Bill Jordan - Top Gun
by Skeeter Skelton
Shooting Times Magazine
November 1969
Tall, Tough, Faster’n Lightning
If Bill Jordan were the most unforgettable character I’ve ever met, this story would appear in the “Reader’s Digest.” Although lacking not a whit of color and charm. Long Bill falls short of some of my more raunchy acquaintances in the eccentricity department. If you’ve encountered this drawling giant, you will remember his 6’6” physique and the contrast of his soft, Louisiana speech. One of his low-key pungent anecdotes may have stuck in your mind, and you might recollect that you laughed a lot when you were with him.
But if you ever saw him shoot a sixgun, one thing will categorize him indelibly in your memory. Bill Jordan is the most unforgettable handgun man to emerge in the last third of a century.
The profession of arms is an exacting trade, and one that often leads humorless men to a premature callousness or the unlucky to an early grave. At 58, Bill has retained the wit and reactions of a Scaramouche after having devoted more than 30 years of his life to the dangerous and sometimes sordid pursuits as a professional law enforcer and combat Marine.
When Prohibition was on the wane in the 30’s, Jordan scouted the river that separated the Mexican smugglers from this country. Duty with the U.S. Border Patrol then meant guaranteed acquaintance with the sound of angry gunfire, and Jordan listened to his share. A stretch at clearing Japanese snipers from the caves of Entiwetok and Okinawa sharpened Bill’s adroitness with his small arms, and his postwar return to the Border Patrol kept a gun in his holster.
Retirement means a rocking chair or a fishing pole for most ex-warriors. The first day after Bill’s farewell to the federal service found him visiting me in Eagle Pass, Tex., and sheepishly explaining that he couldn’t take the inactivity. He had gone to work as Southwestern Field Representative for the NRA, and was striking out in a post that carries him and his guns 100,000 miles a year.
Bill did 10 years as an instructor at Camp Perry, guiding police in the intricacies of the riot gun, combat shooting, and fast draw work. This led to public appearances for the Border Patrol and tours with the Knife and Fork and Executive clubs. Television spots followed, with Bill demonstrating his skills to the nationwide audiences on such programs as To Tell the Truth, I’ve Got a Secret, You Asked for It, and Wide, Wide World. In various local TV programs, Jordan has sometimes found himself executing a bit of clever gun play while the popular cinema cowboy of the moment manned the microphone and discoursed knowingly about the secrets of the fast draw.
This vaudeville aspect of his work is not Jordan’s liking. Gratified if his listeners enjoy the patter that carries them from one shot to another during his exhibition, Bill emphasizes that no chicanery is involved in his shooting. Shot cartridges for aerial work and breaking candy wafers against a vibrant steel plate while blindfolded are not part of his repertoire.
The first reaction to Jordan’s gun work is amazement at his speed. A pin pong is held on the back of his gun hand, the palm hovering six inches above his holstered gun butt. The hand moves, the Smith & Wesson is drawn and fired, and the ball rests inside the holster, displacing the revolver after a travel of less than a foot. For encores, the stunt is started from the same point, but this time the sixgun is drawn, then poked forward , the muzzle striking the falling ball and propelling it forward like the serve of a table tennis ace. Bill claims that his speed is not a big factor in these exercises. The hard part, if you would believe him, is to hit the holster with the ping pong ball.
http://floridaconcealedcarry.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=2656
The Jordan speed is a matter of record. The Robot Dueller, an electronic tester of gunsharks skills, has recorded Bill’s time for draw-and-hit at .27 of a second. A similar device, the McAvoy timer, marked him at .28 of a second. Both instruments include the reaction time of the shooter, who draws only after a signal is given, in the total score.
More startling than his quickness is the fantastic accuracy that attends Bill’s hip shooting sessions. After a bit of kidding around with 12” balloons and aluminum baking tins, he settles down to the real meat of his routine. Two-inch wafers, sliced from a cedar pole, are zapped calmly with quick hipshots. The range is 10 feet – good shooting, but nothing you would stomp your feet and whistle about. Next comes a line of Necco candy wafers, which are smaller and shatter in pleasing fashion. Bill’s guests nudge their drowsy neighbors awake as he blasts Lifesaver mints with quick hipshots, and everyone is muttering in awe when he reaches the finale, unerringly obliterating aspirin tablets with his Magnum held at waist level. Worried that the folks were getting blasé, Willie has added a new target to the series. He now finishes by centering a saccharin tablet with a wax bullet. For exhibition work, Bill’s bullets are of paraffin. For many years he performed all the same feats that are now enjoyed by his audiences, using 38 Special wadcutter ammunition. The transition to wax loads came as he worked more frequently before indoor groups. He makes all his own ammunition, and his method is simple. Decapping an empty 38 Special case, he drills the flash hole to 1/8” diameter, then shoves the case mouth through a ½” cake of paraffin. These “loaded” rounds are stored in a refrigerator or a thermos jus, so that the wax slugs won’t deteriorate in hot weather. Shortly before shooting, Bill caps the rounds with CCI Magnum small pistol primers, using a Lyman 310 tong tool for the chore. Case life is practically interminable with such a combination, and Bill says he has loaded some of his cases as many as 500 times.
