Fitting Caspian slide

[chris allen]

Question-- I have a fellow that brought me a Caspian slide to put on his 1911 and it needs to be fit.Should most of the fitting be done on the frame or the slide?

Thanks chris

 

[Drail]

I would just kiss the frame rails lightly on the tops and sides with a fine cut swiss file. This how Les Baer recommends fitting his frames/slides. Use Dykem to find the high spots. This is assuming you need to remove a very small amount to mate the slide and frame.

 

[krs]

Best to mike the rails so you know where best to take material. For example it would be a long and tedious process to open a slide's rail cuts to fit rails that were bigger than the slide cuts. Say that your frame rails measure .120" and the slide cuts are .116". You'd need to mill out .004" from the slide rail cuts or take the .004" from the top of the frame. Should be easy to envision which job would be the easier to do accurately and take less time.

(The numbers I used are extreme and used only to make the idea clear. Taking .004" off the top of frame rails might bring other issues depending on the frame's dimensioning).

Point is - you need to know what you're cutting and why and the answer to the question of which is better, cutting in the slide or in the frame isn't necessarily a simple one. Lots of good gun parts have been destroyed by not thinking through a fitting problem BEFORE beginning to fit.