Not again!

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Took the 1911 and 200 rounds to the range this morning. Load was a 200 swc, powder coated and sized .451, over 4.2 gr of Promo.
Shot well enough for me to load a bunch more of the same.

Good news is that ver since I got some GI feed lip magazines I have had ZERO failures to feed. Well over 1000 rounds and they all fed perfectly. I really like that.

Here is the bore after shooting 180 rounds and after ONE dry patch.

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Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
First photo is 42 rounds, 6 full mags, at 10 yards using both hands.
Second photo is 42 rounds weak hand only. Left arm got awful tired. My weak hand trigger finger is also far weaker.
C1FCD04A-B68D-4E81-B264-CA5AF43CA99A.jpeg511C34E7-69B7-4244-ACCD-05F730FE713C.jpeg
I also took a video of the weak hand shooting. See Ian, I can shoot lefty too!

 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Now the bad news. I took 200 rounds, only fired 180 or so.

Yet another rear sight problem. This time the windage screw broke!

1F40D8E1-F6BB-4D62-B966-3B4ACC000E90.jpeg8347D982-C61A-4076-BEA9-450D949CC76D.jpeg

At least I know where to get replacement parts now. I think I will get a spare of each screw. The fact they failed this close together is amazing?
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Excellent all the way around. So are you saying that some guy over a hundred years ago, working with hammers,
torches, pencil and paper and a few files knew more about making magazines for a 1911 pistol than all the modern CNC new gen
solid modeling 21st century experts?:rofl:

Of course that 'some guy' being John Moses Browning. :)

Some 1911s will tolerate the modern magazines, many are far happier with the original JMB design.

And a clean bbl after shooting is a joyous thing.

I think both screws were being overstressed by the impact of the hammer (IIRC).

Good shooting. For weak hand, I can shoot faster and better by tilting the gun slightly to the right
and putting my right arm across my chest, tensing the muscles of the upper chest area seems to give
a better platform for recoil recovery, which is up and right instead of straight up, when tilted.

Practice will teach your left index finger this new trick reasonably well. Better to have at least a
halfway decent 'program' put in place now in case you sometime suddenly and unexpectedly have
an urgent need for that skill.:oops:

Bill
 
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Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Yes Bill, JMB knew what he was doing. My hybrid lip mags will be collecting dust for a while.

New sight parts are on order already.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Many guns will tolerate the hybrids well, but fewer are fully happy with the parallell lip mags, or at least
I can tell a difference in feed smoothness with dummy rounds and no spring, hand cycling the action.
But there are a bunch of 1911s out there that will feed dead reliably from pretty much any of the modern,
decently made, lip shapes. A tribute to the guns, that so many will run with way wrong mag lip setups, which
are unfortunately pretty much the standard these days.

Interesting side note....a friend has a Springfield Armory (modern) 1911 that he won in a match some years
ago which has always been a PITA feeder, but it is in 9mm. We recently took this one as a project. Examination
showed that the mags he has, the high build quality Bill Wilson mags are pure parallel feed lip designs, and some
other brand (I forget the brand right now) had much earlier release point. All of them jammed quite frequently,
and my first comment was the unkind.....'so wadda ya expect from 9mm in a gun designed for .45?" Of course, others
have had 9mm that ran fine in the 1911. I took one of the Wilson parallel lip mags and very carefully refiled the lips
to a long tapered, rising round design, more like the original 1911 GI mag lip shapes.

This let the round (tapered round, too) come up quite a bit, maybe 1/8th inch over the travel from full rear to where
it pops out of the lips. This mod fed 40 rds flawlessly in initial testing. Too little to prove much, but a definite good trend
when it wouldn't get a full mag clean before.
I was heading back to the origin JMB concept of controlled round feed and rising cartridge.

An added screwup factor is that the tapered rounds want to curve as they are stacked, so in a straight mag, they
tilt nose down. The second round in the mags are way clear of the first round, except at the base, so little support
for the feeding round to not nosedive, which is what it was doing. Letting the round rise as it came forward let it
hit the feed ramp much higher and it went up and in, not down and stop.

My friend was going to run a lot more ammo through it and then try his hand at filing another one of the Wilson
mags to match the one I did.

Bill
 
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Spindrift

Well-Known Member
It’s a cosmic balance-thing. Once you establish the necessary skills to fix certain gun parts, they will break all the time.

Might I suggest my own system. I keep spares of certain vital parts, and as long as I know where I put them, I’ll never need them :)
 

Ian

Notorious member
I keep spares of certain vital parts, and as long as I know where I put them, I’ll never need them :)

I do that at work. Stock parts so I will never have to order them again and the shop will never see that job again. Works at home, too. Stuff I need is always stuff I don't have spares for or did and either threw or gave them away after 20 years of not needing them or can't find them.

Brad, my Trijicon three-dot systems just don't seem to have that problem....
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
I will bet that this is Phase 2 of the hammer strike issue. Those two screws were getting literally pounded
each time the hammer dropped. Once you replace this one, probably will not break again.

Bill
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I bet I don’t break another one. Having a spare on hand does about guarantee it.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Parts have already shipped.
Got another 300 rounds loaded with same load and another 540 bullets cast. Need to get another 2-3 K bullets cast.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Now you're catching on. I only have about 2" of .45s left in the bucket, time for me to cast some more too.
 

462

California's Central Coast Amid The Insanity
Put 85 rounds of Lyman's 452374, with Unique and Trail Boss, through the Randall, yesterday. Thought Unique was the accuracy load till I shot the Trail Boss.
 

Intheshop

Banned
Looks like the gun is twisting during recoil?

Not being the least bit critical..... just thinking slow motion vids the "youngest" took on his cell phone. We were shooting bows on a "woodland" course. Basically over in the bushes,not upright on the normal manicured lane. The more you get "out of position",weak hand practice? the more difficult controlling the....bow,gun,screwdriver,etc.

It wasn't till we started slow mo vids that we picked up a cpl,not really "hitches" in our strokes..... more positive. Things to work on,or make sure of. Hard to put into words,which is why the slow mo picked it up. Fine shooting in anycase,hope the mag thing works out.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
The gun IS twisting. That is weak hand shooting, I am a righty. I need to work on getting the gun into a better position in my hand.
With my right hand I learned to stop putting the gun where I wanted it in my hand but but instead put it where the gun always ended up being after shooting a few rounds. Now the grip doesn’t move near as much in recoil and I have far less lateral dispersion.
 

Intheshop

Banned
Weak hand;

I always turn my cap about 90*,grab a handful of "junk" with the right hand,turn gun sideways and have at it. Seems to work?
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
especially the high gun bullet throw method.
that one is ridiculously hard to master.
but so worth is since you do get 2 more fps using it, causing the glock 40 bullets to bounce off the pavement even harder.
 
F

freebullet

Guest
Bob Munden claimed to use his forefinger on the draw, point at the target. Claimed that's one of the keys to his speed with accuracy. I tried it when drawing from a holster, seemed to work just like he claimed. Very natural & accurate to point at something with yer finger....bout as gangsta as I get.