The Pistol of the Past’s Future: Kimber KDS9c

Though the seeds of Kimber were sown in the late 1970s and many rifles and designs came before, everything really came to fruition with the release of their first 1911 pistol in 1997. And damn, they really shook things up by releasing a standard gun full of previously-custom-only features at a lower price point. With the launch of the KDS9c, Kimber seeks to do the same again.

FEATURES & DETAILS

Chambered in 9mm, the KDS9c is a new twist on an old dream — the soul and bones of the most famous John Moses Browning design updated for modern times. Retrofuturism is sometimes cheesy, but not here. The Kimber KDS9c represents the future of the past. It isn’t something new meant to look old by being covered in brass and rivets like a Jules Verne steampunk piece, nor is it a tongue-in-cheek ’80s synthesizer cybertruck with a mullet, but instead like the tech-noir cinema style of the sleek cyber-future of the late ’90s and early 2000s. It harkens back to The Matrix and Equilibrium, maybe a little Dark City. Stylized but functional. Sexy.

The slide is machined stainless steel with a deep, rich, black finish with graduated front and rear serrations along slanted sides and an external extractor. The angled snout subtly shows off that the KDS9c is bushingless and only adds to the modern look.

The barrel is threaded, but there’s more going on than mere threads. Not only does it have horizontal flutes, but the profile is also a reverse taper that allows Kimber to forgo the typical barrel bushing while still allowing the barrel to be removed from the front. This does change the disassembly/assembly procedure a little bit but not very much. As you’d expect from Kimber, the barrel is ramped, target crowned, and most likely more accurate than you are.

You have some factory options for frames, to include stainless, black, or railed. Shown here is a TFS (Threaded For Suppression) model, which are all also railed (though threaded barrels in assorted colors are available from Kimber directly). The barrel is threaded 1/2×28 standard like you’d expect. Our example is two-tone with a gray frame, which fits our desired aesthetic.

Missing is the sometimes-controversial grip safety along with a traditional mainspring housing, reminding you again this is a 1911-action but certainly not a straightforward 1911. There’s still an integral beavertail; it’s just that you don’t need the web of your palm pressed on it in order to pull the trigger.

The installed G10 grips have milled lines that nicely match the frontstrap texturing. We can’t call the KDS9c totally ambidextrous even though it does have a mirrored safety selector, because the magazine release is swappable rather than bidirectional — but nothing terribly new for 1911 owners.

The trigger and hammer are both stylish and skeletonized. One thing 1911s are known for are great triggers, and the Kimber KDS9c is no exception. The trigger face is flat with a smooth front complete with short hooks at the top and bottom, which act as centering aids for consistency. Not totally light and stiff, the face of the trigger moves a bit to the wall  — more like settles — and then it’s a quick snap, less-than-a-light switch of pressure. Our scale measures the break just over 4.5 pounds, but half of that weight is in the aforementioned settling — almost like a false first stage. Damn, Browning did a really, really good job so very long ago.

The front sight is a bright fiber optic with some spares in the bag. The KDS9c can accept an optic but we’re not quite sure we can call it “optic ready,” because it doesn’t come equipped with a plate though they’re readily available. Current footprints available are Noblex, RMR, and RMSc. No ACRO at the time of writing, but if you’re running an ACRO you’re probably already familiar with available adapters. Included is one flush-fit 15-round magazine and an extended 18-round magazine, angled like a CZ-75 rather than the upright like a traditional 2011. 

The Kimber KDS9c ships with a handsome gray zippered range bag that can accommodate a pair of pistols complete with an elastic lanyard for five mags. The bag itself is nice enough to use but is a little flimsy — a little more stiffness and padding would go a long way here.

BUT HOW?

The 1911 was designed at a time when machine labor was expensive, and man labor was cheap. What made these guns so affordable a century prior also made them prohibitively expensive in a world where Glock parts are born from molds. This was Kimber’s real innovation to firearms manufacturing: instead of making a new gun that used these new tools, machines, knowledge, and know-how, Kimber instead set out to redesign and reengineer the 1911 to work within these parameters — and give it some updates and make it more affordable along the way. This was their original secret to the 1997 release so long ago, and it caused much consternation among traditional manufacturers.

