Snubbie trigger springs.

 First problem... hey, where is the tiny firing pin spring.  Here it is, inside the hammer spring.  Tricky.   Pay attention, T-Bolt.  The punch is pointing at it.

Remember how I said youtube videos can be dubious?  The hard part is separating the wheat from the chaff.  And I couldn't have done the job without the manufacturers posted videos

First you take everything out, then you put in the new springs and re-assemble.  Easy enough, if the springs don't get away from you.  Here it is with all the parts out.

What's the stone for?  I dressed the rebound slide.  The green arrow is point at it.   As you are looking at the pistol frame, the slide contacts the 'bottom' and 'back' wall.  Just a few passes on the stone to knock off the high points.  I don't want to grind away or polish it down.  I have no idea if that would mess with the dimensions enough to mess up the action.  Just some.

Be careful.  Don't lose any spring or parts that can spring away.  Don't mung up the screws with ill fitting drivers or pry at the side plate.  Watch the video. 

I was smart at did one gun and was able to compare it's new action with the OEM action of the other gun.  Marginally but noticeably better.  Not too light, though, and I didn't want it too light.  Can't wait to try it out.

1911: How it's made...

Youtube is a great source of knowledge.  It's a great source of... other things... too.  But the comments?  Gah!  Some samples of comments:

There's nothing "ultra premium" looking about these.  "See the file marks" no, on a 2k minimum gun I don't want to see the god damn file marks.  We get it, you make all your shit too big so you can make it smaller by hand.  No sale.

I don't believe a human hand out performs a precision CNC machine. It doesn't make sense at all to oversize build all the parts and hand file down. Simple task, hand draw a straight line and see if it's flatter than one done by a machine. Not worth the price tag in my opinion. All I hear is over size and file.

so a week of work and 900$ in parts equals 5,000$?

Hone, Lap and polish-- NOT FILE.......I have fit many slides for comp. shooters. HONE, LAP AND POLISH. Very rare to file for fit-----No go for this 1911

Still filing? I would think we would be able to write a computer program for the machinist. Too much pretty cosmetics on his guns. $2000 still reasonable I paid in OZ $500 for a Gold Cup around 1980.

You should probably never read the comments on youtube.


---

Some better comments.  Or at least commenters that sorta understand the question.

I was not impressed!   Not at all.   No mention about lower barrel lug lockup or how he does it.   No mention about equal contact on sear face from hammer hooks,, just he calibrates it at 3 lbs,   So what he flat tops a slide, that's not custom work!   So what he fits the thumb safety and grip safety!   That's expected!!!!    Even from a low budget factory gun! Custom gun my ass....   

Can your pistols shoot 1 inch groups at 50 yards?

Still not worth it to read the comments

My original 1911

It has some flaws.  It could use a new barrel, and the slide can't be tightened down.

The frame is fine.  It'd make a good base from there.

Or I could just leave my .22 conversion kit on it full time.  It fits it just fine.  At least until I get around to mating a new frame and barrel to the slide.

If I did that, I'd love to match the parkerized finish.  At least somewhat.  I like that finish.  If the gun isn't stainless, I'd want parkerized.  Why?  Low maintenance on a user pistol.  A really nicely blued or case hardened finish is pretty, but I'd worry about mussing up either.

How hard can parkerizing be?  Do I really need to sand/bead blast the parts to fully degrease them?

Gonna need to so a LOT more research on that before daring to put a slide I worked hard on in an acid bath....

Organic

Good point.  Plastic is Organic.  It's got carbon in it.

Therefore your Glock is organic.

What are you, some kinda soap dodgin' HIPPY?  A a swampy commune-dwelling tree hugger?  Get a gun made from mined materials.

Wait... oh crap.  The grips are made from wood.  That's organic.  What about micarta?  Lots of organic materials in there, you'd have to have a lot more sourcing control to eliminate tree based products, or coal or oil based carbon materials in the resin or fibers.

Dang.  That makes me a dirty hippy, too, I guess....

OH CRAP!  Steel has carbon in it.  It's organic too.

Magnets!

How do they work?

Well they coulda done a lot more

We stopped about 50 shy of a goodly number. 

They're just robots!

It's ok to shoot em!



You have no idea what prison is like here!

VE

On V E Day he wept and prayed.

.

On V J Day he wept and prayed again.

Mind Blown

Wait, Charles C. W. Cooke was born in 1985?!

