To start the lapping, apply a bit of the lapping compound to the inside rear of the slide rails.
Going beyond basics on the 1911 requires more tools, more practice, and greater study of how the pistol operates. Before diving in, consider your options both in gunsmithing and in simply purchasing. There are three paths to a custom or super-custom 1911. If you want to work on a pistol you already own, you can do everything yourself. With your own pistol, you can also shop out some or all the work. If you want to create your own custom design, you can buy separate match-grade components and fit them yourself, but you can also easily purchase a completed custom pistol that will meet and almost certainly exceed your capabilities. So, before you go and build a 1980s-era 1911 (in quality and cosmetics) consider what you could buy.
To start the lapping, apply a bit of the lapping compound to the inside rear of the slide rails.
Buying and fitting your own parts was not always possible. In 1985, while still a sub-contractor to other manufacturers, Caspian Arms first explored the marketing of custom slides and frames directly to the consumer. Today, if you have a 1911 with a dead slide you can get a replacement from Caspian in any length, in blue or stainless, and with the dovetails cut for your sights. You can order a frame to replace an over-experimented one, a barrel, and other components. Or go whole hog. Caspian offers a race-ready frame, and you can order a frame, a slide, have Caspian fit them, and be weeks ahead.
One way to lap the slide/frame fit is to clamp the frame (padded, of course) into your vise.
Start the slide, with the lapping compound, onto the frame. Move back and forth. Check fit. Repeat as necessary. Boring, but simple.
Les Baer offers an attractive deal on a slide and frame package. I received a frame already cut for a high-ride beavertail, with front strap checkering at 30 lines to the inch. The slide, dovetailed for a Novak front and a Bo-Mar rear, had extra cocking serrations up front. The fit of the slide to the frame was excellent — smooth and tight.
The best deal in a component 1911 is the STI “Short Block” kit, also available from Brownells on special order. The STI is not a standard 1911 with a magazine capacity of eight rounds of .45 ACP, but a high-capacity frame with a double-stacked magazine holding 10-15 rounds depending on caliber in the “short” magazines. The lower part of the frame is a durable polymer. The big advantage to the Short Block is that STI does the frame-to-slide fitting, installs a match barrel, and ships the kit with a recoil spring installed. All you have to do is install the frame parts behind the trigger, and put sights on the slide. Even if you’re extremely particular fitting the parts, you’ll be ready to go to the range after an evening’s work.
Purchasing match-grade component parts or kits can be expensive. Buying just a premium slide, barrel, and frame can easily cost you as much as a whole, plain, pistol out of the box. But the out-of-the-box pistol will not be as tightly fitted or machined to the close tolerances of the match components. By customizing your 1911 by yourself, you can make your pistol fit almost as tightly and its operation be as smooth as a match kit pistol, at a fraction of the cost. Even if you end up sending some of the work to a pro, you’ll still save money and learn more doing the work.
Some slide-to-frame fits are beyond peening and/or lapping. If the frame is oversized by a few thousandths, you can lap the fit, moving the slide back and forth with lapping compound in between the parts. You use each as the forming surface to shape the other. However, a slide or frame with rails more than a few thousandths oversized requires more work. You could file them to fit. However, that is a laborious process. Faster and far better is to mill or surface grind the parts to fit.
Some push slides back and forth. I used a rawhide mallet, and simply bought a new one every third or fourth pistol.
When building a pistol for competition, make sure you know the rules for the match. This is a Bianchi gun, and you won’t find much love for it in a PPC match.
Always, when modifying a pistol, figure out how you’re going to get it apart for cleaning.
These are now obsolete. Made for IPSC Modified Division, and that Division is no longer in the rule books.
The trick to a Modified gun; make it a comp gun, but no longer than the IPSC box allows. This called for much gunsmithing design trickery, and it is a shame it is no longer in effect.
The fit is adjusted laterally (side to side) by milling/grinding the outsides of the frame rails to match the interior dimension of the slide slots. A surface grinder is fast, makes a clean and even cut, and can cut in passes of less than a thousandth. A mill is not as fast, not as clean, and making a cut less than a thousandth is not always easy. However, a mill is cheaper and has many uses while a surface grinder is expensive and has fewer uses. Clamping the frame is done either vertically or horizontally. In the vertical position, the frame is in the position it would be when you are firing. However, if your vise does not have high enough jaws you can’t hold the frame securely. Not-secure means not-precise, and there is no point in even trying the job if you know from the get-go precision isn’t an option. And if the vise jaws are tall enough, you need to remove the grip screw bushings to clamp the frame. Clamping the frame horizontally is easier.
