ltwguns.com

I have not noticed it, having seen but few S&W's. CNC'd in with a small ball cutter I'm guessing?

Not sure whether manual or CNC. Comes in from the rear at an angle leaving the front face flat and the back rounded from the end mill.

Platinum is a pretty interesting metal. It has many industrial uses, and going way back…. I remember reading about Civil War cannons having touch holes lined with it to prevent corrosion. Well I have been wanting for a long time to try it as a front sight insert material, so I bought an ingot of it. Can you spot it? Oh it’s there in the pic, I promise you:


Oh, there it is! Two guesses what I paid for this “ingot”:

No wonder somebody stole the catalytic converter off my car a few years back—there is platinum in there! $50 a gram!? It’s worth more than gold at this time.
Platinum has a bunch of interesting properties, mostly with regard to corrosion resistance—it won’t. And an extremely high melting temperature—like over 3000 degrees F. I thought I read somewhere that it takes well to silver brazing— only one way to find out. I milled out a little chunk and shaped it to fit a slot milled in the face of a front sight. Indeed, the marriage went very well! My hope is that after serrating and bluing, I will have a nice white insert.


After hours stuff: What would happen if you drilled a 3/16 hole into the chamber of a shotgun? Nothing good, that’s for sure. Well this 1904 Remington Model 11 had an issue where the barrel threads into the barrel extension. It must have come loose generations ago, because you could see where someone had gone all over it with a centerpunch to try and tighten the thread joint back up. At the same time or perhaps a lifetime later, someone drilled up from underneath to put a little set screw in place. Their hole (about 1/16) popped through into the chamber. Well the set screw never held much or at least not for long The hole did not manifest itself as a problem in the five years since this gun showed up at my doorstep, but the the barrel has been loose—all though, in those five years, several hundred rounds, maybe five hundred, no functional issues. What a tribute to that guy, what was his name again, John Moses something?
It was decided that the time had come to get the barrel and extension locked down for the rest of this almost 120-year-old gun’s life—which could easily be at least another 120 years. I found that the .001 circular barrel shims offered for AR15 barreling were just right to “put back” some metal where the barrel used to shoulder up to the extension. It took two of them, it’s on nice and tight, with a little red insurance added. Nor more likely to come loose than a more recent Auto 5 or other shotgun put together this way. But can you do that and not repair the set screw hole? I drilled it out to 5/23 but as the original hole was probably put in with a hand drill, and was far from straight, 5/32 “missed” cleaning it up on the inside so I went, to, gulp—3/16. The bigger the hole is, the more pressure the plug has to hold…… at 12 gage’s 18000 PSI, I calculate the plug has to hold pretty close to 500 pounds. How bad is that, really? I fired a non-magnum OOB round through it with the hole unplugged just to, you know, see what happened. Yes, I purposely selected a round that had high brass that covered 95% of the hole and that “brass” was steel. Here’s the result:


That was somewhat encouraging. Here’s the plug laser-welded in. This will easily hold 500 pounds, not that I would do this for any other gun but, it also now effectively pins the barrel and extension threads from ever turning again. It needs to be trimmed on the inside, and I assure you dear readers that it will be tested with a few hundred rounds by spring…

Also welded, a mag tube extension where they tend to want to separate after a certain around of pounding, and a 1911’s rails.

I've had a front sight post using platinum in the past. Sure stays bright and shiny and very reflective over the years. I can imagine to cost of it and the difficulty to work with

_________________
Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx

Terry, was it factory or custom? I have not seen it before but it's one of things where "if I thought of it, it's been thought of before".

Edit: I am informed by my old friend Ray Ordorica that platinum lines in sights was often used on English doubles. Not surprising and a clue to me, Terry, as to who has previously done it on a 1911......

It was Ray that first plunked a 1911 into 10-or-12-year-old Ned's hand-- it was HUGE, and it was HEAVY! He was a friend of my older brother's. Some years later, at maybe age twenty or twenty one, I saw an article in the American Rifleman by Ray and I was awestruck that HEY, I know a gun writer! Ray made his living writing and that is not yet over, he has a series of novels out and a blog-- and a book about his days of living off the land in Alaska, The Alaskan Retreater's Notebook. https://www.amazon.com/Alaskan-Retreate ... 4372&psc=1

I only realized a few years ago the parallels between Ray's progression and my own, there are many. Guns, motorcycle competition, competition with guns, gunwriting. We started an Email correspondence in about 2000 I think, and have been calling and Emailing each other for advice every since (me getting the better end of the deal).