Huh.

Never would have thought that.

Everyone at the metrocon fortnightly, to me, to my mind, we either William F Buckley's age.  Or my age like Jonah Goldberg.  Now I have to wrap my mind around this..

Glorious People's Revolution

And a safe full of Guns.

Slate comments on Bernie Sanders and how, being a Vermonter, is more gun friendly that most Red Commie bastards.

The part that attracted my attention?  "But before liberal Democrats flock to Sanders, they should remember that the Vermont senator stands firmly to Clinton’s right on one issue of overwhelming importance to the Democratic base: gun control."

Huh?  Is that true?  'Overwhelming importance'?  Does gun control really motivate a sizable proportion of the base?  Does that statement even pass the smell test among reliable Democrat voters that do have gun control on their personal radar?

I'd think, based on my own observations, that gun control isn't even as high as a secondary priority on the Liberal Political Punch List when it comes to what policies they want to concentrate on.

Slate is stealing a march.   But I guess you do what you have to at your media outlet when the Hillary Campaign calls and orders you to.   It doesn't have to make sense or even reflect reality.  I'm sure they will be richly rewarded.

.45 v 9mm

The Terrists in Garland Texas were dispatched to the hereafter by a .45 caliber Glock.  Glock 21?

It would have been over sooner if he had used a 1911.  When you have a lotta ammo in the magazine, you get in a gunfight and go, "Whelp.  Might as well keep shooting since I have the bullets." And you get all those superfluous shell casings at the scene.   With a 1911 you just take care of bidness.

The cop would still be firing if they were armed with 9mm.  We all know the .45 is like the thunderbolt of God.

Saw a picture of a conscious man with a wound over his right eyebrow.  There were stitches around it.  He had stepped into the hall and raise a pistol at a SWAT stick.  Got shot in the head with a MP5.  9mm out of a 16 inch barrel.  His head jerked back, recovered, and he started to aim at the cops again when the guy in front with the shield rammed into him, ending the fight.

The stitches on his forehead are from the bullet splash.  Fragments that burst from the point of impact on his skull.  It didn't actually penetrate the skull.

He didn't look old enough to be a Nam vet with a steel plate in his head.

A 9mm at room distances out of an unsuppressed 16 inch barrel and nigh perfect shot placement.  Bupkis.  Sheesh!

You never see that with .45ACP.

But seriously, I am sure the .45 can and has done something similar.  (Aside from that one cop that ran into a bullet sponge, so now he is switching to 9mm.  The thinking:  if they are gonna be a sponge might as well get em really wet.)  Not hearing about shaken off .45-to-the-head stores is probably a factor of the round not being as prevalent as the 9mm.  If most MP5s were in .45 there would be guys like Armor-Head with pictures circulating among gunnies and the call for "We need something smaller and faster like a 9mm to drill through the thicker bad guy skulls!" resonating throughout the land.

And 1911 shooters only seem more economical with their rounds in action because they have to be.  At least that is my theory.  The fight is over by the time some old fashioned old timer like me can reload after 7.  Plus we don't have the wind we did at 24 years of age.  Naw, let's take our time and use what we have.

Guys that carry just the J-Frame would have to be downright glacial...

The purpose of gun control

Is for Democrats to deny rights to black people.  Gun Crow instead of Jim Crow.  Always has been.

See?

The people suing have a chance as the Dems don't have the lock on Illinois that they used to.  Now if they were Maryland residents...  Not so much.

KSG

The combination of Valkyrie replaying on the Teevee and people get their hands done blowed off by their bullpup 12 gauge.

Well, now you can play Stauffenberg in your WWII historical recreation cosplay group.  Be the bad guy Germans by also being one of the good guy Germans.

They show some pistol technique, on film, in that movie.  How to cock a semi auto Walther PPK when you only got one hand.  So double gun content.  I'd show a clip, but there are none from the movie and youtube has a lot of...  not Tom Cruise showing the technique.  It's simple enough.  Push the slide up by the muzzle against the corner of the desk but without interfering with the barrel itself.  There is a picture still of the procedure from the movie here.  IMFDB

Damascus

Isn't that pretty?  Damascus slides from Caspian.



Damascus is just the welding together of two dissimilar steels.  The idea is one steel is hard as glass and takes a great edge.  The other is tough and flexible.  Put together you get the best properties from both and ameliorate the negative properties.  Like the fact one is brittle and can chip and shatter and the other is soft.

