New 1911 and couldn't keep from messing with it (and messing it up a little)

[777funk]

I don't know why but I can't leave anything alone, so I decided I wanted the slide to be a little smoother. I removed the machining marks in the slide and frame channels/rails and I was glad I did. It now has so much smoother cycling. It feels like a bearing now. Next I adjusted the extractor tension since I was getting an occasional stove pipe. Now it cycles 100%. Then I decided the barrel bushing fit was too loose (about .003 to .005 of play) so I put the bushing face up in a vise and peened the opening with a flat punch until it was a tight enough fit to have just a little drag. Then I addressed the back side of the barrel (hood?) and peened the frame near the extractor where that rests. I'm sure there's a better way to tighten up slop here but it worked and I don't have the money to purchase and fit a barrel. So far so good, now I have a tight barrel fit with less than 10% of the play I originally had (Girsan 1911 by the way which I'd consider a good buy by the way). I was happy about this.

Then comes where I wish I could go back in time... I decided I didn't like the slop in the slide... this is where I should have stopped. I put it in a vise and wasn't getting anywhere (checking constantly with a calipers and it would just spring back to the original dimension after pressure was let off). So I decided to focus the pressure in the rear half of the slide. Now I was getting somewhere. However somehow the slide tipped and only the rear portion of the rail ended up in the vise and it broke a tiny piece off the base of the slide from just behind the safety... ouch! This hurt to watch. But lesson learned. I should have listened to the warnings I've seen about slides being messed up by vises. It's just missing a tiny amount of the slide and not enough to have an effect on function but it obviously killed any value. I noticed where the piece broke, it looks like pot metal. I'm not a metalurgy guy but if I've seen pot metal before (grainy) this is how the metal in this slide looks but I could be wrong here, I should do a test and see. Maybe that's why it wouldn't bend at all to tighten up the fit.

But... on the good side, my groups really tightened up. I was shooting around 3-4" average with this thing at 12 yards. Now I'm getting them in about 1.5" or less (holes touching) and I'm sure the biggest limiting factor there is due to my skill. I'd guess a ransom rest would divide that by 3 (0.5" group) or better. I think most of the improvement was due to barrel fit more than anything else. I wasn't trying to make a bullseye gun out of this but I wanted to see what I could do to make a budget 1911 as good as I could without spending anything on it since the reason I didn't buy a high end 1911 in the first place is that I couldn't afford to. So I guess mission accomplished there. No doubt a real tuner could do better, but I'm happy with the results and accuracy improvement, other than my slide tightening mistake.

EDIT: The slide is NOT pot metal. I applied a little myriatic acid on the exposed area with a q-tip and it didn't budge then I added a little more and still stayed just like it was. Pot metal would have more or less disappeared since it's zinc.

 

[el Godfather]

From your recent posts it seems you are becoming 1911 enthusiast

 

[J2FLAN]

Well, I done worse to better guns, Like you, I can`t help it.
I thought the slide and frame on that gun were forged, not cast, guess not.

 

[RainDodger]

Don't let anyone call you Bubba! It sounds like you're learning and that's a good thing... do yourself a major favor if you're going to work on 1911's and invest a tiny bit of money into the Jerry Kuhnhausen books on the 1911. They are spectacular if you want to learn about the 1911 and what makes it tick... and how to fix/improve it.

Here is a link, or you can search Amazon for it easily.

When I was 30 years younger and didn't have the money to pay a real Gunsmith, I bought his first volume of the set and pretty much devoured it. I learned a ton about the 1911.

 

[Drail]

Yup. I started squeezing slides back in the 80s. I learned pretty quick that it are a crapshoot. Hardness of slides varies all over the map. Get one that's harder than normal, it will almost certainly crack at the thumb safety cutout. That was about the time Baer and Wilson started offering frames and slides to the public and everybody pretty much stopping squeezing slides and peening rails and just bought frames and slides already fitted to each other. Progress.

 

[777funk]

el Godfather: They're classics and you can see why. Such a cool old design. Over 100 years old and still the most comfortable and one of the thinnest.

thanks for all the encouragement guys! And thanks for nobody giving me too much grief for the mistake... lol. I'll read the instructions (book) first next time. I appreciate the link.

 

[David E]

You didn't used to do 1911 work in Phoenix or North Carolina, did you?

 

[777funk]

I didn't mess this one up that (I read the other thread about the N.C. smith) bad... I knew enough to stay out of the trigger group (other than taking a look to make sure it looked like no one else had done any poor/dangerous workmanship).

 

[GyMac]

Lesson learned. As I understand it, the problem with vise tightening, besides your problem, is that eventually they loosen back up. That's one of the reasons why Krieger rails were invented.

 

[rcmodel]

Vice squeezing, hand fitting, lapping, more vice squeezing, and more hand fitting & lapping was the way Army AMU built National Match guns when I was an AMU armorer in 1968 - 70.

It works just fine, and the guns took a beating shooting thousands of rounds in practice and matches all season, year after year without loosening.

My 1950'ish Colt Government got 'squeezed' by me in 1968.

And it is still tight, smooth, and will outshoot just about anything you can buy for under 2 grand today.

The problem with squeezing them today is, there are half a gazillion company's making 1911 slides out of mystery metal.
Cast, forged, stainless, carbon, you name it.

And only the shadow knows what's gonna happen when you squish one in a vice now.
And as the OP found out, either the vice or the slide often break!!

rc

 

[777funk]

This thing runs 100% and shoots great. All it needed to do to get it to run 100% was a little extractor tuning... easy fix. What a great inexpensive 1911. Very happy with it. I paid $400 used with a $100 Laser Max sight (that I plan to sell), upgraded VZ grips, a box of 20 shells, and a holster.

But the one and only issue I've noticed is that the mag catch sometimes ends up under the follower. I haven't thorougly tested yet with a variety of mags (have only the Act Mag and a Mec Gar 7 rounder) but I do notice that sometimes the mag catch pushes out just a hair. That tells me maybe it's the problem. Any ideas what I should try here?

...by the way RC, curious what your method for squeezing the slide is? Do you measure at all? Did you find more accuracy with a tighter slide fit. Do you protect the slide finish with something (I used a few layers of masking tape on the vice and slide)? I noticed that mine sprung right back. it may very well be mystery metal which may explain why (need to test it). I wouldn't think the old Colts were pot metal.

EDIT: The slide is NOT pot metal. I applied a little myriatic acid on the exposed area with a q-tip and it didn't budge then I added a little more and still stayed just like it was. Pot metal would have more or less disappeared since it's zinc.

 

[rcmodel]

Bend the mag follower tab slightly closer to the side of the mag.

It's a common tuning procedure.

rc

 

[Jim K]

I know I will be called names and thousands of folks will line up to call me an idiot and worse, but I will try again. No matter what Wikipedia or some gunzine expert says, "pot metal" is not zinc or a zinc alloy, and it isn't called that because it is melted in a pot.

Pot metal is cheap cast iron, and it gets its name because it was used to make cook pots, the kind that sat on every European stove at one time. The French called them "marmites", the Spanish "marmitas", all the same thing. Everything in the kitchen went in and simmered all day to be ready when the man of the house came home from work.

Jim