rpenmanparker
Member
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2018
- Messages
- 2,456
Folks, I have a GSG .22 semi-auto, zinc pistol frame upgraded with a CWA pro model aluminum slide. It is beautiful and works great, but the slide to frame fit is very sloppy. Chet at CWA told me he has to make the slides oversized to guarantee they will fit the whole range of GSG frames that he sees. The barrel to side fit is excellent, very snug, so the accuracy of the gun is quite decent, but I can tell it is just not as good as it should be. Also the slop is very disconcerting. When I shift the gun around, I can feel the slide moving on the frame. When I pushed the frame to one side and the slide to the other, I measured 0.037" lateral space between them. That is huge and is not even counting the vertical slop.
I want to get the slide tightened up, but can't find anyone to take on the job. Being aluminum, the slide is likely too brittle to squeeze it tight on the frame without cracking it. And for sure the zinc is too brittle to mess with. And I suspect any kind of welding metal into the slide grooves and recutting them to the right size would be prohibitively expensive if even possible. Any work on the zinc frame seems to be likewise out of the question as that metal is even less forgiving than aluminum.
Recently I had a .45 ACP 1911 slide fully Cerakoted. It was pretty tight before the coating, but it came back really snug but still fully operable. The gun is now incredibly accurate IIDMP (if I do my part
). I was thinking Cerakoting might help the .22, but when I looked up the specs on Cerakoting, I found the coating thickness to be only about 0.001". Even if I had two coats put on, I would still only take up less than 1/4 of the slop. I'm figuring 0.002" thickness on each contact surface on both sides of the slide, so 4 X 0.002" = 0.008". I don't think that would help.
Any one have any ideas? Any gunsmiths out there who might have experience with this kind of job? Anyone know of a coating approach that might work? Another question: might warming (heating) the slide make it ductile enough to survive a squeezing process to tighten it up?
Photo of the slide below.
Any help would be appreciated. If you have any ideas and are a reputable gunsmith, I would be glad to have you do the work, pricing within reason, of course.
Thanks.
I want to get the slide tightened up, but can't find anyone to take on the job. Being aluminum, the slide is likely too brittle to squeeze it tight on the frame without cracking it. And for sure the zinc is too brittle to mess with. And I suspect any kind of welding metal into the slide grooves and recutting them to the right size would be prohibitively expensive if even possible. Any work on the zinc frame seems to be likewise out of the question as that metal is even less forgiving than aluminum.
Recently I had a .45 ACP 1911 slide fully Cerakoted. It was pretty tight before the coating, but it came back really snug but still fully operable. The gun is now incredibly accurate IIDMP (if I do my part
). I was thinking Cerakoting might help the .22, but when I looked up the specs on Cerakoting, I found the coating thickness to be only about 0.001". Even if I had two coats put on, I would still only take up less than 1/4 of the slop. I'm figuring 0.002" thickness on each contact surface on both sides of the slide, so 4 X 0.002" = 0.008". I don't think that would help.Any one have any ideas? Any gunsmiths out there who might have experience with this kind of job? Anyone know of a coating approach that might work? Another question: might warming (heating) the slide make it ductile enough to survive a squeezing process to tighten it up?
Photo of the slide below.
Any help would be appreciated. If you have any ideas and are a reputable gunsmith, I would be glad to have you do the work, pricing within reason, of course.
Thanks.
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