Ned. The sight was custom. The owner of the firearm requested it from the gunsmith who built it a few years ago.

_________________
Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx

That is some beautiful welding! You or did you farm it out?

" I have a guy". He is adamant that I not share him, he kinda sneaks me in and doesn't want more of this kind of work.

Colt officers' ACP's, Springfield Ultra Compacts, et al. I noticed a long time ago that their barrels angle down more but that's just the trig reality of it: the barrel's attitude is determined by how it is held in the front and in the back. It is located in front by the bushing or direct barrel-to-slide lockup. Move that straight back by shortening the slide and barrel, and the more-or-less 1 degree of barrel-down attitude increases. That's why they often have stubby front sights and that's why, as an example, Heinie offers (or at least offered) their rear sights in a special extra-high config. Because the barrel is pointing "down" more than usual, either the front sight gets low or the rear sight gets high to compensate for it.

I want to say the whole shortening thing was under-engineered. "Just cut it off short!" Part of it should have been to rebore the slide in front a little higher. I want to say that, but.... I wasn't there . There might well be another level or two here that I haven't considered, but let us consider these other consequences:

As the front of the slide is shortened, the barrel angle downward increases and guess what? The back end moves up in the process. The barrel is essentially pivoting aft of the middle either A) where the the rearmost locking cut is contacting the slide (fat chance, that would be part of a properly fitted barrel and I've never seen that in these shorter guns), or, B) on the slide stop shaft. It's like a teeter-totter. Put either end down on the ground, and the angle will be the same. Saw one end off at at, say, twp-thirds of the way to the end and put the short end on the ground. The angle changes and the un-sawed side goes higher, but the pivot point stays the same. It's kinda like that. SO: the very back end of the barrel goes higher, enough that now the firing pin strike is way low on the primer. I looked at this a long time ago and was surprised how tolerant the ammo can be of this condition, but it's far from ideal. I've had only a few misfires over the years because of it but a few is more than enough to make me say that it's a few too many!

The other consequence is that barrel locking gets compromised-- maybe only in theory, but item one, the lugs in the barrel are now out of parallel or less parallel with the abutments in the slide they're suppose to engage with. This means, on the theoretical side at least, that the engagement will be more at the top and less as we follow the annular barrel locking lug cuts to the sides. Picture a manhole cover properly seated over a manhole in the street.... that's full contact. Lift one side up an inch and now the only contact is directly opposite the lifted side.

Possible upside? They may be more tolerant of extractors that have been over-radiused since with the cartridge being very high on the breechface, when the barrel links down the case mightn't move far enough down to fall out of the extractor's influence. Not much of an upside really.... just get a better extractor

Is this Overthinking 101? It seems like a lot of these guns work well enough if the usual shortcomings are not present, as in, made right in the first place or having been gone over, and now having proper springs, feeding profiles, extractor tension, strong mags, etc. Most I'm sure get shot very little. They are not used in competition much. So durability issues are likely to never come out. And reliability shortcomings, offset firing pin strikes in particular, might show up at a rate low enough to be undetectable. If it happens only one in 100 and you have only fired it 99 times......

More on this later.

I tried to get a conversation started on that subject over on the 1911 Forum several years ago. Another thing that was/is of interest to me is the breech face angle on the short guns. With the barrel angle increased, the angle with the breech face has to change. Granted it is a small amount, but I wonder if it has a cumulative effect along with the other geometry changes.

Yeah, good point. Pretty darn safe to say they did not change the breech face angle for these guns. It matters.... in theory, like most of the above. I mean the firing pin so off center that you get misfires, that's not theory. The rest of it does not seem to really manifest in actual problems although I have seen some where the rearmost locking surface in the barrel takes a little bit of a beating.

I am looking at an OACP that I might upgrade in this area by making the barrel OD eccentric to shift it up in front and down in back.

That will be an interesting experiment!

.... and it was.

At one time it would have been unthinkable to spend Friday and Saturday evenings doing this sort of thing. It seems like I do it more and more these days. I'll get a pic up later.

The OACP factory barrels are flared toward the muzzle to a larger diameter. The barrel got turned down to .578. I made a simple cylindrical sleeve of .800 diameter from a piece of Marlin .46-70 barrel that was in the steel rack, and silver-brazed it on. I got the whole thing in the lathe running out .040 and turned it to about .715, then I ground it to just under .700. On the top then, only on the top, I relieved that .700 diameter from the forward locking lug, forward to just behind the muzzle-- this gives clearance for when the barrel links up into the locking lugs. There were a few other cuts that had to be made-- you learn as you go sometimes. I had not accounted for the fact that after this work, the bottom of the .700 diameter barrel sleeve would be .040 below where it was supposed to be. I mean the whole thing was an experiment and I did not intend it as magazine cover material. I was already spending time on it I didn't have, so clearance where clearance needed to be was not accomplished with,um, the utmost care.