Now, on a gun?  The Damascus patterning just looks pretty.  And is hard to gunsmith.  And pricy.

The only thing crazier than gun people are knife people.  They get way into the weeds on steel metallurgies, and it is glorious and wonderful to watch them debate.  As an outsider.  You think 1911 v Glock arguments are heated?  The knifesmiths go at each other even more, hammer and tongs.  Literally. 

Hey you know what would be fun metals to pattern weld together to make a knife?  1095 carbon steel and Plutonium.

Gunsmith School AAR, Final?

Class was supposed to be complete.  But yet another bonus class is coming up.  One.  More.  Class.

So, my frame was corrected and ready to accept an ejector when I got to class.  Still not gotten the cuts for the sights on the frame.  But you don't need those to make a functioning pistol.

Glued the new ejector into place and into the hot box for curing.

So, then, we set up our jigs and found them to vary between each.  Surprise.  Sort that out.  Now we stone the sear face.  And the hammer hooks.  Then partial assembly to check for fitment using a sharpie as the 'smoke' from a smoke lamp.  Dry fire the gun.  Disassemble, check contact, restone the hammer or the sear, reassemble, run the gun, disassemble, rinse repeat. 

Trimmed and shaped the ejector when it was ready.

The new hammer contacted the grip safety, so the safety has to be relieved a little to get a proper fit. 

One guy in the class is a machinist IRL and initially wondered why the tooling process couldn't have done all this right in the first place.  He was convinced after all the fitment processes and the tolerance stacking, &c....  Each gun is different.  And all you need to make the WHOLE thing different is to drill a pin hole in the frame just a little off square.  And that can happen from metal expansion from the heat of the drilling.

If you wanted to build something easy you should just make a Glock. 

Anyhoo, after a lot of back to the drawing boards...  I ended up with a functioning gun.  The brass all arcs in a uniform rainbow to 4 o'clock, too. 

I can't lie, I did a little happy dance.

So what will happen in the next class?  Fine tuning.  Maybe adjust the leaf spring for a different trigger break.  Hey, the ejector sticks out the back and looks ugly, we can shape that in the next class. 

And we ordered Caspian frames Saturday.  For the next class.  In the fall.  With my very own serial number...  001.  I figure there is no way I'll make New Jovian Thunderbolt branded 1911s past 999, so....

twitter

So much for my reports.  Folks have gotten shot during the Bawlmer Unpleasantness.  But these may be incidental shootings of a street retail pharamacologice nature and not necessarily related to the anti-police riots.  Most aren't in the designated riot areas.  Not rioters shooting non rioters or cops.  Maybe taking advantage of the police focusing attention elsewhere to deal with their own business matters and competition.

---

Also Michael Moore

He wants my gun confiscated and now he wants the prisons emptied and all the cops disarmed too...  Hmmmmm.  Why do you think this is...

HOT Damn!

According to this, glowball warmening may make my house beach front property.

I feel like Mr. Luthor.

Riot deaths

Hey, didja notice not so many people have died in this generational outburst of rioting?

Every coupla dozen years or so there seem to be riots.  Look at the Rodney King stuff a generation ago, and the '68 riots a generation before that.

The current dust up might not be complete yet, but so far... Not as many people got dead compared to the 90s.  And that dust up wasn't as rough as the 60s.

Homicide IS trending down.  All over.  And we can't take credit for that by saying "because CCW!"

I wonder why...  Change in cop culture and the pols that control them tolerate less head bashing?  Fewer Bolshi agitators willing to use murder to promote revolution?

What about the generation before 68?  What were the riots like then.  Buddy the whole world was rioting.  That was WWII and Korea.

Workweek Complete

If you don't want to kill some kid

"For having a pocketknife in his pocket, then don't make it illegal for him to have a pocketknife in his pocket."

This.

Or bit of white powder, or ground up plant leaves.

Speaking of plant leaves, the way things are going, eventually someone is going to die in police custody because someone pass a law about tobacco and its possession.

Sure police are rough and mean and yada yada at times, but the blame goes on the people that passed the law.   Politicians.  And the people that voted for them.  Us.

You gotta be careful, how you vote.  And hit more lawmakers in the nose with a rolled up newspaper.   And I'm not talking about shouting at the 'other' side's pols.  They expect you to yell at them.  You gotta correct your friends.   YOUR side.