Limitless Potential
by Cameron Hopkins
Photos by Ichiro Nagata
American Handgunner, Sept/Oct 1999
Article Reprinted Courtesy of American Handgunner magazine
There are a lot of reasons to hate Don Golembieski. He's virtually a shooting
god, good at just about everything, from silhouette to sporting clays to
IPSC. Limited not just to shooting, his disgusting abundance of talent extends
to custom gun building, fly fishing, dog training and, no doubt, judging
17th century French porcelain.
A Grand Master at IPSC, the guy could win a sporting clays nationals or give Lones Wigger a run for his money in the 1,000 yard Wimbledon Cup at Camp Perry. Don shot .22 rifle competitively in high school and is so good with a shotgun that he breaks doubles from the hip at station four in skeet, just to interrupt the monotony of another 25 straight. Guys like Don just make you feel so inadequate, so normal. He's despicable.
In a world of specialized pistolsmiths and metalsmiths and revolversmiths, Don's an all-around gunsmith, capable of building a quarter-minute .223 Ackley varmint rifle or a custom one-off Bianchi gun. If that's not enough to make you hate him, he dates a beautiful, gracious lady and he's probably the nicest guy you'll ever meet.
If you can get over his good points, underneath it all Don is really horrible. A master machinist, he built parts for the space shuttle before relocating his R&D machine shop from California to Mesa, Ariz. Why did he move to Mesa? Partly because he was born in Tucson, but mostly because there is so much shooting and so many talented shooters- the Land Of Leatham- with two-a-week IPSC matches. Serious about shooting? Don lives to shoot. (Okay, fly fishing too.)
A trained tool and die maker, Don's skill as a machinist is such that he is under contract to manufacture intricate and minuscule parts for heart valves. Heart valves! Yeah, and you're worried about reliability in your gun? The valve parts are made on mills and lathes in Don's spotless shop from whence guns like this custom Infinity .40 S&W derive.
This pistol is a stunning rendition of the limitless potential of a Golembieski full-house custom 1911. Blending the artistry of handcut checkering with the precision of a CNC mill, the gun is built on a high-capacity extended dust cover frame from Infinity Firearms with a Caspian bar stock slide. It's about as top drawer as you can get, costing over $3,000 (see the accompanying box for a complete list of parts and the price).
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The serial number is ULTRA LIMITED, a fitting alpha-tribute to an aipha-gun. It belongs to Mike Goodman of the Southwest Pistol League, a consumate connoisseur of fine firearms and passionate proselytizer of the Steel Challenges "This is Don's best work," he proud owner said. "He pulled out all ,he stops."
By The Rules
IPSC Limited Class rules dictate most of the features of the Golembieski
creation. First is caliber: to make major, the round must be .40 or larger.
Thus the winning ticket is a .40 S&W which allows the maximum number of
rounds in the magazine while still scoring major.
Second is capacity: the rule prohibits magazines longer than 140mm. Tbus the hot setup is a high capacity 140mm magazine. SV can fit 20 rounds in a 140mm mag with their new competition follower. Don's mags come with Gram's Engineering floor plates, again the hot setup for IPSC competition.
Third is weight: the rules prohibit "additional weight" other than what is intrinsic to the gun itself. IPSC has ruled that the dust cover is part of the gun, so naturally gun makers extend the dust cover to the end of the slide and thicken it for maximum weight. The rules permit bull barrels, so Don installed a Bar-Sto bull barrel for maximum weight and unsurpassed accuracy.
There are no rules on trigger pull- "any safe trigger" is as far as it goes. Don tuned the trigger for a crisp "competition weight." (He can go light, down around a pound. And he might... if he knows you can shoot. But not for a mail-order customer.)
The result is a heavy (39.3 ozs.) high capacity major caliber pistol. To this basic set of building blocks, Don embelished the gun with a series of tiny details that, added together, make for an exceptional pistol.
In The Details
The devil is in the details and so is Don Golembieski. He sweats bullets over the little things. The fit of the beavertail? Is it exactly perfect? What about when it's depressed? It has to be right. No gaps, no lines, a seamless blend of two into one.
"There is not a thing in that gun I haven't touched- nothing. Every part in the gun has got some kind of signature on it from me. From rechambering the barrel, to recrowning the barrel, to polishing the breechface. I've tweaked every part," Don says of his meticulous care.
"Every little thing is perfect. Every corner is square, every radiused edge is evenly chambered. There's a slight little chamfer on the muzzle of the gun- it encompasses the slide and the frame- that I did by hand," Don noted.
