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I often have something I’d like to post but it doesn’t rate its own thread, so I’m starting this one…..it’ll be an ongoing thing, a place to put some random shop goings-on and maybe just some general commentary which will be, you might say, “editorial” in nature, in other words presented as opinion. I might squeeze in a few light product reviews. Not “official” reviews mind you, just things I might be using or trying out at any given time. Some of this won’t be current, necessarily—some of the content might be something I’ve done in the past. The first one is a Gold Cup I’ve had in the shop for over two years as a side project. I squeeze a little work on it in once in a while between work on “official” projects.

I have never cared for the Gold Cup. Opinion only, remember! I don’t want insult anyone’s favorite gun but even as a strictly target pistol, I think it has a lot of failings….. as a carry gun, or basis for one, even more.

Many of these shortcomings are shown in this first picture. The Elliason rear sight is world famous, for shearing the pin and falling off. I believe Colt has gone to a Bomar-ish sight now. The one here had the Eliason (pic is not of the actual subject pistol).

The fat trigger. I never was a great big Bullseye shooter I’ll admit, but I could never really feel any kind of advantage in it. The disadvantages are several. Holstering a GC in a holster made for a standard narrow trigger…. not good. The biggest thing is the trigger's weight (mass). Here again I think maybe Colt has gone to aluminum recently but it must be quite recent….. I have not seen one and this one had the traditional steel trigger with the big crooked slot to reduce the weight somewhat. I have comparative weights around here somewhere that I will try to include. I can’t weigh the original because I have already disposed of it, but they are relatively heavy. This is a big deal in a pistol that over the years has had a lot of people do trigger jobs—being a target pistol, people want light pull weights, right? The weight or mass of the GC trigger in a pistol that has been worked on for a light pull is a big safety issue, as it leads to to hammer follow caused by the trigger’s inertia. When the slide slams home chambering a round, the frame jumps forward and the trigger stays where it was, dropping the hammer and sometimes firing the gun.

I hesitate to even mention the techniques some target shooters used for years to counter this. How about this for a loading procedure: with slide locked back, insert magazine, pull trigger, drop slide. This breaks the connection between the trigger and the sear by moving the disconnector out of the way. Or how about this: Slide locked back, insert magazine, put a thumb on the hammer to keep it from dropping, drop slide. Both are terrible practices and dangerous habits….. and I have seen ND’s resulting from technique #1.

One thing you can’t see in the pic is the different GC sear, with the “sear depressor” and spring. I never really studied this out as I have not worked on many GC’s over the years; I started avoiding them early on when one fired as I chambered a round. The sear depressor is supposed to mitigate that.



The following is by no means GC specific but this one was a good example. The slide-top radius was way off center, leading to the slide’s side flats being of very different heights. Doesn’t hurt a thing and one would hardly notice it in most situations. But…. when you cut a dovetail in, it really shows. Left side:

Those slide serrations BTW, before I chamfered the bottom of the slide and deburred each individual cut, were so sharp at the bottom that I was able to saw a pencil in half in about 20 seconds.


Right side, You can see that the break line from flat to round is almost an eighth of an inch different. Like I said no real harm but not acceptable in a gun that will be called “custom”:



And here it is from the front. The line drawn is at the level of the lower break line:



The fix. I have cutters I’ve made over the years for just this kind of thing. This one played well with the GC’s top rib which anyway, was about .020-plus off center. Now it’s centered and ready for further work.



Now from the front, the break lines are at the same level, the rib is centered, and there’s a nice border which relieves me from having to deal with that break line being wavy due to the side flats not being very straight and parallel:



Many 1911’s suffer from this, not a boon to good function at all. Where the barrel has been stamped “Colt .45 Auto NM”, the displaced, bumped-up metal makes draggy contact with the underside of the slide’s locking lugs. Super-easy to make this go away, I mean literally fifteen seconds of workmanship at the factory could have made it a non-issue. Barrel fit on this gun was far from what anyone would consider “NM”; slide to frame was nothing special. You guys that know Bullseye and GC’s historically, I’m curious if they were ever really better for target shooting? I think maybe they were at a time when 1911 smiths were fewer and high-end custom Gov't Models were less numerous. But I think it’s safe to say that any decent custom 1911 with a Kart or Wilson or other primo barrel properly fitted and with a 4lb trigger would out-shoot this or any GC from the last, I dunno, 2-3 decades….?



