Monday, January 05, 2009 Rama: Avenger and a forty-five By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
ASK any taekwondo jin and he’ll say forty-fives are roundhouse kicks aimed towards the torso.
But Avenger Alob (atc.avenger@yahoo.com) knows better. To this taekwondo athlete-turned-trainer, and now proud gun owner, a forty-five is the caliber of his next handgun.
Read in part the e-mail he sent last Friday:
“I was planning to ask this during the Christmas party of Front Sight Gun Club, but I didn’t get the chance. I just want your opinion about the Armscor Medallion 45. I am planning to get this gun.”
Hi Avenger, that was a great party, wasn’t it? I was really surprised by the big turnout and quite happy to see you there.
For a club that considers itself small, the folks at Front Sight really know how to throw a bash. And the lunch they serve every time they hold a competition is just as good a reason to join the match as the competition itself.
Anyhow, the Medallion series is the flag-carrier of Armscor’s fleet of handguns.
It looks good, feels great and is capable of giving snake-eyes on demand for so long as the shooter is up to the task.
Dino Cinco, in the brief time he was still with the Armscor Shooting Centers, competed with a Medallion and was quite unstoppable with it.
The folks at Bolo Tuason’s facility in Marikina City had one thing in mind when they designed the Medallion—a locally manufactured gun that can stand toe-to-toe with foreign brands in the competition circuit.
And they scored big on the project. Despite the rather sharp price, higher than some foreign brands even, the gun is quite popular.
Demand for the unit is quite high, second perhaps only to the polymer-framed units Armscor is assembling with Tanfoglio parts.
Technically speaking, there really isn’t much of a difference between how the Medallion is made and how the other nineteen-elevens in the Armscor arsenal are manufactured.
In all Armscor nineteen-elevens, the frames and internal parts are made via precision investment casting while the slide and barrel are cut from ordnance steel using state-of-the-art CNC equipment.
And while some models in the series, like the Medallion Tactical, have a perpendicular cut etched on its solid slab slide, this is just for aesthetics.
By the way, investment casting and CNC machining is the method makers like Para-Ordnance and Ruger use to make their guns.
What makes the Medallion a cut above the rest is how the guns are fit.
I had the good fortune of getting invited to the Armscor plant in Parang, Marikina City, in November of 2006 and part of that visit was for me to actually see how Armscor makes the Medallion.
From the plant, the parts needed in assembling each Medallion are routed to a special division staffed by master gunsmiths headed by Arnel Bernardo.
Under Bernardo’s masterful guidance, each gun is fitted and assembled by hand and with very unforgiving tolerances, much like what custom gun makers abroad, Les Baer and Wilson Combat among them, do.
Also, Armscor puts in a lot of “enhancements” into the Medallion, enhancements that can otherwise be found only in custom or “customized” guns (read guns that have been to the gunsmith quite a lot).
Among these refinements are a lighter, crispier trigger, adjustable rear-sights and front sights with fiber optic inserts.
I’m confident that you’ll get a good gun in the Medallion, if you are so inclined towards it.
At the very least, you’ll get a gun that Armscor and the rest of Bolo Tuason’s people in Marikina City have staked their collective reputations on.
