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BBBBill, I have never messed with that cut. But I share your irritation and I should be saying, "yes, every gun" but for some reason I look at it and say, "Geez, again? I hate that! Guess I'll live with it."

A friend recently bought a Tisas and the cut is not deep enough so it's hard getting the slide off 'cause the link binds at the bottom of the cut-- obviously that's part of what you're talking about. That one I've seen in a few other guns, I don't have a specific memory of deepening that slot for that reason but I probably have, I mean I know I wouldn't let that out of the shop. But I don't routinely address it for the dual dents at the rear. The should make that cut from the factory with a 45° chamfer starting at the bottom.

I forgot about these parts having been lightened….. this probably saved another .12 OZ…. You can kinda see that the bottom FRAGs are not textured on top, they are smooth..... a boon to daily carry.

This ESPT plunger tube blues off nicely. Making sure it goes flat to the frame / full contact is worth the time.

It’s always something. Many 1911’s you can push the mag release too far in, pinning the mag in place. It would be so easy to make every mag catch lock a GD sixteenth of an inch longer so it becomes a stop. I don’t know what other guys do but this is my cure. They probably do the same thing. Not all mag catches need this and anyway many people would never notice the issue but as I say about many things, if you can induce it, it can happen on its own.
A chunk of metal from a Remington 870 factory folding stock. It only needs to be a tiny piece but making it tiny after silver brazing makes the brazing easier. Nice to have at least one thing that's easy to hold on to.

Flame ON. A little flux, a little silver…. (very little)

Roughed down. I will indicate the original shaft so it has no runout, and turn the new part to a matching diameter. Length will be adjusted with a file.

I remember running into that with a pistol back in the 1980s. All i did was drop a ball bearing of the needed size down the spring before inserting the rod and assembling the catch.

I had more problems with the catch itself, being rough on the face against the mag, and the toolmarks causing drag, etc. One other had a wire edge on the binding side, and once I dressed that off, things were good.

Back then, mag catches weren't the problem i faced oftern. instead, it was toolmarks on the breechface and sidewalls, or short and rough chambers. i ran into so many of those I bought a chambering reamer and routinely used calipers to measure chamber depth,and reamed to spec, minus .005" or so, or until it was clean and not over max.

Good moves fer shur.

My SAAMI standard reamer goes into every single 1911 (or anything else .45 ACP for that matter) that comes near here. It is surprising, even shocking, how many 1911's have chambers that are unduly short and tight. I get chips where there should really be none.

Breech-face roughness and mag catch roughness, well, let's just say "roughness" can sure be an issue. One thing sliding against another thing is not always an issue but when you apply a lot of pressure 90° to the sliding axis, things can get, ah, sticky. The more pressure, the more sticky, "depending". Lube, materials, relative hardnesses, rough / smooth, all figure in.

For a while, every Colt that came through had a wire edge on the bottom corner of the leftside breechface, where the case rim had to slide up. Feeding was, shall we say, marginal until i stoned that off, and smoothed the sidewall. (This was the 1980s)

Somebody at Colt was slacking on that production run or runs.

Rust.

Saw this the other day at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, TX.

Ned. WOW on that one from the museum.

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Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
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How to fit a mag catch in 11 hours or more.

I have had a few things over the years on a 1911 that did not go easy, some things I had to do over. But I never had anything actually beat me. This is a bout as close as I've come to not winning.

It's a mag catch fer cryin' out loud. You drop it in and go, right? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

A gun I've been working on for a while..... all's well, it's done, just do the polishing and blasting and send it off. 250-ish rounds through it, everything works perfectly, including the mag catch. The mag catch got the standard work-over, to make its motion smooth, with no grit, no hitches-- that by itself is a whole set of steps. Mini-FRAG on the hemispherical button top. The only thing left is, get the right side (keyhole shape) polished to match the frame. That means having it perfectly flush, neither high nor low, polishing lines matching the fore-aft lines of the frame. Throughout the process on this gun it's been sitting about .0035 proud, not prob, take care of it in final polishing. This is about the time I discover that it's possible to pin the mag in the gun by pushing the button too far. In 250-ish rounds it has never happened to me but I fix it by extending the mag catch shaft.

I realize at this point, the the .0035 is variable. If I tap-in the RH side of the mag catch it will go perfectly flush. If I leave it .0035 high and polish off that .0035, at some point it's going to go .0035 below flush. Who TF cares, right? It's less than most human hairs. And me, I'm the guy who rolls my eyes when a guy says,
"OMG, I finally hand-cycled my 1911 once and now there's an awful scratch where the hammer was dragging underneath!". But.... this is a brand-new, high-end custom gun for a discerning customer. I want it to be right in every aspect.

I try.... everything. The body of the mag catch is not a distinct, true diameter and is pretty undersized. I check a few others, they are are the same-ish. I already have a considerable amount of work in this mag catch so I want to use it. It goes to the laser welder (yes, sometimes even new stuff can benefit). I mess around with it the better part of a day and can't get to the bottom of it. Finally: "OK, you WIN!"