When fitting a bushing to a barrel, you have to relieve the barrel diameter behind the bushing lockup area. This is easily done on a lathe, with a file.
Once the bushing is a near-perfect fit, it is time to polish the bushing and clearance areas for decreased friction.
The vertical fit is adjusted by milling the bottom of the slide to match the vertical dimension of the frame rails. In extreme cases, it may be necessary to remove a small amount of metal from the top of the frame, to get the rails to fit the slide. While the Brownells/Yavapai slide-holding fixture is useful for many other slide milling operations, milling the bottom simply requires clamping the slide upside down and level in the vise on your milling table.
Once the milling is done to the indicated dimensions, you need to stone the corners of the milled surfaces, and then lap for final fit. However, once finished, a cleanly machined and small-grit lapped slide to frame fit feels like the slide is running on ball bearings.
A comped barrel on an Open gun might even do away with the bushing (lower barrel) in favor of a coned lockup (upper barrel.)
Given the choices you have for compensators, there’s no point in making one from scratch, unless you want to.
When you fit a barrel such as this Clark, take the comp off. Fit the barrel. Then fit the comp to the barrel when it is in the slide, on the frame.
You’ll see comps on Open guns, like this hi-cap .38 Super.
This is a relatively compact and lightweight red-dot and mount, circa 1993. By today’s standards it is an anvil, and we’re even mounting them right onto slides these days.
Even though barrels are available with compensators attached, you must remove the comp when fitting the barrel. A compensator is fitted only after the barrel has been completely fitted and test-fired.
When the barrel unlocks, the comp tilts (it is attached to the barrel, which tilts) and you have to take this into account when fitting the comp to the slide. It needs more clearance on the top.
Screw the compensator on until it touches the slide or barrel bushing. Lock the slide back, turn the compensator clockwise until it is upright, and gently close the slide. Does the comp touch the slide? If it does; you must either unscrew the comp one turn or use your file to remove the contact.
A comp that is meant to work with a bushing has a recess in the back, to give the bushing room.
Try unscrewing first. Lock the slide back and turn the comp out one full turn. Close the slide. Can you live with the gap? If you can, mark the compensator’s position. Unscrew it, and degrease the threads of both the barrel and comp. Apply Loctite to the threads. Screw on the comp. Wipe off the excess Loctite. Close the slide and check the alignment of the compensator. Open the slide to allow the Loctite to set. If you keep the slide closed, the Loctite will wick between the barrel and bushing and lock it shut.
If the slide-comp gap is too large for your tastes when it is screwed out a turn, screw the comp back down that turn. Use a candle to smoke the back of the comp. Gently close the slide. Open the slide and look at the marks in the smoke residue. Use your pillar file to dress down the high spots. Repeat until the smoke is not marked by the slide. Take a moment to watch the slide as it moves. As the pistol cycles, the barrel has to tilt down to unlock. This has the effect of tipping the top edge of the compensator toward the slide. You must make the gap as small as possible, but not touching the slide. Make it even all the way around when closed, but not allow it to “ding” the slide at the top edge as the barrel tilts down. The tilt is one degree of angle between top and bottom. The Brownells/Yavapai slide fixture makes it easy to hold the slide and mill the 1-degree back-angle you need on the front of the slide for compensator clearance. That’s why you can’t just trim a thousandth off of the back of the compensator body in your lathe. Once the comp is fitted, secure the compensator as above.
You could leave the bushing not all the way back to the slide. It would look ugly, but it would work. Some of us have higher standards.
In the old days, we used to have to make our own custom parts from scratch. Now, shops like Clark Custom do it for us. This is a comp in-process.
This is a sample of tiger-teeth. By staking up a sharp point, you increase the non-slip ability of a frontstrap. I prefer other methods, but this was common back in the bullseye days, and you’ll see an occasional pistol done this way.
There can be no contact between the slide and the compensator. If they touch, every time the slide closes it will bang against the comp, driving it forward. You might end up with a slightly peened comp. On the other hand, you could crack the barrel in the threads from the repeated impacts.
A lathe makes fitting a bushing to a slide, and to a barrel, so much easier that you really need to think about it, if you plan to do a bunch of them.
OK, this is practically cheating. By using a barrel fixture and a mill, you can fit the feet of a barrel in a few minutes.
The mount on this pistol (built by Jojo Vidanes) drops the C-More sight onto its side.
On IPSC/USPSA Open guns, there is no size limit. Well, there is; it is the ability of the shooter to holster and handle the pistol.
