Jim Boland
Genius Gunsmith and Great Friend
by J Bartell

And yes, he was a little crazy and sometimes rude, but what genius isn’t?

I need a new gunsmith:
I first met Jim Boland after the First Steel Challenge match. This was a speed-shooting match that included contestants from all over the world. As a newbie, I was happy to have placed in the top fourteen. I made it to the shoot-offs. Me and another shooter went up against Mike Dalton and someone else. Both of us lost every run against the other 2 shooters except one. The only run we won was the one in which my gun didn’t jam.

Afterward, my gunsmith who had witnessed the event, said with a smile, that it was normal for a gun to jam every hundred rounds or so. That remark is what motivated me to find another gunsmith.

I had heard about Jim Boland. Most people knew him as the “mad scientist”. He looked and acted like one, and, of course, being the genius he was, he also sounded like one. It turned out that he was the find of a lifetime.

First meeting with Jim Boland:
After being introduced to Jim by Michael Harries, I found that it was actually a chore to find Jim because he would move from shop to shop before he eventually set up his own place. It took a few weeks, but I finally tracked him down to a little gun store where he worked in the back room. I’ll never forget that day. I asked the clerk behind the counter if he had a gunsmith named Jim Boland. The clerk gave me a funny look and then yelled through a doorway to a back room, “Jim someone wants to talk to you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jim finally came out front. Having gone through a few gunsmiths already, I was thinking I needed to do something to determine if this guy is any good. So I told him my right thumb was riding against the slide whenever I shot my 1911 45. And I wanted a shield of some kind between my thumb and the slide.

After telling Jim basically what I wanted, Jim asked me if I had my gun with me, which I had, and I gave it to him. Without saying another word he took the gun and disappeared into his back room for nearly thirty minutes. Jim then reappeared with my gun in hand with a beautifully made thumb guard.

After other shooters saw my custom-made thumb guard, Jim was busy crafting guards for them as well.

That was the beginning of a wonderful and long-term relationship. He was crazy I admit it, but he was a good friend and I miss him dearly.

Olympic Shooter Don Nygord:
Before I met Jim Boland, I had asked Don Nygord, an Olympic shooter/gunsmith to make me something like Jim’s thumb guard, but it never worked properly.

Side story on Don Nygord. I made a deal with Don before I knew Jim Boland. He wanted me to help him with my mental conditioning process in order for him to improve his Olympic shooting techniques.

After a few months, he was bragging about how much better he was doing. His scores were much better and he felt so much more relaxed. He was shooting very high scores and believed he had a chance for a gold medal.

A few months later he said he wanted to stop working with me because the psychologists who were working with the US Olympic team said their process was better.  This was shortly before the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

I did go to the Los Angeles Olympics to see Don compete.  If I remember correctly, he took 34th Place. He didn’t know I was there, and I never mentioned it.

“Developing expertise is more important than any weapon modification.”
– Jim Boland

Jim Boland – Unique in more ways than one:
I remember one day I walked into Jim’s new shop when he was just finishing the construction of a safe room. That thing was incredible, thick walls of reinforced concrete with a big steel safe door as an entrance.

He was working on a machine when I told him I wanted him to build a new gun for me. He happened to be wearing shorts that day, and for the first time, I noticed a hole in his leg. He said at one time he had surgery on his broken leg and when the doctor replaced a piece of bone, they put it in upside down and it never healed properly. I took a close look and sure enough, I could see the bone in his leg.

What I find interesting in remembering the situation, was that it didn’t really seem that unusual at the time, knowing Jim. He always asked me to bring him a six-pack of Heineken. I asked him why Heineken, and he said it was the best thing to take away the pain in his leg. I never arrived empty-handed after that.

What I really loved about Jim was how well-crafted his guns were. No matter how strange looking, no matter what the principle, he said was behind the design, they worked.

My FK GUN, Specially built by Jim Boland:  Article in American Handgunner 1987 Annual

The following story should convince you, that Jim Boland was the best.

I couldn’t believe how beautifully my FK GUN shot. Now, this gun was not made for concealment. It was an experiment. Later Jim made me a Colt Shorty for concealment so I could use the same type of ammunition.

My FK Gun was something else altogether. I used my FK Gun in the Northwest championships and won First Place overall. And then I took it to the 1984 IPSC National Championships in Arizona where all the top shooters wanted to test-fire it. I remember Bill Wilson, Rob Leatham and others were given the chance. I think Robbie, at the time, was the world champion and was on to a very successful career winning many national championships also.

So I went with all the guys over to a test firing range next to the course and gave everybody a chance to shoot my one-of-a-kind FK Gun.

Robbie and the others loved how the gun felt and how accurate it was. I don’t remember who it was, but one of the other top shooters had an A/D, (accidental discharge) as he brought the gun up to fire it. He said he wasn’t prepared for such a light trigger pull. The other shooters agreed that the trigger pull was extremely light. I didn’t know what they were talking about, since I never had a problem with it and had shot thousands of rounds through it in practice and matches.

But I was curious to know how light a trigger it really had. Generally, for a combat gun, I would have a trigger pull of about 4 pounds max, normally around 3.5. I think the normal trigger pull out of the box is 6 to 8 pounds. For a competition gun, I like a trigger with no more than a 2.5 pounds pull.

Hold on to your hats. When I got back Jim tested the trigger pull and it turned out to be 1 pound. I couldn’t believe it. It had never followed and never jammed, not once.

Out of all the times that I had to use my weapons in combat, I had never had a problem with a jam, accuracy, or reliability. Boland’s work was impeccable.

The FK GUN – More than just a name, a memory:
Many people over the years have asked me what the “FK stood for. I had the FK engraved on the side of the gun to honor 2 good friends who had died.

I’m doing a little promotion for Jim.

Competition Gun also built by Jim Boland:
A friend of Michael Harries, Michael Horne was putting on one of his special shooting matches (you never knew what the matches were until you stepped up to the firing line) in Bakersfield, California. One of the stages was designed so that 2 shooters would stand at a firing line with a steel target for each shooter downrange at 25 yards. The targets were the size of a man’s torso including the head made out of steel on a 4-foot post.

The exercise was to have the shooter’s hands in the surrender position. So the hands were approximately on the side of the shooter’s head at the start. When the whistle blew, the men had 2 seconds to draw their weapons, handguns in this situation, and fire one shot at the target.

There would only be a winner if both shooters didn’t hit their target. After each stage, both shooters moved back 10 yards. We kept repeating this until we were 140 yards from the targets. At 140 yards I hit my target; my opponent didn’t.

I used a standard Colt 45 1911, reworked by Jim Boland, with a Bar-Sto match barrel.  It was my birthday and I won the match.

That’s how good Jim Boland was. One of the greatest gunsmiths ever. I am so glad to have been able to call him a good friend.