And finally, for now—as with slide-to-frame fit, I don’t think barrel-to-bushing fit has to be the ultimate to deliver OK accuracy but it also “don’t hurt none” and is of course considered kinda necessary on some custom guns. One might expect a GC to have both to the degree feasible in a factory gun, but not really. In this pic you can see the bushing tipped sideways on the barrel, indicating that its fit to same is really one of pretty generous clearance in all directions. I like to fit them so the barrel can move up and down the requisite amount (about 1 degree), and have very little side “wiggle”. Not the most critical thing, I will grant ya. But easy enough to do if you want the most accuracy attainable.

Also in the pic, I really like hammer struts that are turned to a diameter at the bottom.… most are not anymore, so I have a little fixture where I make it round like I believe JMB intended. As you can see, I think it may have been intended as a reassembly aid. It makes a very handy slave pin to pre-align the sear and disconnector before inserting the sear pin from the other side. Also in the pic, the trigger that is replacing the original heavy and rattle-loose Colt bit: an EGW. I have narrowed it to Gov’t width, I’ll get a pic of that. when I can. In 2002 I proposed this design to Greider and EGW, where there is not an overtravel adjustment screw, just a bump of trigger shoe material that gets trimmed to allow proper overtravel. I'm not a fan of screws on guns and I'm glad George ran with the idea.


Last vestiges of the Eliason sight cuts going away. Good riddance sez me.


(Edited 02/10/22: This background, after-hours project is done-- https://forum.ltwguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10032)

The late 50s/early 60s Gold Cups were better fit although they were still not up to the standards of a true bullseye pistol.

I don't like the Elliason at all and much prefer almost anything else. Are you going to do some variation of your shield driver sight or something else?

I've seen lots of wonky Colt slide profiles (not so much on other brands) over the years. It is especially aggravating when fitting a comp and trying to match the flats and radii between the two. How does cleaning up the top radius affect the thickness over the slide lug slots? I would be worried about thinning the slide too much at that point. The cleanup itself looks very good and adds some visual interest.

I hate the heavy trigger and the sear/sear depressor. I have fit several of the aluminum triggers since they came out. Before that I hogged out as much of the finger piece as I could remove and still have a structurally sound trigger.

And I agree on the hammer struts. I hate the way they make them now.

Bill, our shops should be next door to each other!

Can't find my other camera and I may have deleted the pics anyway so I dug it out and took this one.

I have always been surprised the GC's don't crack at the arrow. Not much to be done around that area to make the thinness and funky transitions go away. I thought about welding some pieces in so it would use a standard trigger but.... after five seconds of thinking that, everything started to hurt so I stopped . Life is short, let's not waste too much time trying to undo that which should not have been done!

Yes, this one gets a Shield Driver. The wide flat in front which is otherwise optional, is necessary to "get rid of the evidence".

I'm promising myself this is the last GC I work on.... like I did about 18 years ago.

Edit-- found the trigger weight survey.
Baseline: standard Colt short trigger, all steel, two-piece silver brazed together.... the commercial standard going way back: 166 grains
WWI-spec long trigger, all one piece: 200
A-1 spec, short, one piece: 129 grains. This surprised me by being lighter than the Colt commercial short.
Carbon fiber with Ti bow-- 44 grains. Wow!

And now, announcing the heavy weight king of the 1911 world, the Gold Cup trigger.... wide, long, big ol' steel screw, 3-piece: 249 grains!

>>Edit, 12/05/2021<< The above aluminum trigger, reshaped and lightened is at 97.5 grains.

Pictures being worth a thousand words and all that, here is my dissertation on "My first step in fitting a ramped barrel":

I've envisioned similar to that as a way to save a frame with a damaged/recut VIS. Lots to work with on a ramped barrel.

That is a cool fix on the slide... very cool indeed.

I agree about the hammer strut too... at minimum I think they need to be round or a ball shape on the end, many are just a square shape all the way down with a basically square end. There are still a couple of brands out there that are turned at the end as you did, I think Wilson hammer strut is like that.

_________________
Heirloom Precision
http://www.heirloomprecision.com

Yeah, in a recent seance with JMB he said, "They do what with the bottom of the hammer strut!?"

BBBBill, the slide is not too thin above the lugs..... I might get a comparative pic up. As to weight reduction (no one asked but...) that rib on top probably offsets any metal I took off. When I'm all done I will try to get a weight comparo to something standard.

BBBBill, some slide comparisons showing thickness over the barrel locking recesses, left to right-
Guncrafter, Springfield, the GC, a 1942 Colt (soon to be up for sale BTW).

No thickness issues there. I think the GC slide's rib is actually "extra" material but just a little bit.