Improving the trigger pull of your 1911 often has nothing to do with the trigger. You can perform a slick trigger job on your 1911 working only on the hammer and sear.
Lightening the trigger pull on a 1911 used to involve a great deal of work and a certain amount of hazard. If, after laboriously fitting the hammer to the sear the work was not quite perfect, the pistol would occasionally fire more than one round for each pull of the trigger. Today, you needn’t worry about the hazard or the work.
The easiest way to improve your trigger pull is to buy the right parts. All hammers and sears started life as little lumps of steel machined into final form. Chip McCormick changed that when he pioneered the use of the wire EDM process to create match-quality hammers and sears. Today, Wilson Combat, Ed Brown, Cylinder & Slide, and EGW all offer hammers, sears, both, packages, and kits.
Stoning a hammer or sear from one of these companies not only wastes your time, it voids the warranty. Nowlin offers a complete trigger job in a package, which has not only the hammer and sear, but the disconnector, hammer spring, and three-leaf spring. And you even get a choice of hammer designs, too.
Swapping parts is not always an option. Precision parts can give you a trigger pull as low as 2-1⁄2 pounds, far too light for hunting or defensive carry. The lightness can also create problems for a relatively new competitive shooter. If you’re going to carry your 1911 for defense, do not install match parts that deliver such a light trigger pull. Stone your existing parts for a cleaner, crisper trigger pull, but one that is still 41⁄2 pounds or more.
When Armand Swensen came out with his thumb safeties, we all stopped making our own, improved, ones. His were better.
In all, stoning is probably not the best course of action. As much as I respect Ron Power and his fixture, you need to know for the cost of the stoning fixture, stones, and the time you’ll spend practicing, you could have bought a hatful of hammers and sears. If you want to bring an old pistol back from use or abuse, and not exchange the parts, you’ll have to stone, or use my secret method.
Proper stoning of hammer and sear requires a fixture. Ron Power makes the best. With adapter blocks, the same fixture can stone the hammers and sears of every handgun in common use. You will also need a magnifying eye loupe and external hammer and sear pins first to examine and then to check the engagement.
You stone the hammer hooks to make them square and to make their surfaces smooth. You must also shorten the hammer hooks to a specific height. The hook height you select determines the weight of the trigger pull, the useful life of a trigger job, and the safety of continued sear engagement.
A properly-fitted grip safety and thumb safety will not need to be worked on for a long time, if ever.
To stone the hooks square, set the fixture to work the hook flats and faces. Begin with a medium-fine synthetic stone, preferably a Brownells trigger stone. The faces and edges of trigger stones are precision-ground to be flat and square. Make a few even passes across the hooks. Dykem and stone one pass again. Inspect and check the progress of your work. You want a set of hooks that are even and square across their full faces. Continue marking and stoning the hooks until you get there. Switch to the extra fine stone, clean off the hooks, and polish the hooks with a dozen passes.
Adjust the fixture to stone the tops of the hooks. For hunting or carry pistols, where you want a trigger pull that is clean and crisp, but not too light, adjust the hook height to .020 inches. For competition, where you want a lighter trigger pull, adjust the height to .018 inches. The .020-inch hooks should give you a trigger pull around 41⁄2 pounds while the shorter height can deliver a trigger pull of 31⁄2 pounds. Place your feeler gauge on the hammer flats, pressed up to the hooks. Stone the tops of the hammer hooks using the medium fine stone. Stop when the stone reaches the feeler gauge. To keep the now-sharp hooks from marring the sear tip, take one pass across their front tips and in so-doing break the sharp edge of their corners.
You can use the grip safety fixture as a marking guide, or a cutting guide. Here, it is being used as a marking guide, with the scribe cutting a line through the Dykem.
Now clamp the frame in a fixture to make it easier to hold.
A belt sander takes off the excess tang material easily. And the fixture on the frame makes the cuts square to the frame.
A hand-held grinder and carbide tool, to final-fit the tang where it would interfere with the grip safety.
Put the external positioning pins into the frame, and place the newly-stoned hammer and the sear on them. Adjust the hammer and sear so they are in contact, and examine the angle of the sear tip. It should bear evenly on the hammer hooks. Adjust the sear stoning fixture so you are stoning to maintain this angle. If the sear does not contact the hammer hooks evenly, adjust the sear fixture to compensate.
The tangs, cut down and ready for the very last fitting to the grip safety.
Here the grip safety has been fitted to the point the thumb safety goes in, and we can move on to the rest of the grinding and polishing.
