"You need to break it in with 500 rounds of ammo"

[shooter1]

All in all, if someone buys a WC 1911, there's a 99.99% chance it's going to be a safe queen.

Uhh, no! WC 1911s are quite common in SS Division USPSA, and CDP Division IDPA. I am privileged to be a member of a small action pistol club with about 100 members. There's at least 10 WC 1911s, along with a smaller representation of Night Hawk customs and Les Browns. All are shooters. At a tier III or IV match there will be a strong representation of the above represented in the top CDP finishers. When these guys pay north of 3k for a pistol, they plan to use it.
str1

 

[Kleanbore]

I will run a minimum of 200 rounds of ammo through any new gun before I am comfortable carrying it.

So will I.

This is not the same as break in.

True.

Too much at stake to take the chance, however small that it might be.

 

[powwowell]

Balrog sure opened a can of worms with his original post. Shooters of Wilson's, and other high end 1911s, can probably afford 500 rounds to break their pistols in. I wouldn't know. I enjoy shooting, but 500 rounds just to break in a pistol?

There are two versions of firearm break ins. 1) If you have 500 rounds of trouble free range time, then break in is no problem. 2) But, if you have a problem with every magazine, or every other magazine, trying to reach that magical 500 rounds, and the manufacturer's response is "don't send the pistol back, until you have reached the suggested fired round count", is a very different story. With Kahr, the magical round count is 200.

My 1911 experiences have been with Colts, Springfields, a Browning and several RIAs. I've never had a malfunction with the Colts, Springfields, or Browning. Most of the RIAs functioned fine.I have one Colt and one Browning left, for sale. Leaving the 1911 platform. My old body gets along better with 9mm and .380 pistols. I'm now into Glocks and CZs. Shoot the Glocks mostly.

 

[Cooter Boolit]

Uhh, no! WC 1911s are quite common in SS Division USPSA, and CDP Division IDPA. I am privileged to be a member of a small action pistol club with about 100 members. There's at least 10 WC 1911s, along with a smaller representation of Night Hawk customs and Les Browns. All are shooters. At a tier III or IV match there will be a strong representation of the above represented in the top CDP finishers. When these guys pay north of 3k for a pistol, they plan to use it.
str1

Uhh what...??? Your comparing apples vs oranges...
i think my point was actually using the gun as a self defense carry weapon, not a $3,000 dollar paper puncher.
Paper punchers usually end up in a dark safe... and yes, i`m sure they use them, but not as a defense gun for the most part.

 

[stchman]

I didn't realize that people had such strong opinions/feelings about break in period for guns.

 

[Cooter Boolit]

I didn't realize that people had such strong opinions/feelings about break in period for guns.

LOL.... opinions are like... ummmmmm.... and everybodys got one, just depends on who you ask.
Forums are full of opinions, and opinions are just what they are, opinions, including my own.
Who`s to really say what this gun needs or what that gun needs, it either works, or it dont.

And here ya go.... a Break-In Example: (i wont say what the brand name is, i dont wanna make anybody mad in here)
I have 2 brand new semi-auto`s, with consecutive serial numbers, both bought the same day, same place at the same time. (EXPENSIVE...!)
One works GREAT and its flawless, the other one is a piece of chit... ammo fussy, fails to extract, jams alot, BUT the other one, its FLAWLESS.
So, would you think 500rds is going to fix my problem...??? I bet your answer will be the same as mine, nope.
Guns usually do not fix themselves. And a minimum 500rds of break-in is just plain ridiculous for any gun.

 

[Old Dog]

LOL.... opinions are like... ummmmmm.... and everybodys got one, just depends on who you ask.
Forums are full of opinions, and opinions are just what they are, opinions, including my own.
Who`s to really say what this gun needs or what that gun needs, it either works, or it dont.

And here ya go.... a Break-In Example: (i wont say what the brand name is, i dont wanna make anybody mad in here)
I have 2 brand new semi-auto`s, with consecutive serial numbers, both bought the same day, same place at the same time. (EXPENSIVE...!)
One works GREAT and its flawless, the other one is a piece of chit... ammo fussy, fails to extract, jams alot, BUT the other one, its FLAWLESS.
So, would you think 500rds is going to fix my problem...??? I bet your answer will be the same as mine, nope.
Guns usually do not fix themselves. And a minimum 500rds of break-in is just plain ridiculous for any gun.

Haven't read every post in the thread, have you, Cooter? In any case, having actually read your posts, I'm sorta wondering just what you consider expensive? Now, you're saying that you don't believe running a few hundred rounds through an auto-pistol could actually "break it in" and "fix" your problem, so some of us are left to believe ... that you simply don't know as much about auto-pistols as you claim ... And you're clearly not a mechanical engineer by trade, otherwise, you'd know that machined parts actually can "break in" and improve functioning with repeated action.

 

[rskent]

So, would you think 500rds is going to fix my problem...???

If it’s well and truly broken, then no. But in that 500 rounds (arbitrary number) you just may find that:

It only screws up with a particular magazine, or

It only screws up when you hold the gun a certain way, or

It only screws up when you shoot ammunition of a particular type or power level.

In that 500 rounds you might just be able to find out what is going on with the gun. Saying it “jams a lot” isn’t telling anyone anything.
If you can’t tell the manufacture what is going on with the thing, how can you expect them to help you?

 

[Pete D.]

There are a number of ideas through this thread (which may end up nine pages long like the last one) that repeat very traditional ideas that I, for one have always found problematic.
One is the idea that pistols used for target shooting are somehow less reliable than carry pistols. No shooter is going to take a gun into competition if he does not trust it to function 100%.
Another is the idea the a pistol needs to have boxes of ammo through it before it can be trusted. An earlier poster stated that if that is the case, you bought an unfinished gun. I agree.
A third idea is that there is a number of rounds to be fired through a gun in its early use after which the firearm is accepted as reliable.
I repeat an idea that I have stated before: a pistol is a machine. Sooner or later all machines fail. There is no predicting when this failure will occur, only that it will. You can put 500, 1000 trouble free rounds through your gun and there is no guarantee that it will not ftf on the very next pull of the trigger.
Every pull of the trigger is an act of faith.

 

[BSA1]

Of course some semi-automatics are built to a higher standard than others;

"Beretta Defense Technologies (BDT) is pleased to announce that new M9 pistols tested at the Company’s manufacturing facility in Gallatin, Tennessee have continued the world-record reliability pace for the product. Beretta U.S.A. completed the fourteenth consecutive M9 Lot Acceptance Test (LAT) this month with an average of only one malfunction every 19,090 rounds. During this testing period 42 M9 pistols were fired 210,000 rounds, with resultant reliability almost 10 times better than the rate of reliability required by the U.S. Army in its current Modular Handgun System program. "


http://www.beretta.com/en-us/new-tennessee-made-beretta-m9-pistols-continue-records-for-reliability/

 

[JohnKSa]

It's probably worth noting that the Beretta manufacturing process for the M9/92/96 involves machine cycling the action several hundred times.

You can see the process at 0:48 in this video: