Rebuilding a custom 1911

A Colt 1911 got sent to us in order to make some improvements after work by another gunsmith(s). Unfortunately, the customer got the gun back after the initial work but it just wasn’t all that he was hoping for. He sent it to us to see what we could do with it.

Consider this excellent quote from John Ruskin:

It’s unwise to pay too much but it’s unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing you bought it to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot.

It can’t be done.

If you deal with the lowest bidder, it’s well to add something for the risk you run.
And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better!

When having custom 1911 pistol work completed, ensure you know exactly what you are getting and that you go with a gunsmith whom you know can perform good work on the specific platform you are getting worked on. It costs much more to fix poor work than it does to just pay for a reputable shop that specializes in the desired platform to perform the work how you want it the first time.

Unfortunately, this particular customer is paying two different shops about the same amount of money to do most of the work twice.

Specific problems to be addressed are the beavertail fitting, improperly cut front sight dovetail, incorrect barrel fitting, very poor frontstrap and backstrap checkering, poor or no blending of the magwell, and a lack of any action work on the firing mechanism besides the removal of the Series 80 safety mechanism (which may or may not have been specified however we believe in creating good trigger jobs with the factory safety intact).

Some things that the customer is having us add that were not on the original work list is a tight slide to frame fit, different sights, a welded magwell to replace the S&A magwell, and many cosmetic enhancements like line straightening and serrating the rear of the slide, etc.

We’ve included some pictures – along with notes – of the work as it is being completed below, but you’ll find many more photos of the work and an informative discussion going on over at SigForum.com.

General notes:
Click on any of the images to enlarge.

The rear sight dovetail had to be re-cut slightly as the original Novak cut was not quite straight in order to install this 10-8 rear sight.

The front sight dovetail was not cut to the correct depth, we had to to weld up the dovetail and reshape the slide and we will cut a new dovetail to our specs.

Front sight dovetail re-cut and sight installed.

The frontstrap checkering was too crooked to be straightened, also the frontstrap is now too thin to remove the checkering and re-cut it. This leaves only one option; the EGW checkered insert. As you can see from the pics, this requires cutting off the original checkering and shaping the frontstrap to match the radius of the checkered insert.

A perfectly straight shelf must be made at the top of the frontstrap for the insert to butt up against with absolutely no gaps as the top will not be welded and blended. The insert will be welded completely up both sides and then the sides will be blended and bordered.

Obviously, the radius of the frontstrap can not be made to perfectly blend with the insert and therefore when you blue the gun (or Superblack as this will be) there is the potential for pockets of caustic bluing salts to get stuck behind the insert and cause rusting or leeching. That is why we cut the vertical slots in the original frontstrap to allow the bluing salts to drain out from behind the frontstrap insert.

Everything is bead blasted. Notice that the top of the checkering looks seamless; since the checkering is not welded across the top this can only be achieved if the shelf across the top is perfectly square and fits the checkered insert exactly. Since we don’t have a CNC milling machine the shelf is mostly cut by hand which makes it much more time consuming to do and still keep it perfectly square and even.

There are plenty of additional photos, more progress updates and discussion over at the SigForum discussion thread… Check it out.