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Rob was here in early January to pick up Commander (http://forum.ltwguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9506) I did for him and I asked to check the Operator. Found that the slide was cracked.... he's getting a new one put on at Springfield. Actually we checked two of his 1911's and found TWO cracked slides. Both were extreme high-milers but no round count offered on the other one:

Propagated from the recoil spring tunnel? 'Cause it doesn't look like locking lug origins.

Yup, right in that corner. I've seen or seen pics of several that way, of several brands.

Cool thread..

I just saw a picture of it from last May and I believe I see the crack starting!

Found it:

So Springfield replaced the slide and were even kind enough to flatten the slide's top just the way it was before, and refinished the whole gun. Rob dropped it off for a new Shield Driver rear sight since the tritium in the existing sight is faded. Found a little crack in the frame, I have not seen one here before but it's not surprising and fortunately not really critical. I'm gonna just mill it out.



Rob's shooting bag. Ouch, my back!

Does he have a range pony, to carry that bag?

Don't be silly. There's a 3 1/3 HP Briggs in there and a snowmobile track on the bottom!

This is so cool..

A little update on Rob’s Operator. He has been shooting a lot since the last report but not so much the Operator, he says about 4K since I last examined it, meaning total rounds at this time about 112K. Most of those of course before the new slide.

Between training gigs he stopped by and asked me to put a new set of grips on the full custom gun I did for him in ’03. He thought he’d bought VZ’s but as a testament to how good VZ’s are, there are a lot of companies now making similar grips. I would not call these a VZ ripoff necessarily, but for what Rob paid, $30, I suspect they don’t measure up to what I like to say about VZ Grips: American made from American materials to original designs by Americans, made on Haas CNC’s by entrepreneurial Americans!

I thought the pattern came up a little short so I added some vertical lines before I fitted them to the welded-on magwell (made from scratch back in ’03).
I grabbed some pics of both:

Operator: when it needed a new slide it got a new Shield Driver rear sight. Rob is basically the guy the Shield Driver is named after.


The current (Kart) barrel.


The only thing that needed attention this time was the firing pin stop, which was cracked. Honestly, once this happens it’s pretty much done and I have not seen one “break more” but just the same I replaced it with an EGW part.


The Caspian’s mainspring housing, made from scratch by me. Rob and I agreed in ’03 to take a little weight out where it could be done…. but as I got to know him better I could see that he really, truly uses his guns and I was worried the aluminum MSH would take a real beating from reloads so I made this stainless insert.


A few weight saving measures, another window under the grips and a few cuts inside at the Pica rail.


Down the Caspain’s Kart barrel at about 30-40K rounds.


The magwell.


Overall LH side view with the new grips. I almost told him no deal, get some VZ’s, or not deal but then I figured, the money’s already in China, so…..

Hell they're both getting shot a lot and both holding up well.

My guess is the Caspian feels better in the hand which is of course subjective.

...dig the MW

_________________
"Bones heal, chicks dig scars, pain goes away"

I wrote this about 18 months ago when he was at 95K:

"95%-plus of these rounds were 200 SWC handloads, so whatever 95K handloads costs.... roughly 67 pounds of powder at 5 grains per shot (now there's another interesting perspective). $25 a pound? What are 200 grain H&G 68's now, maybe $90/1.000 delivered? More? Primers, been a while, $25/1,000? That'd be--
67 X $25 = $1675
95 X $90 = $8550
95 X $25 = $2375

Total, $12,600 and on a 1050 machine such as Rob uses, I suppose a good 120 hours, with tumbling, primer tube loading, and all that. Am I in the ballpark on component prices? I only buy this stuff every two years or so. "

Amortized over the ten or so years he's been shooting this one,, well, $1300 / year for ammo, especially for a professional, sounds like a bargain, eh?

Jeff breaks extractors, I break firing pin plates. I've busted half a dozen through the years, and one of them had 25% missing. Two cracks, one at 7 o'click, and the other at 10:30-11 o'clock. (I suspect a toolmark for the second one.)

The guns still ran.

$1,300 a year for ammo? A steal. A neighbor of mine raced cars. He figured if he was careful, he could get a full season out of two sets each for two cars. $9,000 a year in rubber, he was spending.

As hobbies go, shooting ain't all that bad.

Finally after ten years, I have devised a good method of tracking maintenance and replacements on this gun. I write it on the inside of a grip panel with the Dremellle. This reduces my chances of losing it

I believe this firing pin stop was the original; in any event it was not one I had fit as there are a few little mods I do to them that were not present.

Very Cool

_________________
Thanks in advance,

Chris

http://www.combatprecision.com
info@combatprecision.com
Facebook/CombatPrecision

Today's pic, Rob tells me 6,600 rounds fired since last I examined it.



