Many moons ago, whilst sitting at the knee of one of the old masters...a man who had spent nearly 25 years in the employ of the U.S. Navy. Except for a brief bit of unpleasantness in the Mariannas, he had been in the armory, plugging away at his specialty. Namely, maintaining and repairing 1911 pistols for the Marine Corps, and....after the war...in building accurate pistols for their games until he retired in 1963. He was my uncle...my father's brother. Between dad's tool and die expertise, and Henry's armorer experience...I learned many things about metal work and 1911 pistols.
Dad began teaching me the art of the file when I was just a wee lad.
"Your file is your friend. Become one with your file."
I had advanced to the point of learning the mysteries of proper barrel fitting in the M1911 pistol. Of course, the theory part came first...then the practice. He dilligently explained the process...and when it was over, I asked him if there wasn't a faster, easier way to do it, since it sounded like a lot of work to a young lad. He replied: "Oh sure" and told me to come the following Saturday to do the work. He was to have 3 barrels prepped and ready for my first lesson. He mentioned that barrel fitting could be done via the quick and dirty method, and if all was well withing the gun, it would work well. He also warned of unforseen pitfalls that would be revealed to me.
When I arrived early the next Saturday, he showed me two barrels with welded hoods, (Barrel #3 would be held in reserve) with the faces trued to square...but the odd thing was that they all had been brazed in the slot between lugs 1 and 2, reducing the depth of the slot by a little less than half. The barrels were marked to the individual pistols that they were destined for. He gave the the instructions for the quick/dirty method and told me to have at it, knowing that I'd forget to take the important first step, young, impatient and scatterbrained lad that I was. I was fitting a barrel! I was also being set up.
I carefully reduced the hood length until the barrel would enter the slide with a light press-fit, then tried to assemble the gun. Tight going into battery and vertical lockup a little too tight.
I made the final adjustment to the brazed fitting pad, and all was well. The gun went to battery and locked in with a light snap. The NO GO headspace gauge wouldn't go...not by a long shot.
The GO gauge went in easily, and I used feeler gauges to find the true static headspace.
Very good!
Proud was I. He checked it out and said I had done well...then pointed to the next one. I repeated the process on the other one, and late that afternoon, I had two pistols with well-fitted barrels, ready for the test-firing and final adjustments.
He smiled and asked me what was wrong with pistol #1.
What could it have been?
Forum ringers, don't answer this one.
To be continued...
C'mon... Anybody? I meant that the real ringers shouldn't give away the surprise ending...Not the folks who've installed a Kart Easy-Fit or a full hard-fit barrel via the Easy-Fit method and think that's the way it's supposed to be! This ain't a flame war in the offing. It's a study to demonstrate what happens when ya trust the "How-To" books and the internet too much.
Tic-Tock...
I do not even pretend to be a student of the art of gunsmithing, but may I suggest that the barrel was only locking in one lug? Also, you mentionned nothing about the sides of the barrel, if they were touching the slide pads.
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I do not even pretend to be a student of the art of gunsmithing, but may I
suggest that the barrel was only locking in one lug? Also, you mentionned
nothing about the sides of the barrel, if they were touching the slide
pads.
Yep. It was locking on one lug, but that's pretty typical of this method.
In this case, it was locking on the first one... which is good... but that wasn't the problem with the fit in this particular gun. By the way... It was a Union Switch. My cousin got it when my uncle died.
The brazing extended from the 10 O'clock position to the 2 O'clock.
Forgot to mention that part.
I can't help but wonder that something is up on the bottom end.
I can't tell you why- just a feeling that we're headed that way, and will be checking the lower lugs and the slide stop pin to see what they're doing down there.
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I can't help but wonder that something is up on the bottom end.
I can't tell you why - just a feeling that we're headed that way, and will be checking the lower lugs and the slide stop pin to see what they're doing down there.
Nope... but kinda sorta related to the problem. The lower lug is standard.
The barrel isn't riding the link. My uncle carefully selected the barrel and the pistol to produce exactly the fit that I wound up with.
Did you fit the hood so that the barrel would not be twisting on the slide stop pin as the hood engaged the slide? Basically, were the lower lugs square with the slide stop pin when the barrel was locked into the slide?
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Did you fit the hood so that the barrel would not be twisting on the slide
stop pin as the hood engaged the slide? Basically, were the lower lugs square
with the slide stop pin when the barrel was locked into the slide?
Yep and Yep.
