Grips look great, Mike!
Whats the story on that 1911?
It's a long story, so I'll try to make it short. Years ago a good friend assembled it from a Systema Colt frame and a GI surplus slide (one ordered 'extra beefy' to be made into natch pistols. He did a pretty good job, and then he sent it out for a high-tech teflon coating. While it was away he got into Glocks and after it came back it remained a box of parts for a very long time. He finally asked me to reassemble it for him, which I did, and he promptly gave it and a box of magazines to me. He passed away shortly after, and I was reluctant to change anything, but Linda said, "Are you kidding? He'd
met you. He would've been fascinated to see what you'd do with it." Being Linda she was, of course, right. I commenced to make changes.
Now that things are opening up I want to shoot some ASI matches, so I thought I'd turn the gun into a carry-gun with concessions to match shooting. Sort of a 'Street Racer.' The trigger is already excellent and has a properly set overtravel screw so that's all good. So far I've:
*Stripped and flat-topped the slide, and cleaned up the many, many tool marks that adorned it.
*replaced the GI sights with XS Standard-Dot night sight
*Replaced the Pachmayr grips with custom grips and added 20LPI checkering to the grip frame
*Replaced the arched mainspring housing with a flat one, blended to the frame with 20 LPI checkering.
*Added a 'scoop' to the rear of the slide behind the rear sight to facilitate thumb-cocking; I won't use this I imagine, but I like the look of it.
*Beveled the magazine-well
*Added stacked-leather bumper-pads to the magazines
*A Remington ambidextrous safety, reshaped and blended for comfort.
Parts on the way include a Bar Sto 5" semi-fitted bull barrel, a reverse-recoil plug and guide-rod, a Wolf 18.5lb. progressive recoil spring. After all that's working I'll rust-blue the slide.
So, it's a story in-progress at the moment.
