks a lot like a Wilson Combat. In addition to these magazines I ordered a couple of 8 round stainless Chip McCormick magazines and an 8 round blued Wilson Combat magazine for the Officer’s model from Midway USA. All of the magazines worked flawlessly in the T3.

Throughout a number of range sessions over the past several months the Nighthawk T3 has performed without a single malfunction with everything from GI ball ammunition to various defensive loads. The pistol ships with a bottle of Gibbs lubricant and I have used it exclusively on the pistol so maybe that has something to do with its performance, but I rather imagine any good lube would do and the pistol’s performance is more related to how well it is designed and fitted. As for accuracy, the pistol ships with a target that shows it can shoot a one-hole group at 15 yards from a bench rest. I stood on my hind legs and fired a group at 15 yards for comparison, and although it’s not quite up to the bench rest group it’s good enough for me. Needless to say, this pistol has the reliability and accuracy to satisfy any shooter. With its steel frame and slide the T3 weighs 34.2 ounces, which is the same as a steel Commander size pistol. This weight packs easily and, although not a lightweight, the added heft makes it easier to shoot well.

When King Abdullah II of Jordan spent the day visiting and shooting with us at Gunsite, among the pistols he fired was his personal Nighthawk Custom 1911. If you’re looking for a pistol good enough for a king, maybe you should think about investing in a Nighthawk Custom pistol.

For more information:

www.nighthawkcustom.com

www.midwayusa.com

About the Author:

Ed Head is a regular on Shooting Gallery, Gun Stories and Down Range TV. He has worked for almost 30 years in law enforcement, first in the United States Air Force and then with the United States Border Patrol, retiring as a Field Operations Supervisor. During his Border Patrol career, Ed worked in a variety of patrol, investigative and training capacities. Ed has an extensive background as a firearms instructor, having trained thousands, ranging from beginners to police, military and special operations personnel. Having taught at Gunsite for 20 years, Ed first trained there under the world famous shooting school’s founder, Jeff Cooper, then later ran the school as the operations manager for more than five years. Ed lives in Chino Valley, Arizona, where he continues to teach and write.