Let's see your 1911's

[Jäger]

Yet they left home cause they didn’t want to max out at $17.00 dollars an hour.

Migration happens.

Yeah, it does. But if they thought they were stuck at $17/hr when PROOF, Applied Materials, etc have banners outside their businesses 24/7 saying "we're hiring", and they pay more than $17/hr to start (with benefits), I'm going to guess that what you're assuming the reason was maybe ain't correct. Super One has similar signs, and they're paying almost the same to start, again with benefits, if you can manage to bag groceries and retrieve carts from the parking lot.

That's starting wage - not maxed out.

Maybe they leave because after growing up watching an entertainment industry and popular culture tell them guns aren't cool, if you aren't urban than you're a loser, cowboys and farmers and loggers and miners are dorks, etc., then they migrate.

I can imagine their surprise when they discover the utopia entertainment and culture vultures sold them ain't all it was sold as being. Just like our transplants from the coast areas of Washington, Oregon, and California discovered that the same bill of goods they were sold wasn't quite what it was supposed to be.

But you're right: if they've finished an apprenticeship somewhere else and are still there snivelling about how bad it is where they are now instead of moving back to Montana or somewhere else with a journeyman ticket in their pocket, that's all on them.

 

[Jäger]

My '95 I heard all the tales of how Montanans disliked Californians, and their big money that was buying up all of Montana's land and erecting massive log homes and creating new ranches.

No, that's not it (assuming I can appoint myself as spokesman).

It's not about that - the couple whose small business empire in Sacramento includes Farralon Boats are friends of ours and nobody blinked when they stopped by to write a cheque for a $13 million little fixer-upper on the Swan River. Great people; great neighbors - that would also be true if all they had was an old RV up on blocks on a tiny piece of land tucked in at the end of a dirt road.

Furthermore, nowhere near the majority are 'big money': big money doesn't describe the average person teaching or attending university in Missoula, for example.

The issue is they bring their Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc politics and political machines with them. Missoula, by way of example, two years ago easily had enough votes to pass gun control measures that would have been more at home in San Francisco. Thankfully, preemptive state laws killed that quickly - but they had the votes to do it. That wouldn't have even seen the light of day 10 - 15 years ago; it would have been political suicide to attempt it.

There aren't enough millionaires like Robert Redford and Jane Fonda coming to places like Montana for their votes to make the slightest difference.

Now what they do with their money, funding the right groups to "improve" Montana, Wyoming, etc. to make it feel more at home to them... that's another matter. Whether politics, particularly gun control politics, stopping coal mining to save the world, or efforts to lock up land and stop public access for hunting.

To try and drift somewhat back onto 1911's, the fight against our open carry laws, relaxing of other gun control laws here in Montana that restrict 1911 owners and others aren't lead by born here Montanans - it's recent transplants who brought their politics and wokeness with them. The failed House candidate from Berkley California, and that university, has been trying to fix Montana politically practically since she moved here from Berkley. And she ain't done yet. More restrictive gun laws are right at the top of what she believes are necessary fixes Montana has to make.

She didn't come here with big money; at least in this area of Montana, who cares. Worse, she came here with Berkley ideas.

 

[Joshua]

Yeah, it does. But if they thought they were stuck at $17/hr when PROOF, Applied Materials, etc have banners outside their businesses 24/7 saying "we're hiring", and they pay more than $17/hr to start (with benefits), I'm going to guess that what you're assuming the reason was maybe ain't correct.

You are probably correct. Ten years can change the job market quite a bit. A lot of these “kids” that I’m talking about showed up during the “Great Recession”. They are now in their late twenties and early thirties. Many are married to a local now who doesn’t want to leave their friends and family.

Where I work never slowed down. The trade schools from all around the region were pushing these kids to apply out west.

I like Washington just fine. Been here 15 years. Plenty of people here hate my kind. I was born a seventh generation Californian.

My grandparents on my Mom’s side were very upset with all the changes in the California’s demographics.

I just really have very little sympathy for this particular rant. Places change. I’ve come to accept that is just gonna happen. The coastal areas in the west have absorbed much more than other areas. I’ve seen the change and am powerless over it.

But more than migration, population growth happens. In my lifetime, US population in 1974, 213 million. US population in 2021, 331 million.

Them people gotta go somewhere.

 

[david s]

I've mentioned on this forum before that my favorite bumper sticker here is "Missoula only 20 Minutes from Montana". I'm sitting in my living room in Missoula as I type this.

 

[462]

Jager,
My post wasn't meant to disparage the citizens of Western Montana. Despite all I'd heard, prior to visiting and buying property in the area, the people were extremely friendly and helpful. But I understand the mentality of not wanting outsiders trying to change things. More than one person brought that up, and I said that that was never anything I'd consider doing. I love the area for what it is, not for what I'd want it to be. In the Dillon Safeway, my wife met an old man who struck up a conversation and asked where she was from. He said he was from the Big Hole area, and that a California transplanted lady move onto the property next to his and put up a fence. She became an instant non-neighborly neighbor. Dirt roads and no streetlights are perfectly okay.

Anyway, back to the thread's original content. Here is my .45 ACP 1911 Randall, made sometime round '83 or '84. I bought it slightly used in '95 for $395, it's seen many thousands of 452460s and 452374s, and several hundred Hornady 230-grain XTP/HPs. Except for the Pachmayr grips and Brownells hex screws, the only non-original part is a Cylinder and Slide sear spring that gives a 3-pound trigger. Interesting, the barrel has 10 grooves. It's a keeper and a shooter, and not a safe queen.

