To talk about performance, the gun as originally purchased was very reliable, but not too stellar accurate. I'm sure with it's former owner who knew her well, she was willing to play better, but my initial bench rest shots at 25 yards were not stellar. In the 5 to 6 inch range. Better than the last springer I started with, (AAAHhhhhh my precious Sally........... I miss her.......) but this piece here, (Samantha) was a little tighter out of the box. Six inches wouldn't do at 25 though, so some work was to be done.
First, the slide was tight side to side, but rocked up and down front to rear. Not unusual for a decent 1911. So, I welded up the top of the front ends of the rails, and then started the HOURS of hand fitting work that goes into making a slide play nice with it's host.
The front bushing was really nice and tight, I'm guessing already replaced, so I just polished it and rolled with it. It fit the barrel and the slide nicely, so there was no noticable play there.
The rear of the barrel needed some lockup help though. The link was the right length, but slightly out of round, so in with a new one, and then of course I tacked up the sides of the hood, the link channels, and re-milled and smoothed it all to fit with no wiggle once in battery.
The new hammer, re-cut sear, and .021 hook job netted a clean trigger. If this was to be a true competition piece I would have went down from the 4+ lbs to 3 or so, but I liked it and went with the 4.25 I wound up with when the trigger parts were done. After the trigger and main spring work was done, (along with polishing the upper main spring housing plunger and freshly made hammer strut,) this netted some more accuracy.
As you can see from the photos, she now has a bench rested 25 yard group of about 2.5 iches, she has a free hand 25 yard group of about 4 inches, and with the higher tension recoil spring and lightened slide work the speed shooting is awesome. I busted 14 rounds out of 2 magazines as fast as I could at 7 yds and came up with all 14 holes in a good spot.
I don't know if this gun would ransom rest along with a les baer or ed brown, etc, but I bet she's close. All of the important work has been done, and short of paying big money for testing barrels and spending the time on fancy hand loads, I think Samantha is right where she needs to be accuracy wise.