Cool. I didn't know how much you were removing to clean up the slide profile. I've seen some questionable factory machining on the inside as well as the outside of Colt slides. I have made a note to myself to always check the slide for adequate material at the bushing retaining slot, the forward part of the slide if factory relieved (such as on LW Commanders and old Gold Cups), and over the locking lug recesses. Two slides in my box-o-scrap are always there to remind me.

Barrel from an ongoing project….. I had it laser engraved with the pertinent info including the s/n.


Well, this years The Pin Shoot is either cancelled or postponed…. But this is the time of year when my internal clock says “start practicing on bowling pins”. This is my competition shotgun since I replaced the Model 97 with it in about 1990…… if I do my part, “we” can still do OK once in a while. That compensator was a whole lotta work, it’s carved from a solid piece. I can’t say it makes a world of difference but I will say that a lot of smoke comes out of it going skyward at high speed so it’s probably doing something. This Browning BPS has had many thousands of slugs and buckshot through it and is holding up very well. I’ll bet it’s had fewer than 50 rounds of anything ”light” through it.

Do I see ports on the bottom side of the barrel peeking through? Comp all the way around the barrel?

Yep, all the way around. The bottom ones probably don't do much good but they don't do any harm.

While we're on shotguns:
“Where can I get some kind of front sling swivel for a Stevens 520 shotgun?”

Good luck with that! You make it.

I have a long-time affection for certain old shotguns. A great many of them appeal to me but especially Models Winchester ‘87’s, ‘97’s, and 12’s. The first two were JMB designs. Also the Rem 11 and Stevens 520, also designs by “guess who”. There is a little snippet of family history with a 20gage 520, so I have a particular soft spot for the 520. They seem to have been considered somewhat pedestrian during their long production life from 1909 to 1955, and were sold under several brand names including Montgomery Ward. By today’s standards, in my opinion, they are works of industrial art, good old “walnut and steel” exemplars of how things were made in years gone by. It was, and is, common, and in decades past was popular with cops and robbers both.

This one…. this one was there the day they got Bonnie and Clyde. Months later, it was at Little Bohemia when the Bureau of Investigations tried to take or exterminate the Dillinger gang.

In, you know, my mind. But prove to me it wasn’t!

I found it at Rock Island Auction. It’d had its share of those things that happen to a gun over the years that disqualify it as a museum piece….. replacement wood, stock repairs, old rubber recoil pad rotting off, some farmhouse checkering on the pistol grip area (but I love it), a toe repair to the stock and a ramped rifle front sight. So there wasn’t much I could do to “ruin” it.

I wanted it to have a sling, and for some reason I think certain 12 gauges should have steel buttplates, I know, different, right? But as I’ve said before, they are the ultimate in durability when the boss tells you to stave-in those kegs of moonshine or you need to “encourage” one of Capone’s boys to stop what he’s doing but not put him on ice.

None of it was easy, and as I often feel compelled to say, this has taken place over the last year little by little, mostly in short sessions after supper. Guns aren’t just my living, they are still my hobby too.

When it comes to doing something with wood I am a disaster but this didn’t turn out too awful.

Converting the magazine tube cap to have a place to put a sling, set up and ready for the heat. A silver joint is incredibly strong but I put a rivet in there for extra strength. It will get soldered in and so be doubly strong. The rivet is in place but not yet peened over on the inside:


Done. Aahh, near-perfect results. Silver even wicked through to the inside (back side) where the rivet will get peened over. This thing is on there forever.


Getting it peened on the backside. Forever plus a few centuries…. this will not be the weak spot, the screw that holds the whole thing to the barrel will be. But all components are plenty strong enough to hang the gun on.


A little bit of polishing, nothing too crazy or out of character with the rest of the gun, and a little cold blue, and then installed. This gun will eventually go to Glenrock for blueing.

The rear sling swivel is also from a Thompson:


Overall. The Kerr sling is not installed perfectly according to their inter-war instructions. I discovered that the front sling loop would not pass the darned hook but it is actually very user-friendly done this way, easy to adjust and practical.

When I turned on the lights in the shop this AM, I found this crawling around.

With a mind like that, one can see how you come up with so many innovative and "artful" solutions!

Aw now cut that out.....

I work on big guns too sometimes:


Suomenlina Island, Helsinki. Last summer I finally made a long-dreamed-of trip to the place of my forebears (most of them). The history of Finland is speckled with war without wanting war. Whoever forces war on Finns usually regrets it. These guns though happen to be Russian, from a time
when Finland was considered a "Grand Duchy" of Russia.... that ended in 1917. Russia had taken Finland from Sweden in 1809, but it wasn't the first time they'd put their hands on her- they had invaded as early as the 1700's. They tried again in the Winter War, and while they did get a small chunk of Finland in the final treaty, boy did they pay for it. While there we visited the Simo Hayha museum, the famous Finnish sniper who made five-hundred-some invaders pay their bit.