Stone the sear for four passes with the medium fine stone and recheck hammer/sear engagement. If necessary, adjust the sear fixture again to the correct angle to the hammer hooks. With the correct angle locked in, stone the sear until it bears across the full width of the hammer hooks. Switch to the extra fine stone and polish the sear tip for half a dozen passes.
Remove the sear from the fixture. Place it against the medium fine stone with only its tip and foot making contact. Take two or three passes to stone the escape angle. By beveling the inside tip of the sear, you create a surface for the hammer hooks to cam the sear out of the way, reducing wear on the sear and prolonging the life of your trigger job.
Another way of creating perfect hammer hooks, my “secret” method, requires a mill. Clamp the hammer upside down, with the flats under the hooks and adjust the hammer until that flat is dead level. Install a new, sharp, carbide end mill. Wipe layout die on the flats and hooks. Bring the cutter down until it just kisses the flats. Move it over to the hooks until it just cuts both hooks. Do not cut any more than you need to get a clean, right-angle surface on both hooks. Unlike many milling operations, this is not a measurement-driven operation, but an observation-driven one. Once you have cleaned the faces of the hooks, lift the cutter.018 or .020 inches and cut the tops off the hooks. You now have perfectly square, even hooks that are precisely .018 or .020 inches high. Remove the hammer from the vise and stone the front corner of the hooks to remove any wire-edge left by the machining. Stone the release angle.
Clean and lubricate the hammer and sear, and install them in the frame. Perform the hammer and safety checks in Chapter 4, and if necessary adjust your thumb safety to the new hammer/sear engagement.
Once you have done the safety checks, and now have a trigger job that is the weight and feel you want, you have one last task to perform: “boost” the hammer. Strip the frame down again. Apply high-pressure grease on the hammer hooks and the sear tip. You don’t need much, but you want an even coating on both. Reassemble the frame. Now, cock the hammer and place a screwdriver under the hammer spur, using the grip safety as a cam point. Press the screwdriver down, using the screwdriver to force the hammer forward, the direction it travels when you fire. You don’t need, nor do you want, a lot of force here. A couple of pounds of force on a 6" screwdriver is plenty.
As you apply this force with the screwdriver, dry-fire your 1911. What you have done is burnished the sear tip and hammer hooks to each other. The grease is here to prevent scoring or galling, to keep an errant bit of grit from scoring your carefully stoned or milled surfaces.
The grip safety in the 1911 encloses the trigger and provides an additional safety mechanism that precludes the pistol’s firing unless it is held. With its wider area, the beavertail grip safety adds comfort and control by spreading out the recoil forces. It also keeps the pistol stable in your hand, speeding up accurate rapid fire.
Beavertail grip safeties change the way your hand fits the frame. When combined with a thumb-over-the-thumb-safety shooting style, the grip safety does not always work properly. If your hand doesn’t contact the grip safety at the bottom, the safety won’t unlock from the trigger. Your pistol will not fire. To prevent this problem, grip safeties are now available with a lump at the bottom. The lump fills the gap your hand leaves when you get a high grip on the frame. If you have trouble contacting the grip safety at the bottom, because of your grip or the size of your hands, you must get a beavertail grip safety with this lump.
Despite being trimmed so the thumb safety can rotate, the frame tangs still bulge into the web of your hand. So off they go.
The tape keeps the grip safety in place. The hand-held grinder makes short work of the bulges. Now comes the polishing and edge breaking.
Last step, break the corners and bring it to a polish to match the rest of the pistol.
Serrating the rear of the slide is something you do last. The slide, frame and barrel must all be done with fitting. Then, and only then, do you match the slide to the frame (if there is any overhang) by grinding the slide. Leave the extractor in place.
Chip McCormick offered a grip safety that incorporated this lump as part of the curve down the spine of the grip safety. Called the “de-activator” it allowed the grip safety to do its job regardless of how you hold the pistol. Alas, Chip no longer offers this safety, but you can find one much like it from Caspian. The Ed Brown has a large kind of rectangular pad at the bottom of the grip safety.
Beavertail grip safeties come in two basic types. The drop-in does not require any frame modification. Simply remove the old grip safety, install the new one, check for proper engagement of the grip safety to the trigger, and enjoy. Drop-in beavertails do not fit snugly to the frame, and some shooters find the gaps objectionable or uncomfortable. The alternative is to modify the frame for a better fitting beavertail.
The sleeker beavertail grip safeties all require grinding, milling, or filing the tang of the frame on a .250-inch radius from the thumb safety hole. Having done that, you face two more options: Ed Brown’s style and everyone else’s.
