I bought one these.

Tisas 1911A1

I know 1911 pistols were originally designed for ball ammo and this gun feeds ball just fine, however it absolutely chokes on hollowpoints. While it is not my carry gun, I have pistols secreted around the house for reasons and like to have them loaded with hollowpoints. Is there a way to make this pistol reliably feed hollowpoints or is it ball ammo or nothing?

PS. I have tried 3 different magazines also. (Mec-Gar, Checkmate and Chip McCormick)

You best describe the type of failure before anyone can pitch in to help.  Tisas guns are tight and that may be part of the problem.  I bought a MAC 1911 which is a Tisas in disguise.  It is tight but feeds my lead semi-wads perfectly.  They say in the manual it may need about 200 rounds to break in.

I din't find that to be the case.  I actually fitted an oversized barrel bushing, an oversized slide stop pin  to tighten it up even more and did trigger work and now it is a great target gun.

Release the slide, it moves forward and jams the nose of the round into the feed ramp and that's it.

Yep, that's about right for hollow points in a 1911.


Google "1911 jams on hollow points" and settle in for some reading.

My Para feeds them flawlessly so I assumed this one would do okay, I guess I was wrong.

Give it to a real 1911 'smith to get it to run.

There are a number of factors affecting the pistol's ability to feed.

First up is the geometry of the frame.  The critical dimensions are shown below.  These can all be fudged a little except for the barrel bed length.  It can be longer but it cannot be shorter.  The feed ramp angle is called out in the blue prints to be exactly 31.5 degrees on the button.  You can get away with a little less but not much.  The depth of the feed ramp has pretty wide parameters but the deeper its the less likely the pistol will suffer from nose dive induced malfunctions.

Another common cause of poor feeding characteristics is a poorly fit extractor.  Insufficient hook-to-breechface distance is a common issue.  In a .45 it should not be less than .075".

Deflection should be set to be no more than .010".  The firing pin stop should engage the extractor snugly to prevent it from clocking (rotating within its channel) and to prevent it from moving fore and aft.  The extractor hook should not make contact with the case bevel nor should it contact the flat portion of the case immediately in front of the rim.

You can test whether or not the extractor is the problem with your pistol by removing it from the slide, seating a full mag, then smartly pushing down the slide stop to release the slide.  If you're still getting jams on the ramp, the extractor is not the immediate problem.

I have a Tisas 1911a1 and it also refuses to feed hollow points. I’ve relegated it to a range gun only. (As I have all my 1911‘s) yesterday’s tech and all. Give me Glock any day.

I never got mine to feed Hollow points, FMJs are no problem.

Try some Wilson mags,also Tripps. Maybe things will improve, maybe not, but it's cheaper than a trip to a smith.

Good luck!

I have 2 Tisas GI type and they work great ,

I have same Tisas Service. It feeds anything I load it with. Ironically, it doesn't like Winchester white box ball ammo. It will feed it, but will not extract / eject life round. It will lodge diagonally in the ejection port. All other ball / hollopoints work fine.

I agree.  I had some FTFs early in break in.  I put 500 rounds of ball ammo through it before going to hollow points.  These cheap guns haven't been broke in for you like a $4000 1911.

Today, when 1911 shooters talk about trying different magazines they are normally referencing different brands they are often just talking about brands without necessarily understanding what matters when it comes to bullet length and point shape and how the magazine feed lips make a difference.
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Look at the fed laps on the magazines below.  We’ll discuss them from left to right.



On the left is a standard military 1911 magazine for which the 1911 was originally designed to use 200 and slightly later 230 gr full metal jacket round nose ammunition. These are often called “GI” or “hardball” magazines.

Note the long and continuous outward taper of the feed lips from front to back. As the round is moved forward by the slide face, the base of the round is slowly and steadily elevated.  This occurs at the same time the nose of the round starts to be be pushed up on the feed ramp.  There’s some up angle on the bullet but it’s moderate. The result is the bullet smoothly enters the chamber and the rim of the cartridge rises smoothly in between the slide face and the extractor.  If you make a dummy round with a 230 gr FMJ and then remove the recoil spring from your 1911 and cycle it by hand, you’ll find silky smooth feeding of the round.


In the center is a “Colt Commercial” or “Hybrid” magazine.  This design originated with Colt in the 1930s as truncated cone flat point, round nose flat point, semi wadcutters, and even early follow point designs started to come into common use, along with lighter bullet weights to increase velocity.  

The common feature of these bullets were generally shorter cartridges overall lengths and differences in where and then in the feed cycle the bullet contacted the feed ramp.