Going back through previous posts and trying to get totals, I think that 6600 makes it 118,000 on the gun and 46,000 on this barrel....? And 15,000 on the new slide.

There really wasn't anything else picture-worthy today. The slide / frame fit continues to hold up well due to the original fitting (recently with new slide, (also well-fitted). There is a lot of contact / bearing area which is conducive to long life on this fit.

The barrel, 6-8000 rounds more since last report. We know this because Rob told me he loaded that many in one whack and is now out. Lead SWC’s.


Cracktrackerpic. I will eventually just mill this right out unless if falls off first. No downside, really. Look at the March 26 2015 pic of this and it has moved since then.

Shield Driver sight, holding up well if I may say so. It should, it’s made from prehardened chrome moly steel, like gun parts used to be made from. Most of the wear is from the Safariland 6004 holster. Rob is the guy who inspired me to name the sight Shield Driver.

Feedramps need to be deep enough and at the right angle. What they don’t need is a mirror finish, although, yes, it has come to be expected on a custom gun and sure, there’s no harm in it. I do it when I’m wrapping one up, and did it on this one— over 120,000 rounds ago. I think I’ve repolished it a time or two over the years but didn’t bother with it this time around.

Now at 140,000 rounds.

The plunger tube broke.... replaced it with the ESPT.



Extra Stout Plunger Tube installed—four pegs instead of two.


ESPT compared to the one that came off. Springfield’s plunger tubes are actually beefier than most and this one I think acquitted itself very well, lasting 140K rounds. So much for MIM (done right) sucking; remember that many of the stock parts, the MIM parts, are still holding up on this long-term crusader.


Rob’s bbl today, for the record. 140K on the gun, to-be-calculated on this barrel which is number four.

Looks like the crack is still growing a bit. Gonna weld that eventually or retire the frame when it finally starts causing trouble? Or just remove the middle section and make it like an S_I?

Just watching it as an experiment.... Rob is aware of it too. At some point I'll just take it out of there-- or it will fall out one day when Rob is cleaning the gun.

Not the Operator, but interesting.

Would this barrel have cracked if it hadn't been Mag-Na-Ported? Honestly I don't know where the cracks started but I would think at the back..... it's almost like the holes stopped the crack, as holes will tend to do. The case didn't blow! On the one side, the crack follows the rifling in the corner of a land/groove step.

Maybe a sulfur stringer? Every split 1911 barrel that I have ever seen with one exception has been stainless. The one exception was a massive overpressure suspected to be from incorrect powder. The gun grenaded during a local match. The owner had let his kids do some reloading for him WITHOUT supervision.

Yeah I guess that's the other question: would a non-stainless barrel have done this.

Guess I was wrong about the cracks stopping at the ports, one did and one didn't.... but technically the barrel is still on one piece

Well this is a gun with some miles on it and was used for bowling pin shooting, loads for which don't tend to be on the light side. Pretty sure the owner will pop in here in a few weeks and fill in some details.

But yeah, over the years I have observed anecdotally that it seems like stainless barrels may be at a slight disadvantage. I had a conversation with a manufacturer of them years ago who even talked about 416R stainless, formulated for rifle barrels, not being ideal for pistol barrels.

On the other hand I continue to use them on my guns and customer guns with no complaints.

Yep, that one there be mine. The barrel was plugged into the Colt, probably about the time Iran-contra was becoming a thing.

All it ever saw was IPSC (200 grain L-SCW & 5.8 WW-2310 and pin loads (200 grain Speer JHP, 6.3 grains of WW-231) and a ton of them. It probalb got the Mag-na-Port work done in the late 1980s, so it saw ten years of nothing but standard or +P level ammo, and buckets of them. With the end of pin shooting, I shot a bit more USPSA Open, and then switched to revolver, so it sat in the safe for 15+ years.

Warming up for last year's pin shoot, it broke, and it took me a while to figure a way to non-destructively get it out of the gun, and then do it.

No telling how much ammo it saw, but lots. When I first saw the damage, I figured over-pressure factory ammo. Not the case, so it went to Ned with a couple of barrels, and the extras for a rebuild.

Mind sharing how you got it out without doing any other damage?

I took a carbide end mill (3/8" as I recall0 and with the pistol clamped and left side up, I planned to lower the end mill down onto the slide stop right behind where the slide stop shaft comes out of the frame. This would weaken the slide stop until I could break it into two, then extract the shaft, and ease the slide and barrel forward off the frame.

In a perfect world, this would have left no marks, but I was tired, and my arithmetic was off, so there is a small shiny disc on the frame where the end mill passed through the slide stop and kissed the frame.

Once back together, I have to check function, re-zero, get it Mag-na-Ported again, and maybe even (the horror!) get in some practice before the next pin shoot.