Ok, the one thing I can think of with brazing the recess between the locking lugs, then filing them down for proper lock up is that doing it this way (and I wonder about Kart easy fit barrels) you reduce the engagement depth of the upper locking lugs. With the above stated arrangement, you may only have engagement on lug number one and you won't have but just a few thousandths of an inch engagement, with numbers two and three floating free and I don't think that is a good thing.
Also, because the barrel is being pushed down by the welds in the recesses, you will need a shorter barrel link. The shorter link is going to disengage the barrel from the slide sooner than a standard link and it may not let the back of the lower locking lugs stop on the frame, but the link will stop the rearward travel of the barrel. This is very hard on the link as it was not designed for this purpose and the link will eventually fail.
Ba-Da-BING!
Dayumm! Stans is all over this thing! The link was fine. The problem wasn't with the lower lug or the link. The vertical lock was... IIRC... in the .032 inch range. Okay for 5,000 rounds of softball or a pistol that's carried a lot and seldom shot... but not for long-term endurance if ya actually work with it.
(Bonus point if anybody can tell me why.)
Now for the tough part...What did I have to do to correct it?
Stans... sit this one out. Too tough to get one past ya today...
I can think of the simple route to fix it. Well, one sort of simple, I guess, and one really simple route.
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I can think of the simple route to fix it. Well, one sort of simple, I
guess, and one really simple route.
Tune-fucious say:
The simple way is only rarely the way to true enlightenment.
The fast road is fraught with many bumps.
The final fix was neither easy nor simple.
Did you keep the same barrel? That would be the not so simple fix. A real simple fix would be barrel number 3. I'm a lazy bastige, I'd go to barrel number 3 and chalk the loss of number 1 to experience and a lesson learned.
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Did you keep the same barrel? That would be the not so simple fix. A real
simple fix would be barrel number 3. I'm a lazy bastige, I'd go to barrel
number 3 and chalk the loss of number 1 to experience and a lesson
learned.
Yep. The barrel that I used for the lesson was the one it wound up with...and it's still in the gun. It's a Flannery. My cousin and I hook up and shoot it 21 times on the anniversary of Henry's death. I had almost forgotten about that pistol until he died. I went by to visit and Hank brought out the gun as part of his father's collection. He didn't know the story, but when I saw that "U S & S, it all came back.
Nope... Barrel #3 was reserved for "somethin' else."
Repeat:
The fix was neither simple, nor easy...NOR quick.
Okay... Since overnight didn't bring forth any more shots at it, I'll give a little more information to point everybody in the right direction.
As I said, my sainted uncle selected the pistols and barrels specifically to produce the initial results.
Welding up the lower lug and removing more of the brazed pad would have provided better vertical engagement depth, but would have put the barrel axis too far above the breechface centerline, and the firing pin strike would have been too low to suit Henry's anal-retentive specifications. While a little off-center isn't all that critical, it's still a consideration.
The problem was with the vertical height of the slide axis to the slidestop pin.
All parts were within spec, but stacked to throw the installed height of the slide out of spec.
The barrel locking lugs were .047 inch tall, so 100% in the vertical plane wasn't going to happen. We did wind up with about 90% of that, which was the best we were gonna get with that particular barrel.
The adjustment brought on three other minor problems, one of which was a surprise, (To me...Not to Uncle H) but was a simple fix. Th second was expected by both of us, but required a bit of elbow grease and a smooth-cut mill file to correct. The third required a die grinder and a little pucker- factor on my part.
For the uninitiated, a die grinder is a Dremel on steroids.
Sometimes, you can get Mohammed to the mountain... Sometimes ya gotta drag the mountain over to Mohammed.
With all these, I am thinking that going through the required bureaucracy to get an export license, and send you my 1911s is a very worthwhile effort. Something like a check-up!
I don't even dare to say what my ignorant mind think that you did to that barrel. I am sure that you and Stans will laugh your heart out.
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With all these, I am thinking that going through the required bureaucracy
to get an export license, and send you my 1911s is a very worthwhile effort.
Something like a check-up!
I don't even dare to say what my ignorant mind think that you did to that barrel. I am sure that you and Stans will laugh your heart out.
Didn't do nuttin' to the barrel that I hadn't already done... just a little more of it. (In law enforcement circles, that there's what's known as a clew.)
Didn't do anything to the barrel that you hadn't already... hmmmmm...
I wonder if that means you did MORE of something you had already done on the barrel... OR... you went to work elsewhere.
Like the slide.
You did say it was not easy, eliminating a link swap.
What would be really hard?
Howzabout building up the SLIDE'S lugs?
Or the other upper barrel lugs?
Here's a reach:
Barrel bushing.
Build-up/file the bushing's opening to lower the muzzle end of the barrel, which would "rock" lugs up.
Nah, that would probably cause more problems than it would solve.
I'll stay with building up the slide's lugs, or the upper barrel lugs.
Nope nope. I'll let it stand a while longer to see if anybody nails it... and post the procedure for the fix. Details at 6-ish... unless I fall asleep or get low on coffee and smokes at 5:30... or I bump my head and forget... or the dogs get loose.
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With all these, I am thinking that going through the required bureaucracy
to get an export license, and send you my 1911s is a very worthwhile effort.
Something like a check-up!
I don't even dare to say what my ignorant mind think that you did to that barrel. I am sure that you and Stans will laugh your heart out.
Nope, I have never, nor will I begin to laugh at such a thing. I was, and still am, ignorant of a great many things. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge and is correctable.
At this point, I'd say Tuner has just about stumped me! See, I still suffer from ignorance.
By this time I would have likely ditched this project and started with a new barrel too. Maybe swaging down the frame rails (or welding them), then dress the tops of the frame rails and recutting the bottom of the slide rails, then recut the weld pads in the locking lug recess.
Stans... You've been sandbaggin' on me!
The fix got a little involved. We had a little too much distance on the slide's installed height due to tolerance stacking and a very slight out of spec location on the slidestop pin... which is where most of the critical dimensions are measured from... either directly or indirectly. That had to be resolved. We also had some vertical play between the slide and frame, which added to the problem.
Henry brought out the vise fixture, the way bars, a hammer,and his homemade swaging punches. We figured that the slide had to come down a total of .012 inch, and he reminded me that the machinist's rule of halves applied... so the slide rails were measured... in went the -.006 bars, and down came the hammer.
Since the slide was coming down, I also had to cut the bottom walls in the frame ways to let it drop. Going on the dictum that it's better to take half of the needed amount from two places than all from one, I also draw-filed the bottoms of the slide rails until I got the slide started onto the frame...lapped to get it the rest of the way on... and ran into problem #2. Since the slide had come down, the cocking/disconnector rail was in a bind with the top of the frame. More draw-filing and dressing of the rail got it past the bind with clearance. I lapped just enough to get it on, and rechecked the barrel fit. Eureka! I had to take a little more out of the brazed pad. I was cookin' with gas! But it wasn't over yet. I still had less than .040 inch of vertical engagement, and 80% of spec (.050) just ain't quite good enough.
More way bars... more hammerin'... more filin'... the whole enchilada. Went to recheck the barrel fit... and hit wall #3 Now the slide had dropped so far that the barrel's clearance under the slide was too small.
Henry brought out a die grinder and a barrel-shaped stone that he had dressed to match the radius of the barrel bed, and a junk frame. "Gonna hafta practice on this one first." He domonstrated the "technique". Put the frame in the vise with the front at a slight downward angle. Angled the stone so that just the forward corner contacted the bed...lifted it a little and hit the go switch... and ever-so-smoothly, he guided the stone from the rear of the bed toward the front of the rails. "Make one light pass and check the clearance. If you put too much pressure on the stone, it'll grab traction and climb the rail. If you let the stone climb the rail, I'll beat you like an ugly, mangy dog. If you see more than just a tiny amount of light sparking, you're using too much pressure." I practiced until I could do it like he said. Then came the real deal. Pucker factor high...but about 25 or 30 light passes later, the barrel dropped enough to clear the slide... almost. (Whew!) Then he had me to lightly radius-file the bottom of the barrel to get the final .002 inch. Clearance checked at .015 inch, which is a little closer than he liked, but it would have to do. Vertical engagement checked at... IIRC... in the neighborhood of .042-.043 inch. (Gimme a break. It's only been about 40 years.) Not ideal, but it was the best we could do on this gun with this barrel without welding and recutting the locking lugs. He didn't want to do that, so .042-.043 it was. Firing pin was... pretty well-centered. We were goin' for lug engagement, after all... The braze was all but gone.
Put the thing together and ran all the standard checks. Timing looked good... All safeties working, etc... until I pulled the trigger to dry-fire it. Seems that the disconnect wasn't able to reset completely, and pulling the trigger either didn't drop the hammer, or it would drop to half-cock. A little scraping in the slot resolved it.
He handed me the gun and said: "Still not right." I was crushed. What the hell could be wrong NOW?! He took it back and laid it on a shelf. "We'll see later." And then he pointed to pistol #2.
To be continued: