1911 Viewpoint

[1911Tuner]

Tight vs Right

I was asked: What is your life worth?

I've said that I have no issues with a high-end custom gun,
and I don't. My main point is that most of them are too tight,
even the ones meant for duty. This has been my experience in
examining some examples, all the way down to gutting them
and taking measurements...but on to the counterpoint.

I just got through with two project pistols...Commander-size.
One was built for me while my ex-stepson watched and learned,
the other for him while I watched and guided. Both are
very plain...not "pretty" by custom standards, but very handsome
in a strictly utilitarian sense.

Both are nicely fitted, and even a little tight for my tastes, but
we built them for hard use on the range, and for carry. The
criteria were decent accuracy, durability, and absolute
reliability. One has exceeded my expectations, while the
other remains untested. This will be addressed in the
nest few days, as his schedule permits.

The first one will keep all its shots in a 3-inch circle at 25 yards
from a solid rest...It won't draw blood or blisters, even on
a 1,000-round torture test...and it has gone 2500 rounds
without a malfunction...without cleaning. In the interest of
not abusing it, I allow it to cool off every 150 or so rounds, and
allow a drop of oil to run down the rails while the pistol is
locked back during the 5-minute cooling process.

It has the top-grade small parts, all new...A new slide, frame,
and barrel...It took less than 15 hours to build, and the total
cost was less than 600 dollars. If I were to be contracted to
build a carbon-copy, my fee would be about 150 bucks.

You can go spend upwards of 3,000 dollars for a good, reliable
pistol if you wish...or you can cut through some of the frills
and have one that will serve its purpose for far less. I've
proved that on more than one occasion over several years.

Since I'm no longer a practicing smith, I can't contract to copy
these pistols. I can, however, provide details, parts lists, and
some instruction for those who have some experience and wish
to take a shot at building one for themselves.

Hope that this clears up some misconceptions over my theories and contentions.

Cheers all,
Tuner

 

[1911Tuner]

Slurry

The slurry that I call "Magic Goop" is simple to make, and it
will make your pistol feel like it's running on buttered glass.

Pour about two teaspoons of CLP or other good oil into
a small mixing cup. (You will get better results with CLP)
start adding J&B Bore cleaner to the oil, mixing thoroughly
as you go, until the mix will just barely sag off the end of
a screwdriver, but not drip off.

Coat the upper and lower lugs, and lug recesses in the frame,
the link..inside the hole too...the slidestop pin...the sides of
the barrel in the area of the chamber...the inside of the bushing...
the frame rails, and the disconnector rail.

With the recoil system out of the pistol...guide rod and all...
hand cycle the gun about 200 times, or more if the gun is
tight or newly built. The two project pistols described in
a previous post were cycled 500 times...Remove the
slurry thoroughly, lightly oil the gun and reassemble.
Feel the difference.

This also works well in the lockwork of a double-action revolver,
and I have been chided by some custom smiths on a forum
for giving away "trade secrets"

Take care,
T

 

[1911Tuner]

One final point...

...lest anyone feels that I am here trolling for business.
I'm not, and wouldn't take it if it was offered. I'm retired...
read that as "Too-Tired"...althought I'm only fiftysomething...

Much too busy since I've been unofficially designated
range armorer for the IDPA and IPSC matches at my
club. I spend most of my time there stopping hammer follow
and burst-fire issues brought on by glass-rod trigger jobs
that seem to have become the darling of the games crowd.

Just wanted to clear it up before it COMES up.

Thanks,
Tuner

 

[Delmar]

Tuner-ever tried toothpaste for a slurry? I've used it on a couple of occasions on friend's 1911's. Seems to polish without taking much metal away, plus it gives ole reliable fresh breath

I've always looked at the 1911 as a modular design, with the major wearing parts easy to replace in order to bring it back into spec. I wouldn't call that planned obsolecence, but a very functional design easy for the company armorer to keep running. So far as feeding hollow points and such, I have seen a couple friends do nothing more than slick up the frame feed ramp and install one of Colts new barrels with the grooved feed feed ramps on the barrel-strange looking on my 2 year old 1991A1, but then they feed LSWC's and flying ashtrays just fine without any corrections or polishing.

 

[1911Tuner]

Toothpast and other observations

Delmar!

Your modular design theory has hit the nail squarely on the head,
along with the unit armorer observation. Note that in its original
guise, that the pistol could be gutted by using its own parts
as tools. JMB thought far ahead of just the artifact. Your
astute observations are the mark of a man possessed of
logic and a clear thought process,and your thoughts are drawn
from that, rather than being based on emotions. That's a gift.

In days of old, I used Pearl Drops tooth polish to make'em
slick, but not since I discovered J&B and CLP...Before
Pearl Drops, it was Pepsodent...and I just dated myself.


Thanks for your thoughts. After the week I've had, I needed it.

Tuner

 

[Ky Larry]

I seem to recall from grade school history a man named Eli Whitney. Didn't he invent the mass production process? Modular design is making all the parts the same so they can be repaired and/or replaced by standardized parts. The 1911 was a military contraced design so I'm sure JMB designed the pistol to be easy to return to spec by replacing part with a minimum of hand fitting.

 

[1911Tuner]

KyLarry

Bingo again!

Very few designs come about in a lightening bolt of
genius and inspriation...but rather as a long, evolutionary
process.

Browning borrowed the idea of headspacing on the case mouth
form Georg Luger, and the 9mm cartridge. Now...if he had
just tapered the .45 acp a bit more....

 

[tex_n_cal]

I have shot three 1911's that were "tight"...two springfields & one Kimber. All would choke as soon as they got a little dirty.

The Kimber was mine, a stainless Gold Match Series I. It was traded for a Gold Cup, which is a little looser, but shoots just as well.

Guns are self soiling machines. The powder residue, brass shaving, unburned kernals have to go somewhere. That's common sense.

I have a Delta Elite, to which I fitted a Bar-Sto barrel. Since it's primarily a target/fun gun, I left it pretty tight, as far as going into battery. The slide to frame fit, however, is as Colt produced in 1987, which is pretty sloppy. It's a one hole gun at 25 yards, and is reliable.

I own six Colts, and one SA Mil-spec in .38 Super. The SA is a little sloppy on the slide, and it eats everything from .38 ACP's, to fire-breathing 9x23's(with its 9x23 barrel). The Colt Defender is a little fussy about what it eats, but it is indeed an ultra-short 1911. All the fullsize Colts are reliable, including the newest one, a stainless new rollmark 1991A1.

I certainly might someday buy a Les Baer, but otherwise I am perfectly happy with Colts made as 1911Tuner describes

 

[dsk]

I have a Delta Elite, to which I fitted a Bar-Sto barrel. Since it's primarily a target/fun gun, I left it pretty tight, as far as going into battery. The slide to frame fit, however, is as Colt produced in 1987, which is pretty sloppy. It's a one hole gun at 25 yards, and is reliable.

I have a Colt Series 80 made in 1988, and it too has a very sloppy slide/frame fit. It's so bad that when you shake it, it doesn't just rattle, it CLANKS. I added a tighter bushing, a beavertail, and better sights but that was it. Since buying the pistol new I've fired nearly 75,000 rounds through it. I used it when I took several high-level training classes during the course of a week back in 1996. During that time I had no real opportunity to clean it, just squirt some more oil on the rails at one point. The combined round count during that week was over 1500 rounds. Despite never cleaning it the pistol it never malfunctioned, and in fact I ran another few hundred rounds through it just to use up my training ammo before finally getting around to cleaning it.

In all the time I've owned it I can only recall maybe a half-dozen malfunctions, which means I've had a failure rate of .00008%. So you can NEVER convince me that a loose gun is a bad thing. By the way, my two final scores were 297/300 and 296/300 on the LFI targets, so you also can't tell me that a loose gun also guarantees inaccuracy!

 

[Handy]

Don't you think, when compared to other weapons that require not tuning of new parts, that calling a 1911 "modular" is pushing things a bit?

There are other guns as easy to take apart, and almost all other combat guns are completely "drop in" on OEM parts.

It was modular in the first half of the century.

 

[1911Tuner]

Pushing it

dsk...Nice shootin'.

I'm glad that you asked that question, Handy.

During the watershed that WW2 was to become, weapons
were built on an assembly line by select fitting what was
essentially a procession of "Drop-In' parts...In the event
that there was a problem with a function check due to a
part not fitting properly, another was selected until one
was found that would bring it into spec. Then, there
was always the selection of oversized and undersized parts
that could be called on to enable the assembler to keep trying.

The weapons were shipped to their destinations, and only if
one experienced a repeated malfunction did it come under
the influence of a unit armorer...who started searching for yet
another part that would make the gun work. If hand-fitting
was required, other than a little deburring, the gun was
taken out of service because it couldn't be repaired in the
field.

In most cases, a part was a member of a "group" rather than
standing alone, and as such often required that the whole
group be switched to effect a repair, and in most cases, this
worked quite well with very little, if any, fitting required.
Most of the time, they dropped in and worked.

This isn't modularity in the purest sense, but it comes very close.
An ordnance-spec pistol can be retro-fitted with ordnance-spec
parts or groups of parts in just a few minutes, with about a
99% chance of success on the first try.

Some of them rattled...and some clanked, as dsk pointed out...
but they worked.

Cheers!
Tuner

 

[riverdog]

1911Tuner,
Thanks for the details on the "Magic Goop". My thought is to use this just on the rails and allow the barrel-slide contact to remain tight; I can always do it to the barrel surfaces later if required. Smoothing the slide-frame contact should go a long way to improving the feel of this pistol and IMO side-frame tightness is way overrated vis-a-vis accuracy.

 

[1911Tuner]

re: Magic Goop

Mighty welcome riverdog...

Go ahead and slap in into the lugs and all. It won't loosen
anything up. All it does is polish the high spots. It's not
like lapping compound at all. It removes no metal, or at least
not enough to measure without an electronic comparator.

Try it...You'll like it.

Shoot straight!
Tuner

 

[BigG]

In his "Colt 45 Auto" book, Kuhnhausen states that tight slide/frame fit has a 5% effect on accuracy. 5% is not even statistically significant, according to the stats I know.

 

[Albert Shear]

quote:

____________________________________________________
Would YOU pay 3500 dollars
for a pistol and carry it every day? Shoot it 25,000 times a year?
A millionaire might
____________________________________________________



Yes and I am not a millionaire. I have Berettas,Sigs,Glocks and many custom&stock 1911s. Whats my life worth? A $2000.00 Ted Yost Springfield Armory Operator is currently on my belt.
Baers & tightness: I have three and have never had one malfunction. It is not the slide to frame fitting that is what some perceive as a problem. It is the lockup surfaces that are oversize fit to allow wear in(top&bottom lugs,bushing).

 

[Handy]

G,

Kuhnhausen states 15% for slide/frame fitting. The 5% is the unreachable number.

He makes the excellent point that slide frame fit is worthless if the various aspects of barrel fit isn't done.

 

[1911Tuner]

Millionaire?

Good show, Mr. Shear...Your collection seems to be impressive.
The point was not to bash the high-end pistols, but rather to
point out that the tighter the fit, the more *likely* it is
to be dirt and/or neglect sensitive... and that is very true.
I have a Ford pickup truck with nearly 200,000 miles on it,
and it still operates on the OEM water pump, alternator,
and all light bulbs. I understand that this is the exception
rather than the rule, however.

My other point is that a completely reliable pistol can be
carried for less than a third of the cost of a full-blown custom.
Not everybody can justify that cost, if they can afford it at all.
I envy those who can...on both counts. I would love to add
a Yost-built pistol to my collection.

Now, my question to you is...assuming two equally reliable
pistols...In the event of a shoot-for-blood situation...can you
do any better with the Yost than you could with a mil-spec
Springfield or 1991-A1 Colt? Maybe a little, if you are a very
good shot, and the range is 15 yards or more. Your event
is likely to occur at closer to 15 feet, and the time for taking a
deliberate shot is probably not going to be available. In these
situations, taking the time to find, align, and squeeze off a
shot will likely get you killed. Your antagonist will probably
have the initiative, and any action on your part will necessarily
be a reaction...and your time will be measured in fractions
of seconds. Ask me how I know...

The bottom line is that it won't be the gun that determines
whether you go home or get a tag on your toe...It will be your
resolve, and your ability to keep your head and act in a very
short time frame. The gun won't have much bearing on it,
if any at all.

Not meant to flame...just pointing out some realities.

Respectfully,
Tuner

 

[Albert Shear]

Tuner:

Based upon your parameters of the "life or death" encounter I concur wholeheartedly. Yes, I believe you know and so do I.
I have been blessed in life and I can afford most of what I desire. I have many handguns from $300 up to $3000. If I can afford to carry,use and train with the most expensive is that any different than doing the same with the $300? Maybe not, maybe so. One of my Wilsons is a CQB. I can not trust it because of sporadic malfunctions. The same holds true for a Springield Armory Loaded. A $300 EAA Witness has never malfunctioned once in 6 years. I still have my S&W Model 58 I purchased as an LEO in 1974. Has it ever failed, no.
What I do choose to carry is because it instills confidence and peace of mind. And just like anything else in life there is a pride of ownership mentality and I have that flaw when it come to firearms.

 

[Albert Shear]

Second post apology

I also wish to address the "dirt" and tightness issue. I believe this to be a non-issue with civilian concealed carry. The gun generally goes between holster and safe or nightstand and back agian. I have heard this argument before about tolerances and dirt allowances and I believe it is not jermaine.

 

[1911Tuner]

Dirt and such

mr. Shear...do this test.

Carry your pistol concealed for a month. Field-strip it
once a week and use a drop of oil in the usual places.
At the end of a month, detail-strip the piece and
peer inside with a light. You may be surprised to
see what resembles a small lint-trap...dust bunnies
and all.

I had occasion to address a Failure to Fire issue on a
friend's custom pistol...complete with 3.5-pound trigger
with minimum overtravel. He was sure that his trigger job
had gone south. Very concerned. The problem was that
lint had gotten behind the trigger shoe, and was stopping the sear from rotating enough to get out from under the hammer hooks. The pistol hadn't been shot dirty...It had been carried
dirty. Worked fine the night before when he cleared the
pistol and lowered the hammer. He had me remove the
overtravel screw.

A tightly-fitted pistol can be very reliable, but it will be
necessary to keep it sparkling clean to be so.

On another point...I have a couple of M-58's myself. Love'em!
Though I can't accept firearms through the mail any more, Richmond ain't far. If you'll bring those problem pistols to me,
I'll get'em runnin'. Active and retired LEO's pay for parts
only...labor is N/C

Take care, and thanks for your service.

Tuner

 

[Albert Shear]

I agree

Yes , all weapons must kept clean whether $100 or $10,000 in order to operate trouble free. That is the constant in the discussion. I do thank you for the offer and who knows, maybe I will be down your way. I have enjoyed the banter with you immensely. Please stay safe, Albert

 

[1911Tuner]

Banter

Aye aye...I'm about 15 miles north of Winston-Salem...easy
directions. If you're in the area, look me up. We'll have a
peek at those problem children. It's likely somethin' simple,
and a matter of bringin' everything into harmony.

Keep your powder dry!
T

 

[Ky Larry]

Slide-Rail Polish

Thanks for the toothpaste tip Tuner and Delmar. I tried it last night with my CZ75B (.40 S&W). I put a little Ultrabrite on the rails and worked it thru 500 cycles and cleaned every thing up with degreaser and relubed with Break Free CLP.Slide feels much slicker. I'll try the slurry on my other CZ's. How do you clean the slurry out of your pistol when you are done polishing it? Thanks.

Admin: If this is the wrong place for this post, please repost in proper place. Thanks.

 

[1911Tuner]

Cleaner

I use Next Generation carburetor cleaner...Advance Auto, for
less than 2 bucks.

Tuner

 

[Handy]

Watch out using that carb cleaner. It will permanently damage your skin, and melt many plastics.