so, Gravity Tester gets this "try out" gun for a 1911....against my advice...but hey, no one ever listens to me anyway
....
when my eyes are finally layed upon it I can hardly express the urge to shriek like a little girl....to say it was ugly would have been an understatement....I shook my doubting head in disbelief.....
yet...something told me that this gun could be returned to some semblence of "glory". Despite the Auto Ordinance frame ( which was actually in fairly good shape ) there were a couple components worth salvaging and I have ( or had, rather....
) a box full of Colt, Ed Brown, Wilson, Springfield, etc, parts....
Soooo, first, GT and I fully stripped the gun and started ditching parts....off went the gas pedal slide stop, the barrel, many of the springs, the firing pin, the extractor and a couple pins. Then....in true WECSOG style....out came the dremel and the files.....
After SEVERAL hours of fitting, assembling, disassembling, more fitting, reassembling, blending, more fitting.....more re-assemlbing....we had something to take to the range......something out of a Wes Craven film, anyhow.....
Off to the range where we spent another couple of hours testing, tweaking, testing, disassembling, more fitting, re-assembling, etc. FINALLY after fighting with the extractor tension for what seemed like forever....WE GOT IT. We finally got 100 rounds straight without a bobble. WHEW!!! Our fingers bled....we whined like little girls.....and our fingers bled some more.
After some more judicious blending and the addition of a Colt Nylon trigger ( we can't find an acceptable aluminum one at the moment ) and a newer ( brand new ) recoil spring the poor thing looked more like a Calico Cat than a 1911. Sigh.....my hopes were dimming, despite the fact it shot very accurately for a Frankengun and it was now up an running strong....I felt this gun was gonna be the ugly girl at the school dance. A good girl...but not one that anyone was gonna look at.....
Well, off to the sand blaster......here's where Gravity Tester comes in to save the day....we stop by a local shop and purchase some blaster and park tank time...and I drop a few hundred on parts and sevices for my soon to be redone Browning HP. But hey, that's another thread. Anyway, G_Tester is good with a blaster so he goes to town on almost evry part we have with a nice Aluminum Oxide grit. After some VERY heavy blasting and reblasting....into the park tank ( with a black park additive ) and then out in the Arizona sun to dry and soak up some rust sop and then heavy coats of oil.
After re-polishing up the feed ramp and barrel hood....and a heavy coat of my "Ancient Chinese Secret" oil soak mix for good measure.....we put her back together.....
Here's what we have so far ( and the pictures aren't half as good looking as the gun in real life ):
Well, it isn't perfect, there's couple of things cosmetically that I couldn't fix and I wish I had a nice aluminum trigger with no holes in it. It would fit better than the nylon trigger does....but it feels really nice. The bottom of the frame and the MSH pin hole weren't in spec so I ground the base of the frame a bit. Though a tad short, the integral mag well is still well preserved and GI mags seat just flush. Still, on the whole...this thing turned out like a GEM. After racking the hell out of the gun and saoking it in MORE oil and blasting it with compressed air and adding MORE oil....she is smoothing out like a dream.....and she looks like she's gonna be spending time on the dance floor, not just hanging out by the auditorium bleachers by herself.
Now, to go shoot it and see how much stuff needs retweaked....she hand cycles very well....but that only tells you so much.
Shall report further.