Well in the end I got there. What was gained: Point Of Impact came up more than 3" at 25', which trigs out to being able to raise the front sight .050 - .060, which this gun needed. More and better engagment of locking lugs. With the muzzle end being angled up .040, the rear came down less than I calculated but it amounted to maybe .012 (have not yet measured that.) This is still a plus as this gun's FP strike was so low as to be eyebrow-raising: .041 off center. And never a misfire, but with another .010 or .015, I'd say never just got longer, and I can improve on that some time in the future, more on that in a moment.

This barrel and its "fit" were typical of, well, several manufacturers, in that there was plenty of "press-down" when in battery. The barrel locks up on the link. Egad, right? Not text book at all! But the actuality is that they quite often work well enough (and it sure makes things easier for the manufacturer). This one has a tad less press-down now but where did it really pivot when I moved the muzzle up .040...? "Somewhere". The back end's position in battery is controlled by, not much, really. The first locking groove is not touching anything, where in a proper barrel fit we would like some contact, a positive stop, with the first locking abutment inside the slide. The barrel foot is not touching anything. It's more or less the link doing the job and again that's good enough much of the time. Think about how many guns were made for Uncle Sam that had these same conditions, and complaints were few.

At some point in the future I'll make that barrel have proper contact with the underside of the slide, that will constitute a pivot point and I think the back end of the barrel will come down further, while keeping an eye on locking lug engagement.... then the barrel foot will get a proper contactish-fit with the slide stop shaft. I don't expecty accuracy to go way, way, up, but.... to be continued.

I anxiously await your further adventures in OACP engineering.

Larger-diameter cone on the muzzle end turned down, and the old barrel chunk that would become the sleeve.


The offset muzzle. This resulted in a higher POI which would allow a higher front sight.


FP strike is still off center but you can see the primer’s anvil has been effectively struck, albeit it not dead-center. FP strike went from .041 off center to maybe .030. Pretty sure I can make this better without resorting to a firing pin bushing but I've taken this experiemnt far enough for the time being. Now, had this been one of the Federal or CCI .45 rounds with a small primer, and a 9mm-sized firing pin, and perhaps one made of titanium, I wonder.....

Do you think it's possible to avoid the .050" higher rear sights generally required to get these somewhere near normal?

This mod does it, not saying it's worth it just for that. But if the guns were manufactured just a little differently, yes. What I have done in the past is to lower the whole front of the slide so the front sight can be high enough to be effective; and maybe have a rear sight that's a little higher than I wanted but not so high as to be a stand-out feature.

Here's an illustration of the dif in barrel angle. You can see the dif in the downslope and that the rear of the barrel is higher.

On hearing loss.


My hearing is not great. I get get by OK most of the time, but of course as the years pass, there is more evidence of it. My bottom-line metric is how much do I have to say, "What?" It is dependent on a lot of things like the pitch and volume of the thing you are trying to hear: the petite waitress in a crowded restaurant, kids in the back seat of the car.

"Tinitus": ringing in the ears. I have it 24-7. Doc asked if it bothers me and I said 100% not, I think that my laid-back personality has allowed me to just ignore it. I mentioned that I had read that a famous actor almost committed suicide over it and she confirmed that story, or at least that she had also heard it. My impression was that it was accepted as fact among ear docs. Big bonus, I learned how the people that deal in tinnitus pronounce it, once and for all. TINN-it-tiss. For years I have been bouncing back and forth between that and what I thought the obviously correct pronunciation would be, tinn-NIGHT-iss. Wrong.

I had a hearing test a few years ago that showed my right ear leads the left in terms of hearing loss. That confirmed what I knew just from, well, listening to my ears I guess you might say. It showed quite a margin in fact, that seemed to me a greater margin than what I was experiencing. But everything about the test seemed up to snuff.

I had occasion today to have it tested again. Same test format, different place. I won't disparage the first test but I will say this second one was at an ear, nose, and throat outfit of long-standing good repute. I was mainly there for the nose (Doc, I got this 1911 stuck in my nose, can you do anything?) I brought the graph from my first test, thinking maybe another hearing test would not be necessary. But they wanted to do a test so of course I did what the doctor ordered.

