Caspian frame

[1911WB]

Tuner & anyone with experience with the Caspian titanium frame- what are your thoughts about the ti frame as a basis for custom Cmdr. (Colt upper)?
How about its durability/longevity compared to steel?

 

[1911Tuner]

Titanium

Howdy WB,

Caspian makes one more fine frame, but I've never even seen one in
titanium. The stuff is kinda evil to machine, so I hear....and I'm not
real sure that it would offer much advantage over a good forged aluminum alloy frame.

Maybe somebody who has some experience with it will give ya some more
insight.

Luck!

Tuner

 

[Dave Sample]

I have built a lot of 1911's out of Caspian parts but we have had only one Commander lower end in progress. It will not be a Commander, but rather a very high end "Short Sword" that will be at the Shot Show next year in the Caspian Booth. It is a very hard metal to work with and our quest for perfection makes it a long hard job to get it right. Gunsite has been testing them for a long time and there have been no failures so far that I know of and if there were, I think I would know. I am an old fashioned guy and have always been able to start my Scooter without putting an anvil in my hip pocket, so the few ounces in weight reduction is not important to me. I have no desire to making 1911's like I do with the extra work of filing on this very hard metal. It is very hard on tooling as Tuner knows from his experience as a machinist. It eats cutters up like you would not believe. I do think it is great stuff if you are willing to put the extra work into a project like this. This is just my opinion and you should follow your heart.

 

[Zak Smith]

Ted Yost has built some. Mine's being built now, but before I went ahead with it, I called Gunsite to see how theirs were holding up. The impression I got was that as long as the gunsmith knew how to work with Ti, they worked well.

-z