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This mag does not go with this gun but it was an opportunity to show some of the peculiarities of DLC…. The little rectangle is perfectly dry, and when matte DLC is dry it looks grey. With a little oil it goes black and you can’t tell it from matte blue.


I will post this here on LTW only.

Meat and potatoes of this post: starting with a brand-new unfired Combat Commander. This was to be, well, a budget-conscious, restrained custom project. I don’t do that well. THat's the DLC'd mag in a blued gun-- perfect match.


FRAG everywhere, with matching carbon-fiber grips from VZ. They never should have let me on that airbase…..


When you’re a second-rate photographer with other gun projects that need doing more than photos need taking, you get this….. some things don’t translate well. The ring on the bushing is polished to match the slide and frame flats. This bushing is DLC’d since I sent it to bluing having forgotten it was stainless. Glenrock Blue was on top of things and kind enough to not only tell me about it instead of just sending it back undone, they also sent it to my DLC source so it could tag along with a stainless gun that was there being done—timing was perfect. Glenrock is a total class act; one of the few places I would trust to do all the prep work although in this case I did it as they were backed up on same. The recoil spring plug looks like the checkered points are unblued but in fact I stoned them “shiny” after blasting for a bit of a different effect. Looks good in person…..


In the interest of the above-mentioned economy, there was not a wholesale changing-out of everything. Colt parts are not bad parts and I have no compunctions about using most of them. I did use a slightly extended mag release (Nowlin), grips safety (Wilson), my own MSH-F mainspring housing, my own 4-post Extra Stout Plunger tube, an EGW trigger, a Kart barrel, a Wilson thumb safety as spec’d by the customer, and probably a few other things I can’t think of right now.


Oh yeah, Shield Driver rear sight. That’s the Colt hammer with a little extra work; it and the barrel, and the Series 80 parts are done in WMD’s NiB-X plating. It’s not white like chrome but boy is it slick. Gloss levels on the slide rear and the Shield Driver's serrations are actually exactly the same although they look different here. I had to pick between direct sunlight or not enough light or put too much time into it so I took the sunlight. Not complaining-- one should never complain about sunshine!

Test targets. I do a fair amount of test firing before refinishing and on a beauty like this I don't really want to shoot it too much after. When I re-install sights after refinish I typically will return them to wherever they were prior to refinish that gave a perfect zero; this time I just pressed them in to center to get started, so I need, in this case, to move the rear to the right or the front to the left of a combo of the two, about .005. Elevation wise when it's within an inch or so at 28 yards it seems to almost never fail to be good with the owner. Actually, for grouping it's kinda handy to not have it perfectly zero'd.

I did something a little different this time that I think I will explore further. Six individual targets, fire one round at each, mark them, repeat with a different load, etc. Some guns, as one would expect, put different loads to different points of impact. Some guns don't seem to care if it's a 155 at 800FPS, a 230 +P JHP at 950, a 215 cast Keith SWC at 1020, or a H&G68 at 875.... this is one of them. These groups are off bags at 28 yards. They are four shots, one each of the notated loads. Not too bad. But YES, I did pick the best two of the six targets although the other four show the same POI consistency and are not bloody awful.

Nice blaster indeed!

What barrel did you put in it? Or did I miss it in the text?

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Heirloom Precision
http://www.heirloomprecision.com

It's a Kart. That's been my go-to barrel unless customer specs or other circumstances (like, must be stainless) intercede. You too I think, right Jason? Although I am working on a private source......