Naturally, in a hearing test you want to "do well" , but you also want to "find out". I won't go into detail but it's actually kinda fun. Bottom line, my hearing is not nearly as bad as shown in the first test. "Righty" is still not as good as "Lefty", but overall it is not awful. The disparity between the two in this test is more like what I hear every day.

But what causes the damage? Gunfire "don't help none", we kinda know that. I protect my hearing with the utmost diligence but there are a couple things that foil that, one is that there is always that one shot where you thought everything was done for the moment and you take off your earpro, and BANG! The other is simply, numbers. The number of 5.56 rounds I'm in the vicinity of every year is way lower than some of the guys that tour the country or are otherwise on the range every single day but for me 100,000 rounds or more a year seems like plenty. 5.56 is loud. Like Sofa King loud. Sometimes I have to stand close to a shooter to observe. The sound-- it hurts my teeth, literally. Sometimes the shooter is on a gun with a 14.5", or 11.5" barrel. Rarely shorter, thankfully. They are loud. The guys with muzzle brakes seldom make it past me Monday morning-- I am the Brake Nazi, but a kind one-- "Ah, that muzzle device, we need to replace that, hope you don't mind. I'll loan you or sell you or give you an A1 flash hider for the duration of the class, but you can't run that in our class, it's a hazard to your line mates."

I wear plugs and muffs, 100% of the time. I constantly find that despite this my hands often unconsciously find their way to my muffs, trying to cover them and further mitigate the noise. I am always on the lookout for better sound mitigation, and electronics, and I am nearly always disappointed. I've tried several electronic plugs and the majority have the black "foamies" that render them of no use, and in fact in my opinion they will do more damage than good. I want that electronic feature in plugs and muffs because being able to hear range commands is also a big safety issue. Fortunately I have not seen much in the way of incompatibility when wearing both plugs and muffs that are electronic-- just that the plugs typically have a low NRR (Noise Reduction Rating).

One of the best things I've come up with starts with the Pro Ears Stealth 28 HT-- electronic plugs. They are curly-wire tethered to a small control module and battery pack that rides on the back of the neck at the base-- it's rechargeable. Good! BUT, but again with the black foamies so of no use! I replaced those foamies with the form-your-own wax plugs and finally what goes into the actual ear canal is the yellow half of the 3M double-ended plugs. YES, the ones there is a class-action suit against! This rig is not solid but comes close to getting it done-- I mean the hearing protection part...... seems like the hearing protection people would take more interest in getting hearing protection done instead of all getting their stuff at the same black foamie mine.

Still looking. A the Doc's today I saw a product that I intend to test. I will talk to the company and play the "gun writer" card but I'm not getting my hopes up too much. I told her how I have informally and surreptitiously tested the hearing of many vets who have really been in the thick of it. I mean belt-dumping SAWs inside concrete buildings and-- I had the great honor of knowing one the the Burma Bridge Busters, the maestros of the B-25 with (in Ray's case, the "J" Model). 18, yes eighteen, .50-cal Brownings on board. I asked Ray once, "Those eight .50's hard-mounted in the front, could you fire only two, or four at a time, or.....?" "It was all at once," he replied. "Wow, what was that like?" I asked. Ray thought about the answer. 93 at the time, it took Ray a few more tics than it used to, to come up with the answer, which, finally, was "LOUD!" And yet-- I did my "secret" testing of Ray's hearing a couple times during the lunch we were enjoying, and it was not bad, not bad at all considering his age. I read another account of a guy taking a single flight in a B25, an officer catching a ride from Point A to Point B. With no combat on the way, no weapons fired, he suffered some hearing loss just form the overall racket in the Gull (B-25).

So-- I asked the Doc today, are some people more susceptible to hearing damage, is it like a genetic thing? The answer was a definite "yes". Some of those Battle of Fallujah Vets had seemingly minimal hearing loss. Others, I thought, had more. Informal, unscientific testing but I was surprised at how good the hearing was in some cases.

How to convince young studs that hearing protection matters? The ones that maybe even think their hearing is so "strong" that they need nothing, or maybe they don't think it's tacticool to wear earpro? The other day I was at the range with some friends. Jay was about to fire a group with his AR10 and some guys just arriving were walking in behind us. I asked Jay to hold fire. As the filed by, three of four took earplugs from a box that I had brought to the range weeks earlier which also included glasses-- giveaway, Z-rated safety glasses (also.... obviously.... G D important!). One guy didn't take any plugs. Watching these young apparent newcomers to what we do, I brought a pair of plugs down to him a few minutes later. I observed this guy also not wearing glasses as they started shooting, many positions down from us.