I mostly use MGW (Maryland gun Works) front sights-- .330 X 65 degrees. They've been very consistent over the years and in the case of a gun coming in with a loose front sight due to loosey-goosey factory dovetails, it's a good fix, just recut the dovetail and fit a new front sight.

Sometimes I need one that's jusssst a little different, or more knock-proof. On this one I wanted a wider base left/right and it got "knock-proof" into the bargain as the block it came from (background) is prehard 4130. That's 28-32 on the Rockwell C scale, so not extremely hard; soft enough to machine but a lot tougher than mild steel.

I did some Conamyds today. In pretty much any machining operation, even little tiny ones, burrs are created. In doing Conamyds some really small ones are created.... I could go over the pattern two or three times and they would come off but it increases the chances of a screw-up. Grab a wrong number, put the cutter in the wrong place, and I'm F'd. So I go over the whole thing with Opti-Visor and a little carbide blade. They are tiny but big enough that they might not come off in blasting.

I decided today to catch some of the burrs knocked off. The divisions on the Starrett scale are .010"; the lines are about .0035 wide.

Can't say I've ever really worked on a Mauser much. But sometimes I use one working on a 1911:


Some more silver brazing. Thanks again, Dad. This grip safety is on the gun in this thread
https://forum.ltwguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9786 . There's a reason for this which I can go into a little detail about pretty soon.

Getting stoned this slide is:




This one is a little more elaborate in a few areas than some guns I do. Sometimes this leads to intersecting lines and shapes that will tend to accentuate imperfections, leading in turn to the need for time and patience in getting them to blend together nicely. Little files and stones, crank up the Pearl Jam channel on XM, maybe crack open a Michigan microbrew, and dig in-- carefully.

Dang!...I know for a fact, that a certain extremely fortunate individual is already giddy being witness to this intriguing project as it unfolds before us here, and without any doubt; will be deliriously happy with this incredible heater once it’s in their hands!

Pearl Jamming and sipping a yummy microbrew sounds like some pretty good inspiration to me!

As always, thank you very much for sharing with us!

Always good to hear!

I had a chance to go to the UP last week and get some work done on the family camp up there...... some good friends were going stir-crazy and wanted to come up and do some carpentry / repairs, which I myself am really bad at. There was still some snow on the ground-- that had come off the roof. Seemed like a great idea to take advantage of Nature's cooler, which I did. With everything else that could go directly into the snow, I made little coves for the coolers we brought. So, for the first time, coolers were left outside. "Don't leave them outside" was completely blocked in my mind by "wow, a cool place to keep the coolers!"

And yup-- the bears came that night, made a mess and got away with at least $50 worth of some really good stuff.

Dropped a tree that years ago we used to pin targets on and found a bunch of Dad's .38 wadcutters in there..... firewood is good for the coming year now. Anyone needing a new splitting maul-- that Fiskars is the best I have ever used. But then I'm biased toward anything from Finland I guess. There was some logging going on on the way in and they were using another bit of fine Finnish logging equipment, a Ponsse Buffalo: https://www.ponsse.com/products/forward ... ffalo_8w#/ The young Yooper running it was a real maestro!

The unholstered Commander is owned by Rob, the guy with the Operator. It is featured in this thread: https://forum.ltwguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9506

Been a while since I've been up that way. Your post made me reminisce a bit. Pictured Rocks, pasties, Wisconsin cheese, camping by Lake Michigan...
Bet they got a good buzz. Maye a hangover, too.

Tried to get them back each subsequent night but no deal.

Relative to the above post with the weird grip safety-- this is what that is. A second version of the Fallarrest™ safety system...... the grip safety doesn't only block the trigger, it will catch the hammer unless it is depressed. Patent issued a few weeks ago.


Looks a little better in real life:

Some comments on quality in the firearms industry (and industry in general).

You see issues in every industry, manufacturers put a product on the market because the market has called for it. They are in business to make money and if they offer this thing there is a demand for, it's a sure thing it will sell.

It doesn't even have to work reliably. To a certain segment of the market, it doesn't have to work as advertised, it just has to look as advertised. It has to seem as advertised.

They put it out knowing it's not fully developed or even knowing it's unsafe (cars are a great example). Sometimes in some industries they probably continue trying to improve it behind the scenes; other times it seems certain they don't. It's the mentality of "every one we make, flies off the shelf".