Look at what's not there- tool marks. "You won't see any tool marks anywhere. All the mating surfaces, like the beavertail and the back of the slide where it fits the frame, are all meshed evenly. It's a solid fluid line," the IPSC Grand Master pointed out.
The rear sight is a Bo-Mar, sunken and blended into the slide like it grew there. What about the front sight? Perfect width, not too wide, not too narrow. It takes a Grand Master's eye to know the sight picture that a competitor needs. Don has the eye. The sight, a custom dovetail unit from EGW, is. 100" thick.
"If you have a front sight that's too wide, you spend too much time on feedback trying to get the right amount of sight on either side. I've got guys shooting sights as thin as .080". But. 100" xith the standard Bo-Mar notch of .1 12" as the standard IPSC sight picture Don explained.
The trigger, just the right amount of take-up to allow you to prep the shot- but not too much to be squishy. Crisp to break, but fast to reset, a delicate balance of the hammer-sear arrangement and its sear spring. How light is light? Well, Don sets his competition triggers according to your skill.
Don fitted an Infinity ITS trigger ,which allows you to swap trigger faces- long or short, straight or curved, smooth or serrated. He set the pull at 1.75 lbs., but that's only because he knows the owner. The mag funnel is from Krebs, -machined from solid bar stock, but Don checkers the sides to improve, ever so nightly, the grip surface for those with large hands. Details, details, details.
Don fit an Aftec extractor. This is the hot setup for an extractor. It uses two coil springs to provide the proper tension instead of the old "bend 'til it looks 'bout right" method.
Internally, all surfaces are polished and mated for a perfect fit. The slide hisses along the frame rails like a hydraulic piston. The small internal parts- hammer pin, strut pin, disconnector pin- are from EGW, the best. Don also selected an EGW slide stop pin. The hammer, sear and disconnector are from Nowlin, a top purveyor of 1911 parts.
The mag funnel and the mainspring housing, taken together, form a snagless unit that is an aid to fast reloads. Don explains: "There's two funnels that I really Re: the Krebs and the SV. In combination with the Alan Zitta mainspring housing, it just makes the biggest difference in doing a mag change. Now I'm talking GM [Grand Master] mag changes. When you're going that fast, any little interference is a problem."
Zitta's mainspring housing is made of steel, not plastic, which allows the funnel to be blended into it with seamless perfection. Frankly, this is a modification that I wouldn't have even noticed if Don hadn't pointed it out. His gun is like a great painting- every time you look at it, you see something else that fascinates you.
The thumb safeties come from Ed Brown, but they are fitted and contoured by hand, filed into place. The underside of the safeties are carefully radiused and chamfered to prevent the sort of annoying abrasion that comes after heavy practice. "Man, I just hate it after 200 or 300 draws and your thumb starts getting all beat up. The safeties are contoured to match and be comfortable. The bottom side of the safeties are chamfered and laid back.
"This gun would be comfortable for 95 percent of the people out there. The other five percent would be lefties or people with bony hands, just not much meat on the hand. Those people I would do something special for."
Cosmetic touches abound. The finish is a deluxe hard chrome from Techplate Engineering, home of 23 different finishes for firearms. Their hard chrome glows with the deep luster of matte stainless.
To highlight the extended dust cover of the Infinity frame, Don cut two subtle yet distinctive flutes. They mate with a set of flutes cut in the Caspian bar stock slide, bordering panels of handcut checkering that serve as front and rear cocking surfaces. The top of the slide is serrated.
Limitless Shooting
Very few people will ever be fortunate enough to own an honest-to-goodness testbed gun. A testbed gun is one that has proven to be so accurate that one can test any given load and know with certainty that the results are solely the ammunition, not the gun. Such a gun Don builds.
Noted IPSC Grand Master and author Brian Enos has such a gun. He calls it his testbed gun and uses it to check out any new bullet/powder combinations that come along. "Brian's gun shoots 1.5" to 1.75" at 50 yards- with iron sights and Brian shooting prone," Don said. "And it'll do it all day long with hollowpoints, truncated cones, roundnose, you name it."
The secret? Fitting the barrel dead- nuts perfect and using a Bar-Sto barrel. The renowned stainless steel match tube from Twentynine Palms, Calif., was, is and always shall be the premium barrel by which all others are measured. Don tweaks the Bar-Sto just a bit- he isn't saying exactly how.