What do you do? You don't want to be the walking rulebook A-hole but you hate to see a young guy get injured unnecessarily. He will "get it" eventually but let us try to keep him from learning it the hard way. They left before we did and I told the group in general, more or less:

"Guys, I don't want to be fuddy-dud here but-- you need to protect yourselves. Guns, they blow up. You guys were shooting steel at 25 yards and one of you did not have glasses on. When you get home, I want you to just tape a Post-It over your eye for-- heck, twenty minutes. You will find it no fun, Imagine living that way for the rest of your life!"

I right there with ya. Tinitus 24-7. Plugs and muffs when ever doing any shooting, including 22 rimfire nowdays.

I have hearing aids (free from the VA and they provide the good ones now). Civilian price on those would have bought a nice 1911.

I'm lucky. My Father was a WWII combat vet (Garands, BARS, M1919A6s in urban combat, in-between sessions of mouseholing down blocks in German cities) and yet he hearing wasn't too bad.

But, as an engineer at Ford, he also protected what he had. So, the very first time we went shooting, with .22LR rifles, he handed us foam earplugs. My ears have been subjected to unprotected gunshots perhaps a dozen times in my life.

I was talking to another gun writer, in the airport from SHOT last year, and at first I thought he was talking to himself. It turns out he had his hearing aid bluetoothed to his cell phone, and was on the phone. When I seemed surprised at that, he asked "Why haven't you done it?" My response surprised him more than his bluetooth had me: "I don't have heating aids."

He said I was the only gun writer of our age that he had met, or heard of, who didn't have hearing aids.

Thanks, Dad.

Bill, you're lucky to have good source for those things, I know they can verrry expensive.

Genetics, I am more and more convinced. One old-school retired cop told me he lost his hearing all at once, or it took a big hit anyway, when he fired a Remington Model 600 in .350 Remington Magnum under a bridge, from the window of the squad car.

A few weeks ago I gave some advice to a young guy who I observed being very casual about hearing protection:

Imagine one night you're out of town and having dinner at a nice little brew pub. The super-cute waitress brings your bill; you hand her your card and she starts to turn away but then she turns back. "Hey...." she says. "I was just thinking. I get off in about twenty minutes. Maybe we could.... have a drink together...? If you'd like? And I.... I only live about a block from here....." You reply, "I like seagulls too."

I thought that might have the desired effect on a young guy.... I hope it did.

Now being in my early 70's my wife convinced me on hearing aids about two months ago. Lost most of mine during my time in the military. 4.2 inch mortars for a tour or two plus all that goes with 19 more years. Turbine engines while in C-130 then later Huey engines not to mention the radio in the head set. Anyway. Take care of what you got.

My nephew after 3 deployments in Afghanistan said this. You want you sense as sharp as possible when on patrol. He has hearing loss now 10 years and deals with it.

You don't realize it until you lose it. If you can protect it do so.

_________________
Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx

Terry, 4.2" mortar, yeah I bet that makes one's ears ring.... like, forever.

You guys that have these experiences (talking to you too here, BBBBill, and anyone else), they need to be written down for posterity's sake. I mean I know enough to know how a lot of you don't care to make much of it and I understand that but I know people would like to read about your experiences and right here is not such a bad place to do it. Just putting that out there.

4 deuce mortars! Been there, done that. I had a mortar platoon among others when I commanded a combat support company. We did a lot of cross training with my scout platoon to get the scouts profficient on call for fire. I turned the light bulb on it their heads when I got them to understand that the mortars were the only artillery that they could count on if they got compromised. They got really good at it once they understood that. Fostered some comraderie with the mortar crews for a change, too.
A lot of time in M-60 and M-1 tanks. Lots of rides in UH-1s, UH-60s, CH-46s, CH-47s, CH-53s, C-130s. The majority of my UH-1 rides were one way from the ground up. We used them for jump ships in the parachute club at Rucker. Sad to say that our club president at that time, Kirk Knight, just passed a short time ago. He later commanded the Golden Knights Parachute Team. He contracted a respiratory infection while jumping in Iceland of all things. I worked with him at SOCOM prior to my retirement.