There will be some blowback from some of the people who buy it, but the manufacturer has already considered the cost of this and rolled it into the price: they're not going to lose money just because their product doesn't work. They know or hope or predict that the number sent back for re-work will be statistically tolerable and within budget. The policy will be to pretend you're the first one to have this problem, and suggest that you must be doing something wrong.

Some companies, let's narrow this back down to the gun industry now, some companies have rather made a habit of this, with models and features that are not fully developed or tested, designed to sell but not necessarily to work. Sometimes the product or feature is bad enough that even profuse amounts of advertising can't keep it selling; blowback and returns are enough that the cost to the company of warranty work cannot be absorbed by the padding added to the product's price. The internet and gun magazines are onto the issues and the manufacturer can't ignore and BS their way around it ("What? Oh that's a new one on us, no one else has reported this problem. Are you sure you're not limp-wristing it?"). Without notice, without fanfare, they discontinue the model or feature and maybe even quietly offer to replace faulty parts for a while.

Sending a non-working gun back is a great way to send a message to them that "we're not putting up with this" but my observation is that in the vast majority of cases (across many brands in the gun biz) the people that didn't make it right in the first place (and very likely knew it), will not be able to fix it. It will go to a person who is firstly, not a bad or lazy or stupid person but does not understand how these things work and has not been given adequate training or resources to address the issues. What they have been given is a check list: "Customer says gun does not extract; replace extractor. Customer says gun does not feed; replace magazine. Fire three rounds, advise customer it is working perfectly now, return gun. Remind customer that we said up front gun is expected to malfunction in first (200, 400, 1000) rounds", etc. AKA "break-in period". Puh-leeze.

My $.02.

Now you keep talking like that and the gun rags are gonna stop doing articles on your guns.

Eh, find me those articles, I must have missed them!

A lot of the times, it happens because Marketing, Business and Production are all speaking different languages. Design hands Production a new product, and Production tells Business "We can probably get that to customers by [pick a month]."

Business looks at that, and asks "Can you have it ready for the Fall hunting season?" Production, with much hesitation, says "If everything goes right, we probably can."

At that, Marketing is off, with a full court press and extolling the perfection and necessity of the new product, which will be in full supply by Labor Day weekend.

At that point, they are all screwed, they just don't know it. every minor bobble means the product is less tested, less debugged, and in less supply when it absolutely has to be shipped (or Business will suffer, because the stock price/dividends will fall) and Production has to suck up the extra work of repairs on returns.

I've been doing some range maintenance. Where woods meets field, the line is getting blurred and over the years, you hardly notice it, but "woods" is winning. Some trimming is in order and, oh darn, whatever will I do with the wood? Cherry, Osage Orange, Oak. Well a bit of the O-O will be put into the drying cycle for making FRAG grips. Oops, I mean Original F-ing FRAG grips. The rest of the O.O. and the others will keep things toasty in the house and shop starting in about October..... that's pushing things a little as to drying time for burning but I think I'll be good, plenty of backup options anyway. Cherry-- oh, the smell. Like your favorite uncle is in the next room smoking his pipe. Osage Orange-- burns like hell got loose. Most BTU's per pound of anything in North America. Oak-- lots of BTU's, dries fast, good smell, very efficient.

By the end of summer I think I will have reclaimed maybe an acre for the farmer. Probably doesn't mean much in dollars but of great value to me are the exercise, the therapy of making something better without having to fret thousandths of an inch (although YES, I enjoy that very much!), the sense of accomplishment, the feeling of banking-up BTU's for the cold months and therefore not burning oil or gas, the augmentation of one's independence. And a little revenge on wood. I am generally bad at carpentry. That's pretty frustrating, so I take it out on wood with a chainsaw and splitter. And a Teletrimmer 520.

"Tele" is from Greek. We all know what it means: Distance, or, "from a distance". Telephone: sound from a distance. Television, telescope: things seen, but from a distance, etc.

So, the Teletrimmer 520. Got some branches overhanging the edge of your field? Too dang high to reach with a chain saw, say 25-40 feet up, but the ends of the branches are sagging down into your tillable area? Sick and tired of them bumping the cab of your combine, scratching the paint on your BFN (Brand, Fantastic, New) John Deer that cost three times what your house did....? And, you keep thinking that there must be a way, some way, that you can get help from John Moses Browning...?

The Teletrimmer 520, with a little help from Fiocchi and Wolf 12 gage slugs.


.... 3" branch, 4 slugs. 4" branch, 8 slugs. 6" branch, 15 slugs! Nothing's ever easy!