If you’ve been around the block or have just done some light Googling about Kimber, then you’ve undoubtedly come across some complaints about MIM parts. That is, components manufactured with a metal injection molding process, one of these newer (at the time) methods. If old internet forums are to be believed, any MIM piece ever produced will randomly explode under pressure, but let’s give it a slightly closer look.

MIM was initially developed for parts that are too complex or time-consuming to machine and really took off with American manufacturers in the late 20th century. Kimber was the first firearm manufacturer to use it at scale, though some other makers were implementing MIM processes at the same time. The real problem was twofold: Kimber was shaking up the 1911 market by undercutting competition, making previously custom options standard fare on their pistols and making enemies in the process. And there were some teething issues, not uncommon with new processes even today, that were elevated by said enemies.

Regardless of if a part is machined, cast, forged, printed, molded, worked, or conjured into existence, they all require a quality assurance process to ensure they’re up to snuff. MIM is just fine, provided it’s done right. In fact, though MIM is used for everything from rocket parts to surgical tools, firearms manufacturers still make up the bulk of material sales in the United States today — they just don’t talk about it. Every major manufacturer uses it, probably your favorite one too, even in your carry gun.

Does this have MIM? Who cares.

Just as when they started, Kimber is leveraging the most advanced design and machine practices to bring previously custom features to the forefront at a cost you couldn’t get before — at least not for something made in America.

OUTFITTING & ON THE RANGE

While everything is ready to go out of the box, at least if you’re OK with shooting a pistol like it’s the late 1900s, we wanted to bring the Kimber KDS9c into the future a bit. The first thing to address was the optic, so a classic Trijicon RMR06 it was. The rear sight is attached to the optic plate but it’s dovetailed in place so it’s windage driftable, swappable, and removable. Curiously, the rear sight that comes with the RMR plate is standard height and not suppressor height, so it doesn’t cowitness, which is just as well because it saves us the trouble from removing it.

Kimber sells compact weapon-mounted lights in their store like the SureFire XC1-C but the KDS9c readily accepts the full-size WMLs like the SureFire X300U-B models.

What immediately sticks out is that the magazine is very easy to load. This might seem like a small thing, but the fact that it was a first thought says much about how hard it is to load many of the modern stagger-stack nines. Only the last round of the extended mag gives any guff at all.

The KDS9c feels fat toward the top. This makes the safety selector a little harder to hit, especially the one on the right side of the frame, but this isn’t anything new with double-stack 1911-style pistols.

In terms of silencers, we first used the Kimber KDS9c with the diminutive Dead Air Odessa 9 at CANCON Carolinas. It performed admirably, the frame soaking recoil with no weird cycling issues. The same went for the other cans we tried across other range trips including some examples from Liberty Suppressors, Rugged, and
SilencerCo. Threaded For Suppression? Check that box as truthful — this is a fantastic silencer host.

Reset is extremely short, and this equates to exceptionally fast hammer pairs (we were printing cloverleaves at 10 yards). Guns like this could make someone a believer in the 1911 system.

FASTENERS

Kimber only uses two different hex sizes for their fasteners across the entire pistol and they include both wrenches. The key to swap the magazine release is a minuscule 1/16-inch hex affair but it’s not likely something you’ll be moving around much, if at all (and if you do, you won’t be using any thread locker). The real problem rears its ugly head with the others. The optic plates and grips both use 5/64-inch hex head fasteners, which are quite small and exceptionally easy to strip out with any amount of torque or thread locker. This isn’t too bad with the grips, because these are things you might change once or twice, and even if you bugger them up, you can get new grip bushing. But with the optic plates? Yikes. We almost stripped one out merely removing the factory blank. 😬

Take time, care, and apply heat judiciously. We recommend all manufacturers move to Torx bits the largest size the shaft can accommodate, especially for parts that’ll be swapped, double-so if there’s any sort of thread locker making a showing.

LOOSE ROUNDS

With the KDS9c, Kimber is right back to their roots, making a pistol that you’d otherwise have to shell out far more coin to get through the door for. It doesn’t have perfect attention to detail, but you aren’t paying that premium required for that extra human attention either. In terms of longevity? Only time will tell, but seeing as this one is a helluva lot of fun to shoot and more affordable than their immediate competition, we’ll know sooner rather than later.

Try it, you’ll like it.

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