Figuring that the other mechanics of Bill’s gun handling would be of interest, I ran him to earth in El Paso and tried to pick his brain. Responding to questions in his bantering, jocular style, the Jolly Lean Giant came through with a clear description of his guns, holsters, and other equipment.
Jordan favors two guns for fast draw and hipshooting. One is the Smith & Wesson Model 19, the 4” Combat Magnum. The Jordan piece has a few conservative alterations. The trigger guard is narrowed, a semi-circle of metal being cut from the front of the finger side to allow untrammeled access to the trigger. The square corners of the rear sight leaf have been rounded off with a file and touched up with cold blue. A third, but unseen improvement is the use of a lighter than normal mainspring and a trigger rebound spring that has been weakened slightly by the removal of a couple of its coils. These lighter springs greatly enhance the smoothness of the double action function of the Smith.
Bill has enormous hands. “I never wear gloves because I can’t find a pair large enough,” he complains, noting that a size 13 is far too small. While his gigantic mitt gives him absolute control over his handgun, it necessitates the use of a special pair of stocks. Finished smooth, with a filler behind the trigger guard and covering the backstrap, Jordan’s design of sixgun handle has enjoyed a wide appeal since being offered to the public by Herrett’s Stocks, Twin Falls, Ida. As the Jordan Trooper, these big stocks have solved recoil and pointshooting problems for most of the big handed gents who have tried them, and Bill uses the same grip on all his DA revolvers, whether Colt or Smith & Wesson.
Jordan’s second gun for slick work has a history as colorful as his own A family heirloom, this old S&W Military & Police 38 Special was presented to Bill’s uncle by the Smith & Wesson factory in 1910. The uncle, a handgun man of the old school, was Dr. Ira J Bush, a pioneer El Paso resident who is well remembered for his enthusiastic participation in the troubled affairs of the Mexican border country during that revolution-torn heyday of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
Continued--------
by Skeeter Skelton
Shooting Times Magazine
November 1969
Tall, Tough, Faster’n Lightning
If Bill Jordan were the most unforgettable character I’ve ever met, this story would appear in the “Reader’s Digest.” Although lacking not a whit of color and charm. Long Bill falls short of some of my more raunchy acquaintances in the eccentricity department. If you’ve encountered this drawling giant, you will remember his 6’6” physique and the contrast of his soft, Louisiana speech. One of his low-key pungent anecdotes may have stuck in your mind, and you might recollect that you laughed a lot when you were with him.
But if you ever saw him shoot a sixgun, one thing will categorize him indelibly in your memory. Bill Jordan is the most unforgettable handgun man to emerge in the last third of a century.
The profession of arms is an exacting trade, and one that often leads humorless men to a premature callousness or the unlucky to an early grave. At 58, Bill has retained the wit and reactions of a Scaramouche after having devoted more than 30 years of his life to the dangerous and sometimes sordid pursuits as a professional law enforcer and combat Marine.
When Prohibition was on the wane in the 30’s, Jordan scouted the river that separated the Mexican smugglers from this country. Duty with the U.S. Border Patrol then meant guaranteed acquaintance with the sound of angry gunfire, and Jordan listened to his share. A stretch at clearing Japanese snipers from the caves of Entiwetok and Okinawa sharpened Bill’s adroitness with his small arms, and his postwar return to the Border Patrol kept a gun in his holster.
Retirement means a rocking chair or a fishing pole for most ex-warriors. The first day after Bill’s farewell to the federal service found him visiting me in Eagle Pass, Tex., and sheepishly explaining that he couldn’t take the inactivity. He had gone to work as Southwestern Field Representative for the NRA, and was striking out in a post that carries him and his guns 100,000 miles a year.
Bill did 10 years as an instructor at Camp Perry, guiding police in the intricacies of the riot gun, combat shooting, and fast draw work. This led to public appearances for the Border Patrol and tours with the Knife and Fork and Executive clubs. Television spots followed, with Bill demonstrating his skills to the nationwide audiences on such programs as To Tell the Truth, I’ve Got a Secret, You Asked for It, and Wide, Wide World. In various local TV programs, Jordan has sometimes found himself executing a bit of clever gun play while the popular cinema cowboy of the moment manned the microphone and discoursed knowingly about the secrets of the fast draw.
