Project handguns!!!!!!

Heres mine and my EDC now. 1911 Caspian Commander in 45ACP. Took me about 3 years to build entirely by hand. Caspian frame, slide, trigger and GS. EGW internals. Originally had a 3 white dot sights but switched to 2 white rear, tritium up front. The only thing I did against the grain was used a Nowlin ramped barrel for a 45 but the extra case support was insurance. The grips were from a Kimber originally. Originally I polished the flats with 800grit but it would get scratches like crazy. I plan on dropping to 600 grit later. Its been 2 years and I havent glass beaded it like I had planned but also on the agenda. I did not checker the front strap. I'm a revolver guy and don't care for the roughness. She has eaten everything I have put through her without a hickup except for 230 Speer Gold Dots. They dont like the feed ramp. I recently put 20+ rounds of 45 Super through it with a 26lb recoil spring. No problem. I even dykemed the internals to see if anything developed. Nada.

I like the surface texture and wouldn't dull it with bead blast. Not like it was a mirror polish.

I bought this model 66 at a gun show a decade or more ago. It was pretty rough. It was missing the rear sight, had a lot of end shake and an unacceptable gap. The finish was pretty uneven.

I found a rear sight. Had a Weigand quick-change front sight base put on it, along with the larger Weigand rear sight blade. Plus they fixed the end shake and set the barrel back to get the gap to .003".

Also had a wide target trigger installed and the SA trigger set to 3#. Plus a glass bead blast on the whole thing. My favorite range gun.

I have a 657 I want to do the same too. Plus a stainless Blackhawk .357/9mm convertible I have some plans for, like an extended (5") ejector rod housing, some Weigand sights, and maybe a Bisley grip frame and hammer. Possibly cut the barrel back from the 6 1/2" to the end of the extended ejector rod. I have the guns and the money and some of the parts, I just need to find someone to send them too. The guy who did the 66 isn't around anymore. Anybody know a good revolver gunsmith?

I have a S&W Victory in the back of the safe. It was refinished decades before I got it, obliterating most of the markings. The original stocks are long gone, but that sweet long action of the prewar k-frames is there.

Someday, when I have more money than sense, it will be the base of a project gun. I'll round the grip frame, bob the hammer and make it DAO, cut the barrel to 3 inches, add a gold bead front sight, and refinish it.

It has no collector value and there are plenty of unaltered victories out there. I just want to give this one a new life someday.

My handgun project...is to teach myself how to buy less handguns!

I would say, however, that one project I'd like to take on (eventually) is to make the aftermarket magazine for my High Standard Duramatic 101 in .22 work properly. I've heard that's a tall order. They're notorious for not working right. Thankfully, I also have an original that works fine, but having a second mag would be great.

I just recently finished polishing a turd known as an FIE (tanfoglio) Titan II, 22LR.
I got it for a song from a guy who was happy to be rid of it. Wouldnt feed 1/2 the time, fired only when it felt like it, wouldnt extract or eject most of the time....
But it feels great in the hand and points pretty naturally. Worth an attempt to doll her up, i guess!
So, after filing/stoning away the dry fire damage, polishing the ramp and chamber, replacing the extractor and adapting some new springs for it....it works!
Well, most of the time...I think the magazines still need a slight tweaking...but i dont have a lot of time to fiddle...

1911s are a great platform for this kind of thing. I have an SA that started life as a GI model-- my first 1911. I gradually turned it into a "race gun," with the help of Kuhnhausen's manual. Only part I couldn't do myself was milling the slide for Novaks. I could have saved money by just buying a more competition-style gun in the first place, but then I wouldn't have had the satisfaction of knowing every little part. I have better guns, but that one will always be special to me. I have over 7000 rounds through it.

One of my winter project guns started with an old Essex frame I picked up many years ago. The biggest problem I encountered with this build is that not one of the holes on the frame was true from one side to the other. I spent countless hours with a set of Swiss files carefully filing away enough metal to get all the pins, thumb safety, magazine and slide release to fit. I also removed all of the bluing as it was very thin to begin with and was somewhat worse for wear with all of the work I was doing on it. Thought about getting it hard chrome plated at some point but the polished metal looked so good and has held up so well over the years that I have just left it the way it is.

Originally started out with a Colt slide and barrel assembly in .38 Super on top but could never get the the kind of accuracy out of it that I wanted. So it was consigned to sit in it's pistol rug until a few years ago when I decided I would turn it into a .22 target pistol. Really wanted a Marvel conversion kit but they were so far out in terms of backorders that I passed on that. Then I came across the TacSol conversion online at one of the big parts suppliers (don't remember if it was Brownell's or Midway), and decided to go with it. I have always liked the look of Kim Ahrend's skip checkering grips so I figured that was the perfect addition for this pistol build.

Overall the TacSol conversion is very well designed and built and required no additional fitting or modification to get it up and running. I am very pleased with how it well it all turned out.

This one is more of a tool than a "for looking at" pistol but I built this dual purpose Open/ESP pistol for two different gun games. It will be the last dual slide pistol I build.

The gun pointed to the left in this photo is an ongoing project. Each time I get around to it something else comes up. It currently has a set of plastic rear sights, and no ejector housing. The plan is to SBR it and stock it, add ladder sights and be happy. It is a .357 with 15" barrel made by EMF and sold as an Armi Jager.

Here's my Bauer .25 that I have sanded down to 320 grit and rounded the sharp corners. Filed off the sights and the grooves on the rib. I'll be engraving it this summer.

I won't post pictures of mine - a 1920s S&W 38 special revolver. I did the finer and finer sanding and thought I had prepped it well. When I tried to cold blue it, it turned out looking like some sort of blue on blue on grey camouflage. Looked horrible. I'm going to try again. Maybe later I'll post pictures when it looks decent!

jmace57, please be sure to let us know what you learn from your experience. learning from others is primarily why I come to THR daily.