I get another mag catch, an extended Nowlin. They have been my fave for a long time. This one does what one hopes for, it does what works for most guns most of the time: it drops in and is close to perfect. But. It too can pin the magazine. And on the button side, what locates it in the mag catch hole is the smaller diameter of the button itself, not the body diameter, which as with the first one, is very undersized. The issue with this? And again, who cares? But at this point--- I will have GD perfection if it kills me-- the issue is, it will wear the bluing off the side of the button diameter, which will be visible. I bet I've done a bunch of guns in the past that do exactly this but now it's personal. In the frame, the button hole and the body hole are perfectly concentric. The button diameter and body diameter of the mag catch are pretty close but with the body being so far undersized..... I silver solder a ring on it and kinda botch the grinding-back-down of it. I mill a slot in it and silver a piece in on the side where it really needs the bump-over and OD grind it to exactly where it needs to be and.... halelujah, I'm there. Extend the mag catch shaft (the other extended one was not a good match), and done. Ish.

Now, "All I have to do" is put mini-FRAG onto the new one.

I silvered a a ring onto it:


That didn’t really get me there so I silvered an insert into it on the side I wanted to bump over:

Whew.

Un-Freakin-Real... This, this right here... This kind of stuff is why you are looked at as one of the best to ever do it.

Sheesh, Nice work Ned.

Thanks. I'll give you three days to stop talking like that

that's taking things way beyond the basics! Incredible work

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Hmmm, methinks you mighta been able to just make one from scratch with less time and effort.

Funny you say that. The time it would take to make one, plus the time it would take to repair one..... I swear that's how much time I spend contemplating the choice sometimes......

While a 1911 is out for bluing I'm taking a little time to maintain some things around here. New tool heads for making my OCKS AR15 carrier key screws. (Photo deleted).

[forehead smack] So that's how he does it.

NRA Annual Meeting in Indy-- a good time. Impressions-- Everyone was so polite. One could joke that, yeah, everyone's armed but it's not that, not at all. It is simply that gun people seem to be widely and by nature, nice folks. Mustering for breakfast at our motel (and I have noted this at previous NRA's, and SHOT, and classes, and matches....) was always pleasant, meeting other attendees.

Wife Dianna pointed out that going by the anti-gunner logic, it should be a dangerous place. Carrying is not discouraged. But, every year, every venue, you could say that the crime rate at NRA, where XX% of the people (my guess: 25% or more) are armed, the crime rate is ZERO.

Saw lots of friends, some that I see regularly and some that I seldom see but are nonetheless good friends. and, yes-- this is part of the reason for going. John VanZyke of VZ grips-- on the surface he's a happy-go-lucky guy, funny and friendly, and he is those things, but also-- to me, one of the most accomplished and impressive guys in the firearms industry. Talk about a self-made man. My son spotted Ken Hackathorn and we all went to the sidelines, got the lad introduced to Ken and had a very nice chat. I had not spoken to him for several years but you would not have known it. This is a guy who has done it all, and does not beat his chest about it. He might mention something interesting he's done if doing so will benefit YOU. He doesn't talk about it to benefit himself.

One guy we would have loved catching up with didn't make it at the last minute. A certain top-tier 1911 smith whose first and last initials are the same as those of that guy who designed that gun...... which I find suspicious, but in a good way..... Jason Burton. Well maybe next time, pal. I never asked your middle initial because if it's not "M" I might be a little let down

Another top-tier guy who is also a (yet another) super-nice guy, I learned at the last minute he was there, Pete Single. I went back to the VZ booth where he was hanging but was too late. Pete has his paw prints all over the 1911 biz going back a long way.

Silencer Central was a popular display; they were processing ATF applications for silencer purchases on the spot in a very efficient manner. These guys know their stuff.

We could not get a reservation at St. Elmo's, one of the best places in the-- world, maybe -- to get a steak. Well... that's OK as we are less and less drawn to being in a city these days. I will say though that previous visits to downtown Indy have been very nice. The Civil War monument in the center of town is a museum inside-- a small, but very tall, museum.

The wife and I did a trip to Indy a number of years back, for a museum exhibition of "treasures from the Louvre" or some-such.

We were struck by several things;

1) The number of items from the Louvre, that came from Italy, dated "donated by such-and-such, 1798". Hmm, donated as: "leave now and we won't chase you" donation?

2) There was a real effort to turn the victorian-era section of town, with big mansions, into a B&B district. i wonder how that worked out?