With the standard hardball magazine the base of the cartridge case would start to rise before the bullet contacted the feed ramp and started to rise.  The result was the bullet would basically nose dive into the fed ramp at too direct an angle to deflect upward.   Sound familiar?  

Colt’s solution was to reduce the taper of the feed lips to slow the rise of the base of the cartridge to prevent the bullet from coming to a dead stop against the feed ramp.  It worked fine with most of those shorter bullets.

While  it increased the up angle on the longer 230 gr round nose bullets, shortening the feed lips allows the base of the case to pop up into the ejector before the angle on the rim gets too steep to allow it to rise into the ejector, and before the bullet is angled up so steeply that it gets jammed against the top of the chamber.

The feeding is no longer silky smooth with the 230 gr ball round, but it’s generally still very reliable.  In some cases the extractor needs to be reprofiled or adjusted to allow the rim to come up between the slide face and the extractor without binding. When that happens the slide will stop about 1/8” out of battery and the pistol will not fire, until you tap the back of the slide to drive it the rest of the way into battery.  

Some shooters try to fix this by changing the recoil spring to one that’s more powerful but that generally won’t help much, and it can make it worse by shortening the slide over run distance and counterintuitively the slide velocity as it comes back forward as while the spring is stronger is accelerates the slide over a shorter distance.  



On the right is a “parallel lip” or “wadcutter” magazine.  This was a response to a need for a magazine that would feed really short bullets like 155 gr semi wadcutters.  These short bullets still had a tendency to nose dive into the feed ramp even with the hybrid feed lip magazines. The parallel lip ensures the base of the case is kept down until the bullet is started up the feed ramp. The shorter feed lips then suddenly release the base of the bullet to come up into the extractor.

They work well with most of the the longer points and or heavier semi wad cutters as well like the Hensley and Gibbs #68.

However these will not feed 230 gr RN bullets very well at all. The angle of the cartridge is too steep. This can cause the rim to bind in between the slide face and extractor, or worse it can cause the bullet to jam in between the barrel and slide.


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At each stage in the process of shortening the feed lips and reducing their taper the controlled feed of the original 1911 and military magazine is lost, going from a very smooth fully controlled and smooth feed cycle to a feed cycle where the round is fully controlled for progressly less time.

It’s also worth noting that when the US military started buying 1911 magazines again in the 1970s the “GI” magazines were at that point Colt Commercial or Hybrid lip magazines.  They still worked great with the 230 gr ball round and could be made on the same tooling as the commercial mags so they were cheaper in the bid process.  Consequently a “GI” magazine encountered today is most likely not going to be the original long  tapered lip magazine.

Today the Colt Commercial/Hybrid feed lip design is more or less the standard with nearly all 1911 pistol manufacturers, with very little deviation.  They work ok with most rounds, but might not function with your particular hollow point of choice.  

A parallel lip “wadcutter” magazine like the one on the right might work fine for feeding hollow points that nose dive with a Hybrid feed lip magazine like the one in the center. If the cartridge rim binds between the slide face and extractor causing the slide to stop just short of being in battery, some adjustment of the extractor or replacement with a reprofiled extractor designed for a steep rim angle should fix the issue.


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There is also the Wilson 47D magazine.  It leaves the bullet much higher in the magazine and just sort of pops up in front of the slide which then bats it into the chamber. That gives up any pretense of controlled feed, and it also requires the extractor to pop over the cartridge rim as the slide slams it into the chamber.   Extractors eventually break from that abuse. The shooter blames the original extractor as being “poor quality” and buys a new one from Wilson that is designed for the purpose.

If you go the 47D route, replace the extractor as well when you do it.

Saw this in my email….$319.00 Looking at their Tank Commander though





https://www.sportsmansoutdoorsuperstore.com/products2.cfm/ID/282860?utm_source=050424&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=050424&trk_msg=8ICRO8O6DAF4FDO1SOSK4C8O6C&trk_contact=JT78UA57VGUOS5IG42QBJ824DO&trk_sid=GTKJ0GA38NHUKQBKUC97KBO5TC&trk_link=2681SJRJ357KV3T34RHBSF3CU4

I’ve been very tempted by this blemished steel frame Commander in satin nickel.   This pistol seems very desirable since I sold a Colt Satin Nickel Combat Commander years ago.



https://www.budsgunshop.com/product_info.php/products_id/411561546/tisas+1911+tank+commander+.45+acp+nickel

You have the A1 Service?

Polish the feed ramp and see if that helps. I got one of the 9mm A1 Tisas 'clones', and it does not like HP ammo either. At some point when I no longer am Mom's primary caretaker I will work the feed ramp on mine.