One thing about taking these 1911 Armorers classes? It's RUINED me for factory made guns. It's ruined me for most high end guns and even most custom guns.
"Well, T-Bolt, I guess you are regretting going with the 1911 instead of something good, like my Glock/M&P/HaitchUndKaye. Hur hur hur!"
It's ruined THOSE for me too. I didn't take the Glock armorer class (I want to) but the little snippets I've seen in a bleed over to the 1911 classes? Those modern semi-autos are similar, if less finicky to correct. And more disposable.
Taking the 1911 classes didn't make me an expert 1911 gunsmith. It made me a near expert 1911 critic. There are some things to do that are cheap or easy to make any 1911 better. Things with extractor tension, ejector shaping, or an adjustment you can make to the slide stop to make it better. There are some parts that are more drop-in for me now because I can easily do some of the minor fitting, confidently. Great.
The trick is, now, for me, if I ran into a factory 1911 that had few flaws, and, most importantly, had a halfway decent lockup, out of the boss, with the barrel hood, barrel lugs, and barrel to slide fit... I mean you were really lucky there... All I'd want to do then is trigger/sear/hammer work. That would be a great gun, that I could do preventative maintenance on, easily, and stay ahead of it.
THAT's the class I want to take now. JUST the jeweler type work filing and fitting the trigger guts. If the sights are already good, and the trigger is tuned, the gun can be loose and still be great. I want 5 weekends of just stoning the trigger parts. Even if I am just making a good trigger 5 times for one gun.
I spent some time learning from some of the best how to tune, repair, and build M-14 type rifles. Same deal. Now I want to fix every one I see.
ReplyDelete"Wouldn't take much, are you sure you don't want to drop a few bucks into it? We could really make that thing shoot."