This vaudeville aspect of his work is not Jordan’s liking. Gratified if his listeners enjoy the patter that carries them from one shot to another during his exhibition, Bill emphasizes that no chicanery is involved in his shooting. Shot cartridges for aerial work and breaking candy wafers against a vibrant steel plate while blindfolded are not part of his repertoire.
The first reaction to Jordan’s gun work is amazement at his speed. A pin pong is held on the back of his gun hand, the palm hovering six inches above his holstered gun butt. The hand moves, the Smith & Wesson is drawn and fired, and the ball rests inside the holster, displacing the revolver after a travel of less than a foot. For encores, the stunt is started from the same point, but this time the sixgun is drawn, then poked forward , the muzzle striking the falling ball and propelling it forward like the serve of a table tennis ace. Bill claims that his speed is not a big factor in these exercises. The hard part, if you would believe him, is to hit the holster with the ping pong ball.
http://floridaconcealedcarry.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=2656
The Jordan speed is a matter of record. The Robot Dueller, an electronic tester of gunsharks skills, has recorded Bill’s time for draw-and-hit at .27 of a second. A similar device, the McAvoy timer, marked him at .28 of a second. Both instruments include the reaction time of the shooter, who draws only after a signal is given, in the total score.
More startling than his quickness is the fantastic accuracy that attends Bill’s hip shooting sessions. After a bit of kidding around with 12” balloons and aluminum baking tins, he settles down to the real meat of his routine. Two-inch wafers, sliced from a cedar pole, are zapped calmly with quick hipshots. The range is 10 feet – good shooting, but nothing you would stomp your feet and whistle about. Next comes a line of Necco candy wafers, which are smaller and shatter in pleasing fashion. Bill’s guests nudge their drowsy neighbors awake as he blasts Lifesaver mints with quick hipshots, and everyone is muttering in awe when he reaches the finale, unerringly obliterating aspirin tablets with his Magnum held at waist level. Worried that the folks were getting blasé, Willie has added a new target to the series. He now finishes by centering a saccharin tablet with a wax bullet. For exhibition work, Bill’s bullets are of paraffin. For many years he performed all the same feats that are now enjoyed by his audiences, using 38 Special wadcutter ammunition. The transition to wax loads came as he worked more frequently before indoor groups. He makes all his own ammunition, and his method is simple. Decapping an empty 38 Special case, he drills the flash hole to 1/8” diameter, then shoves the case mouth through a ½” cake of paraffin. These “loaded” rounds are stored in a refrigerator or a thermos jus, so that the wax slugs won’t deteriorate in hot weather. Shortly before shooting, Bill caps the rounds with CCI Magnum small pistol primers, using a Lyman 310 tong tool for the chore. Case life is practically interminable with such a combination, and Bill says he has loaded some of his cases as many as 500 times.
Figuring that the other mechanics of Bill’s gun handling would be of interest, I ran him to earth in El Paso and tried to pick his brain. Responding to questions in his bantering, jocular style, the Jolly Lean Giant came through with a clear description of his guns, holsters, and other equipment.
Jordan favors two guns for fast draw and hipshooting. One is the Smith & Wesson Model 19, the 4” Combat Magnum. The Jordan piece has a few conservative alterations. The trigger guard is narrowed, a semi-circle of metal being cut from the front of the finger side to allow untrammeled access to the trigger. The square corners of the rear sight leaf have been rounded off with a file and touched up with cold blue. A third, but unseen improvement is the use of a lighter than normal mainspring and a trigger rebound spring that has been weakened slightly by the removal of a couple of its coils. These lighter springs greatly enhance the smoothness of the double action function of the Smith.
Bill has enormous hands. “I never wear gloves because I can’t find a pair large enough,” he complains, noting that a size 13 is far too small. While his gigantic mitt gives him absolute control over his handgun, it necessitates the use of a special pair of stocks. Finished smooth, with a filler behind the trigger guard and covering the backstrap, Jordan’s design of sixgun handle has enjoyed a wide appeal since being offered to the public by Herrett’s Stocks, Twin Falls, Ida. As the Jordan Trooper, these big stocks have solved recoil and pointshooting problems for most of the big handed gents who have tried them, and Bill uses the same grip on all his DA revolvers, whether Colt or Smith & Wesson.
Jordan’s second gun for slick work has a history as colorful as his own A family heirloom, this old S&W Military & Police 38 Special was presented to Bill’s uncle by the Smith & Wesson factory in 1910. The uncle, a handgun man of the old school, was Dr. Ira J Bush, a pioneer El Paso resident who is well remembered for his enthusiastic participation in the troubled affairs of the Mexican border country during that revolution-torn heyday of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
Continued--------