Sig Sauer P229 Legion Series

A friend’s wife once said something about firearms that stuck with me. A small-framed lady, she said, “I like a lot of gun around my bullets.” She was referring to having a large, heavy handgun which helps to dampen recoil, but there might be another meaning to that phrase. Considering the less-than-lavish pay the law enforcement profession provides, most of us can only long to own a custom shop pistol.

The Legion Series

SIG SAUER is doing something about that with the Legion Series. The Legion Series provides custom shop features in a production line of pistols.  Eventually, Legions will be expanded across more of SIG’s products including rifles, optics and suppressors. For now, the consumer has three Legion Series pistols to consider: The P226, the P229 and the P226 SAO (single action only). These popular and well-established platforms are the perfect place to launch the Legion. An alliance between SIG and Grayguns, Inc. is partially responsible for this excellent product line.

The Gray Matter

For the uninitiated, Bruce Gray of Grayguns Inc. is a highly-respected competitor and gunsmith.  He earned a sterling reputation in particular for his work on SIG SAUER pistols. He is especially renowned for his aftermarket trigger work. When SIG began the Legion project, it only made sense to bring Gray in on it. The end result is an advertised 10-pound double action trigger. Our review gun’s double action pull was right at 10 pounds and incredibly smooth. This standard double-action trigger is simply on another level. This partnership is proving to be quite the success for both Grayguns and SIG SAUER. However, the end consumer is the real winner.

Legion Features

Speaking of the Legion Series features: The beavertail is reduced and contoured. The frame is relieved under the trigger guard to allow for a better purchase. The finish is PVD. That stands for Physical Vapor Deposition. I looked that up out of curiosity, but it’s too boring for a gun article. For most of us, knowing it’s a durable, quality finish is as technical as it needs to get. The Legion comes standard with aggressively checkered grips and a solid steel guide rod. The Electro-optics X-Ray™ High Visibility Day/Night Sights are easy to rapidly acquire in any lighting conditions. Anyone in law enforcement knows three magazines is the bare minimum for a duty pistol. Many come with two, meaning the officer must seek out and buy another before the pistol can be put into service. At this writing, all Legion Series pistols come with three magazines.

 

One of the first things I noticed about this P229 is its smooth functioning controls. SIG always excel in this area, but the Legion is a step above. The magazine release is noticeably more smooth and positive. The slide operation is similar to a highly-customized 1911. Even the take down lever feels as though it received some extra attention. The frame is an alloy/stainless steel combination which helps keep this gun’s weight just under 30 ounces unloaded. The P229 has a 3.9-inch barrel and a sight radius of 5.7 inches. Of course, most modern full or medium-size pistols of today must come with a Picatinny rail as does the Legion P229. I found it worked well with both my TLR-1 and Surefire X300.

Speed and Direction

When testing for general accuracy, I use a sandbag because mechanical rests are expensive, time-consuming and take a lot of the fun out of getting paid to shooting someone else’s gun.  Five-shot groups were fired at 25 yards with only my fading skills to guide them to the target.  Chronograph testing was done at 10 feet.  The Federal HST 124 grain +P impressed with its 1141 average feet per second average, but I was only able to eke out a 2.9″ group with this loading.  That was only the first attempt and I knew the gun could do better.  I was able to manage a 2.4″ group out of the P229 with Corbon 100 grain Pow’r Ball screamers.  Finally, I shot a 1.9″ group with Remington Golden Saber 124 grain +P.  Imagine what this pistol could do in the hands of a skilled shooter.  After several days of shooting, we put about three hundred rounds through the pistol without issue.

SIG is doing something special with the Legion series pistols.  They’re putting custom shop quality pistols into the price range of us normal folks.  Granted, they’re still not exactly cheap with an MSRP of $1428.00 and a street price of around $1250.00, but pistols with these features would normally bring upwards of $3000.00.  If you purchase a SIG Legion pistol, you get a lot of gun around your bullets.

Velocity/Accuracy Table	5-Shot Average Velocity	5-Shot Group
Federal HST 124 Gr. +P	1141.2 FPS	2.9″
Corbon Pow’r Ball 100 Gr.	1329.8	2.4″
Rem. Golden Saber 124 Gr. +P	1056.6	1.9″