Different services have different procedures for flying on their aircraft. Air Force literally would not even let me bring palletized ammo on board a C-130 in theater going from Kandahar to Baghram. I had to draw new ammo at Camp Vance once I got there. Army says clear the chamber, put it on safe, and point the muzzle up or down depending on the particular aircraft and where the critical systems were located. Marines just said, "Jump on and grab hold of something." I kid you not! Nothing like running out the back of a 130 at 3AM into a dust bowl in the middle of Afghanistan.

Of course none of my hearing loss comes from shooting 38 Super comp guns in IPSC matches... in a pit in SE Alabama.

I think my ears are ringing more just thinking about it.

I can't hear high pitches and yet sirens absolutely stab me in the ears.

Is the 4.2" mortar fading from use? Don't seem to see much about them. Man that's big.

The 4 deuce (107mm) has been replaced in US service by a few variants of the 120mm Mortar system - M-120, M-120A1, and M-121.

Talk about ears ringing. I was a squad then section leader. A fire for effect was really something and with a few "Willy Pete" to top it off.

_________________
Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx

I think I've seen some that big now watching the action Ukraine. As bad as it is on the "sending" end...... it's still the preferable end.....

One 1911 I'm about to wrap up, the owner asked for some weight reduction, framed in sort of an "If you could" way more than a "I gotta have it" way. Looking back at how much work this is and how minimal the return is, I decided I'd take the "where it's almost no extra work" approach. I know me..... so I told myself no more than that! As I come up on sending for refinish, the "me" that simply won't be told what to do by "me", went the rest of the way. Well, not the "shave every thousandth off that's not doing anything" version, but "I" allowed "me" to go for some of the more high-return areas. I didn't weigh before an after, but I calculated the volume of the holes and slots, this figure is probably within 5%...... I have taken .51 OZ out of the gun. So, about the weight of a 230 round-- I mean, the bullet only. I thought, maybe if I superglue a 230 grainer to my eyelid for while, it will seem like a lot of weight and therefor more worth the trouble..... but I decided not to do that .

I don't keep close track of my time. It's just the way I do things, I don't care that much, it's about what I'm doing and not how much time it takes (is this a problem when paying bill? Yes:-) . If you were to ask what my hourly rate is, the answer would be, "I don't have one". How many ours into a custom 1911? I've never even tried to track that but I've done enough of them that just by osmosis I have a pretty good idea. I think I've had as much as 140-160 hours into some. Not all, but some.

So a half ounce of steel. Let's just say I have four hours into removing that half ounce. My local guy where I buy chainsaws and related things, has a $90 / hour rate. So if he had done it that would be $360 to remove half an ounce. So an ounce woulda been $720. $720 an ounce is not as much as I thought it would be...... could I removed 10 ounces for $7200? That would be a fun challenge but might not succeed! Just for reference, today's scrap price for steel is $.38 / lb so in actuality the chips I got out of this process are worth a penny! HEY if I did this a thousand times and saved the chips I would have almost twelve bucks worth!

The old “holes under the grips” trick…. Five holes, 5/16 diameter, .104 wall thickness. Steel is .284 pounds per cubic inch. Start calculatin’.


More low-hanging fruit—the VIS under the barrel bed. Lots of steel in there, and the root of the trigger guard. Fresh off the Bridgeport and not yet deburred.


Some holes under the rear sight. And some in the rear sight itself, which I forgot to factor in. Probably adds another 1/10 OZ…….


Does a frontstrap treatment remove weight? Certainly…. I never calculated this before but let’s see here….. hold on a sec….. I get about .143 OZ on the front strap.


As I’ve said before, in aluminum, at just about 1/3 the weight of steel (.101 lb / cubic inch), removing it by drilling, fluting, etc., doesn’t give much of a return. What about Garolite-- AKA G10-- grips? Pounds per cubic inch, .065 or about one ounce / cu. ". I was able to remove a fair amount on these G10 grips.... it seemed a significant weight reduction, comparing the grips before/after. I wrote it down somewhere…. Let’s see if I can find it but I think it approached a full ounce. (Correction, I think I remember it being about 3/4 ounce).


Conclusion, an ounce doesn't seem like much but but put five quarters in your hand-- that's an ounce. Take ten quarters and tape them to your 1911-- you will notice the dif! Milling and drilling to remove maybe 3/4 OZ, worth it or not....?

The photo triggered a thought. Do you ever slightly deepen and/or extendethe link clearance slot? It bugs me to see the tiny nicks in the rear radius where the edges of the link sometimes make contact. I typically extend that slot a few thou further to the rear and on a couple I deepenedthe slot to eliminate link contact. Just wondering if you ever fool with that.