 

[462]

For anyone interested, here is information on the uniqueness of Randall:

The History of the Randall Firearms Company

The History of the Randall Firearms Company

sightm1911.com

 

[JonB]

Not unique like a Randall, but it's the only 1911 that I currently own.
RIA in 38 super.
Aftermarket ebay grips that no one else wanted to bid on,
got 'em for $12.95 shipped ...but one scale had a slight warp.
The well worn grips shown on the bottom photo came off a Argentine Colt 1927.

 

[Cherokee]

462 - thanks, that was an interesting read. I remember the guns but never saw one.

 

[USSR]

My first job out of high school was at Remington Rand. Of course, this was well after the war, and they were making this thing called a typewriter.

Don

 

[Cherokee]

Don - funny thing, the typewriter is a thing of the past (well mostly) already but the 1911 keeps going.

 

[Jäger]

My post wasn't meant to disparage the citizens of Western Montana. Despite all I'd heard, prior to visiting and buying property in the area, the people were extremely friendly and helpful. But I understand the mentality of not wanting outsiders trying to change things.

To you and Joshua; it isn't just wanting to try and change things. It's when so many of them tell you they moved from Seattle, San Francisco, etc and give you a laundry list of how the taxes were terrible, government wanted to run their lives, etc and so forth - and then they proceed to try and push exactly the same kind of policies into law in the state they allegedly moved to in order to get away from that. I don't get nearly as annoyed with the ones who arrive to announce to all within hearing that they're the Caped Crusader, and they're here to lead the local brainless unwashed yokels to the Sweetness And Light.

Here is my .45 ACP 1911 Randall, made sometime round '83 or '84. I bought it slightly used in '95 for $395, it's seen many thousands of 452460s and 452374s, and several hundred Hornady 230-grain XTP/HPs. Except for the Pachmayr grips and Brownells hex screws, the only non-original part is a Cylinder and Slide sear spring that gives a 3-pound trigger. Interesting, the barrel has 10 grooves. It's a keeper and a shooter, and not a safe queen.

Randall is a name I had almost forgotten about; that's a very nice looking pistola. If you take out that 3lb bullseye trigger and swap in something heavier intended for high adrenelene business when in Montana, that would make a darned good Bear Wrench loaded with WFN type ammunition from Double Tap, Underwood, etc. I would guess you have a handgun there that is worth much, much more now than when you bought it 25 years ago.

Now I'm going to have to go read that Randall link posted above.

 

[462]

Thanks, Jager. Its value has gone up a lot, for sure, but it's my only 1911 so will continue to shoot it. As much as we'd like to, I doubt we'll ever make it back to Montana. Ol' Griz will have to roam about without fear of me and the Randall.

 

[Jäger]

The well worn grips shown on the bottom photo came off a Argentine Colt 1927.

View attachment 19163

How often in life do you see things like those grips and just wish you could see what they've seen on their way to getting that well worn?

 

[JonB]

How often in life do you see things like those grips and just wish you could see what they've seen on their way to getting that well worn?

NO doubt. I'd love to hear about their life before I got 'em.

I bought a 1927 back in the 90s. Back then I had little respect for keeping guns original or the original parts with a antique. That 1927 got some nicer looking and historically incorrect grips. Then the gun spent some time on the gunshow table, until someone else wanted it more than I did. Then, the old worn grips spent 2 decades in the drawer. I put them on this RIA, soon after I bought it a couple years ago, as I disliked the smooth plain RIA grips. A couple weeks later I bought the US ebay grips. I posted the photo above at the other forum, and someone with an old Argentine Colt asked to buy them, as he didn't have the correct grips for his, so the grips got sent off. It's like a happily ever after type of story, LOL.

 

[Creeker]

A few I've owned but never warmed to them. The bottom is my present.

 

[Charles Graff]

It is very hard to explain my attachment to the 1911 pistol, because it not rational i.e. based on reason. I like Colt and Smith and Wesson DA revolvers, Ruger SA revolvers, Browning Hi-Power pistols and many others. I suppose my attachment to the 1911 comes from early years when I depending on one as my one and only do-all handgun. It was my companion and protector in many lonely and remote places in the Texas Big Bend. I can still pick up one and tell you how many rounds are in the pistol. When I pick up one with a full mag, a sense of well being seems to come over me. Whatever the reason, I am not truly comfortable, if one is not within easy reach. A good Colt GM is about one foot from my elbow as I key this in. BTW: I have the same attachment to Springfield 03A3 rifles. I fired one and carried one so much in the early 60's that I could almost wish a bullet to the target. The rifle still feels like a part of me, an extension of my body and brain. Some things just can't be explained, they have to be experienced to understand. The emotional connection with firearms is not something we discuss on boards like this. We like to talk about the objective features, pros and cons but not the emotional connection.

 

[creosote]

These haven't been out for fresh air in while.
Couple series 80s, "43" remington rand, and one inglis w/China writing, and a German marked w/no mag safety.

 

[Herb in pa]

Colt Series 70 Gold Cup with Kart National Match barrel, accurized by a former Air Force armorer
Colt 22 Caliber conversion unit on lightweight AMT frame
Colt Government 380 with full length guide rod and adjustable sights (my mini Gold Cup)
Colt 32 ACP

 

[JWFilips]

No Photos yet from me but I'm with Creeker That is what my Remington 1911 Rs looks like and it is a smooth shooter for the $'s
Just wish I had adjustable sights so I am working on that!

 

[david s]

Have some 1911's and Hi Powers but I think "Herb in pa's" Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless makes about the neatest 32 or 380 ACP going.