Once in a while it’s fun to go to lengths to fab something up that really maybe ought not to be fabbed—when we can just go out and buy it. It’s kinda like playing “what if”…. What if we can’t get parts? What if we have to salvage the old stuff that got tossed? Many of my personal guns have a few things pieced together that would not normally be, just because it’s, well, my gun and if need be I can fix it. It’s a good way to see what the limit is. With silver, I tell ya, it’s an incredibly strong bond. Dad showed me how to do it when I was a kid and I’ve made good use of it ever since. I remember when I first worked as a machinist in high school, inserted carbide tooling was not that much of a thing yet, and we used tons of lathe bits that had the carbide silvered onto a square shank. I used those turning rough cast iron wheels, and large 42” wheels fabbed from steel. I never saw a lathe bit come off short of an absolute crash where other things also got destroyed. (AKA young Ned learning a lesson).

Yet another piece of the old Remington folding stock…. gets re-purposed to, well, a much higher purpose than being a Remington folding stock!


On the inside. The problem here? On the Springfield MIM'd grips safeties, the hammer rowel recess is excessively deep, you can't go too high on the sweep or it will break through. What's nice about them though is that being an injection molded part, they are cored out and very light.


The near final product


Can it take the beating of the hammer rowel banging it? Not shown, added metal to make sure the hammer bottoms out forward of the clearance cut.

1911’s I have recently run across: an actual carry gun. Regular guy, regular gun.


And another with a Pachmyr product that I was never aware existed. Anyone ever seen one of these?


Some months ago. This weight-saving measure was actually worthwhile. I don’t remember what I saved but G10 is not light, so hefting just the grips, it was quite noticeable:

More on the test-bed BHP: working to make the grip safety as if it never happened.


Time is often not kind to plastic: a 1968 Colt.

Reincarnation can be a good thing!
Where's the mainspring housing pin?
Yes. Pretty common at one time. I may have one rattling around in a parts box.
Educate me as I am an amateur wannabe machinist. Single lip cutter? Shop fabbed?

Yes, the pin is around somewhere out of frame.

And yes, that single-lip cutter is one that I made years ago. Notice the hex body-- it's made from a stripped-out drawbar for a Bridgeport

Waste not, want not. I don't throw away much. Looks like I'm not alone in that.

Some magwell work. Milled:

After a bit of time with the ultrasonic polisher, a bit more time still needed:

Shorten the grip screws for thin grips, my pref given the choice. I generally don’t use the short grip screws offered, with the stepped head. I have better results taking regular grip screws and shortening them—also, that way they look a tad more classic. Sometimes it’s tempting to say “they are not too long and won’t protrude into the magwell,” but—what about in 20-40-60-200 years when they have been over-tightened a hundred times. So I shorten them to “no longer than they need to be” . Chamfering the ends could be done by several means but I have a special cutter and fixture so they look real nice. Probably no one would notice but the problem is, “I know”. The “1/2°” on the cutter is not relevant. It’s a ½ ° cutter that broke off and I just used the remaining shank to make a split cutter.

Carry guns and dust rhinos. This pic is by far not the worst!

I will just say this. “The Monday gun.” Burrs abound, kinda shabby, but none of that roughness really, truly, hurts anything. Still... that curly burr would eventually have fallen off and caused—who knows what? 1981 Series ’70. Some screwdriver marks too.


And finally—how rough can you go!? And yet—I cannot run Colt down for this….. none of these areas really, truly, need to be smooth, although ideally I like the fit of the MSH to be smooth and no-slop, like a slide to frame fit. Can't promise I do it on every gun though.

No pride at all. The last one looks like it was worked by a drunk monkey with a cold chisel.

Colt seems to have gone through some phases, don't they? I've kinda lost track of "when the best" and "when the worst". Often it was said to be related to Union issues. When I started my tool & die apprenticeship I was surprised to learn something on the first day that had not been mentioned: I "had" to join the union. At age twenty I already had a bad feeling about that. I just wanted to make my own way, try to work hard and do a good job and let that be my "representation". So I was going to resist it. Dad said, "Don't make waves, it's the Teamsters!" I moved on after a couple years to another shop and it was a good move. I never missed the union and I'm sure they didn't miss me.

Dude... not sure if its the macro pics or what... that Pony looks rough. Esp where the MSH is at.

I have no doubt you will have her running like a top though.

Yeah once the stitches from handling it come out

The 1988 .38 Super mentioned above, has had its going through and is back with its owner. I told him now might be a good time to sell it if he doesn't use it and he said, simply, "No, I want it".

I wish I could find the results for the 1988 steel challenge, they are here somewhere but buried pretty deep. I remember doing "OK" with it but many of the competitors there were on a whole 'nother level.

“Mr. Armorer Sir, can you take a look at my 1911…?”
This week in Patrol Rifle class. What do you suppose happened here? The thing that always brings this result….. a squib. I didn’t get really clear info on conditions when it happened but this always makes me think, “Do your tap-rack-bang only after careful consideration and don’t try to set a world speed record doing it unless the zombie is almost on top of you!”


I love it when after a few days of class and students realize why I’m really there, and we all get to know each other a little, they’ll ask me if it would be OK for them to bring in a personal gun or Grandpa’s old whatever and have me take a look. When I can fit it in (always) it’s an honor and a pleasure to do this for these guys that do one of society’s toughest jobs.