Don admits that he rechambers the barrel and cuts a special crown, but
beyond that his fitting secret is simple- do it right. The Bar-Sto locks
up property with full lug engagement, the way it's supposed to. A Ransom
Rest cannot be used to test any polymer framed pistol because of the inherent
flexibility of the frame. A Ransom Rest indexes the gun by squeezing the
frame. Plastic has too much flex to allow the precise alignment necessary
shot-to-shot in a Ransom Rest. 
For better or worse, we are stuck with my eyeballs to determine the accuracy of serial #ULTRA LIMITED. Testing was conducted at the American Shooting Center, an indoor range in San Diego. The range is as nice as an indoor range gets, with a custom ventilation system and air conditioning, but I have to admit that I don't shoot my best in an indoor range. The noise and concussion are disconcerting, making it hard to concentrate on group shooting, and the lighting is never ideal, at least compared to outdoors on a sunny day.
Chronographing was out; it takes a special lighting setup to chrono indoors. Loads were assembled by Don using 5.4 grs. of Viht N-320 with a Winchester 180 gr. JHP, your basic everyday 180 power factor IPSC load. All shooting was done at 25 yards, rested on the plastic bench but without sandbags.
Groups ran from a "best" of three- touching in a 5-shot cluster of 1%" to a vertically strung 5-shot group of 2 1/2" (less than 3/4" horizontally) to the "worst," the first group shot, of some 4". Put a Grand Master like Don behind the gun and expect consistent sub-2" groups at 25 yards.
The pistol shot very nicely, as to be expected of a gun of this caliber. Don installed a Springco recoil reduction guide rod, which seemed to help. Similar to a standard recoil spring guide rod, the Springco unit incorporates a spring- dampener that only kicks in during the last half-inch of slide travel. Don asserts that the Springco device, "Makes a pistol shoot a lot more comfortably," however, I am unable to make such a claim without a basis of comparison to an identical gun with identical loads.
"I put a Springco unit in a customer's gun. He shot it for a couple of months and came back and asked for a tungsten rod. He had to have the tungsten rod. He went and shot it and came back all disappointed. He wanted his Springco back. "Every one I put in, the guys like it. I haven't had any problems with them at all. I put one in my gun a week before the nationals, and I never change anything before the nationals. That's how much I like it," Don said.
The gun functioned flawlessly, again something to be expected in a gun with such a pedigree. Several hundred rounds went downrange during a photo shoot with our ace photographer, Ichiro Nagata. Nary a bobble. Don's guns very rarely jam, I might add, which is why he has an active clientele among competition shooters.
For the competitor who demands the last little edge a gunsmith can provide, Don is the man. He knows what top shooters- and those Who want to be top shooters- need in a pistol, not just from hearsay but from standing there in the shooting box, waiting for the beep. Talent like Don's is way too rare in this day of the "production custom" gun. There are no employees in Don's shop, no receptionists, no color catalogs, no assembly line workers staying busy while the Big Name Who Started It All counts the day's receipts. There is only Don, the meticulous craftsman with a burning love of shooting.
Not only does Don have the itch to shoot, but also the drive and the desire to make guns to perfection, both shooting them in matches and building them for customers. Talent, skill, determination and a sense of hurnor to boot. There are a lot of reasons to hate Don Golembieski.
Readers wishing to contact gunsmith Don Golembieski can reach him at Kodiak Precision, 6557 E. Riverdale, Mesa, AZ 85215; phone: (480) 832-8107.
Ultra Limited Parts Suppliers
| Mag Base Pads Gram's Engineering 2435 Norse Ave. Costa Mesa, CA 92627 (949) 548-3745 |
Hard Chrome Plating Techplate Engineering 1571-H S. Sunkist St. Anaheim, CA 92806 |
Match Barrel Bar-Sto Precision 73377 Sullivan Rd. Twentynine Palms, CA 92277 (619) 367-2747 |
| Bar Stock Slide Caspian Arms 14 N. Main St. Hardwick, VT 05843 |
Modular Frame Infinity Firearms (800) 928-1911 www.sviguns.com |
Components Nowlin Mfg. Rt. 1, Box 308 Claremore, OK 74017 (918) 342-0689 |
| Ed Brown Products P.O. Box 492 Perry, MO 63462 (573) 565-2791 |
EGW 4050 B-8 Skyron Dr. Doylestown, PA (215) 348-9892 |
Aftec 3588 Hwy. 138 Stockbridge, GA 30281 (770) 506-0849 |
| Z-Man 203 South Street Bemardston, MA 01337 (413) 648-9501 |
Krebs Gunsmithing 940 Forest Edge Dr. Vernon Hills, IL 60016 (847) 821-7763 |