Wear hearing protection and safety glasses, because the tool is noisy and sparks will fly.
Will it be just the slide? If so, take the sight off. If you will serrate both, leave the sight on, and blend it, too.
The Ed Brown grip safety is far more curved under the tang than those from other manufacturers. To install this safety, you have to file and polish the excess frame under the tang in order to blend the edges. Other grip safeties do not require blending under the tang or only require a small amount of edge-removal. The greater curve of the Brown lets you get your hand higher and tighter to the frame, affording many shooters greater comfort and added control.
The installation of a non-drop-in beavertail grip safety begins the same way regardless of the brand. You can grind and file or you can mill. If you intend to grind and file, when you order the grip safety also order a beavertail-fitting jig to guide you in your grinding. Strip the frame. Install the jig. Fire up your bench grinder. Grind the frame down to the jig without touching the jig. You can also use the jog to mark the frame, by scribing a line using the jig as your guide, and then grinding up to the scribed line.
For the next step, you want to have the thumb safety already fitted to the frame, and timed to work correctly with the hammer/sear combo. If you are installing a new thumb safety along with a new grip safety, do the thumb safety first.
Use your pillar file to dress off the metal on the edges of the frame kicked up by the grinding wheel. With a candle, smoke the freshly ground surfaces. Press the grip safety in place and remove it. File the contact points. As you work your way down, be sure to file the surface to a smooth radius. After a couple of smoke and file turns, start checking the thumb safety to see if it goes through the pivot hole of the grip safety. As you move down towards proper fit, each time you press the grip safety to the smoked surface, rub the grip safety against the frame, duplicating the rotating motion of the safety as it will pivot once it is installed. This will show you the high spots not just as the safety is pressed, but as it pivots, too.
When you get to the point that the thumb safety will insert, pivot the grip safety on the thumb safety pin to check for additional high points on the radius. Also check to see if the grip safety is binding on the frame opening. If so, file the safety until it moves smoothly.
Marianne made a special fixture to keep the cuts square at the start.
Since this is an “all the way up” job, the sight gets serrated, too.
The lines have been started.
The finished metal, ready for final touches and off to the bluer.
With the sight, slide and frame blended and polished, you can begin serrating.
Pull the thumb and grip safeties off and install the trigger. Reinstall the two safeties and look through the frame opening. Press the grip safety and attempt to pull the trigger. The trigger should pass under the grip safety extension. If it doesn’t, file the bottom of the grip safety extension to provide clearance. Install the mainspring housing. Pull the grip safety up until it stops against the mainspring housing shoulder. The tip of the grip safety should pass behind the trigger, preventing it from moving back. If it does not, the grip safety tip is too long. Remove the grip safety and file the tip, checking fit as you go. You want to shorten the grip safety tip enough that it passes down behind the trigger when pivoting, but not make it so short that the trigger can move when the grip safety should be blocking it.
If you have a mill and are planning to do more than one beavertail grip safety installation, buy a grip safety fixture. To use, clamp the fixture in your mill and install a carbide end mill. The thumb safety hole of your frame goes over the pivot pin on the fixture.
Position your cutting tool .185 inches from the fixture’s pivot post. Wearing a pair of heavy gloves, set the frame on the pivot pin, turn on the mill, and rotate the frame against the end mill. When you are done deburr the new cut. Check the grip safety for fit. The cut should be close, but the thumb safety will not yet fit through the frame. Move your milling table .005 inches in (end mill closer to the fixture post) and repeat the process. Continue .005 inches at a time until the thumb safety fits.
Fitted this way the gap between your frame and the grip safety will be less than .005 inches. Usually the grip safety looks as if it grew out of the back of the frame. For an even finer fit, as soon as the thumb safety pin can be forced through the grip safety pivot hole, do not use the mill any more. Place lapping compound on the tang of the frame, install the grip safety and a sacrificial thumb safety, and work the grip safety back and forth. Once the grip safety moves easily, clean off the lapping compound and check the fit. You are done when the grip safety moves freely.
One last fitting and timing task: Take your pistol to the range and see if your grip fully depresses the grip safety. If it does not, you can solve the problem one of two ways: build up the “speed bump” on the bottom of the grip safety, or “sensitize” the grip safety. Of the two, the latter is a whole lot easier, and thus the one most-often performed when needed.
Look at the tip of the grip safety. The thickness of the paddle behind the trigger bar, top-to-bottom, determines how sensitive it is. If the paddle is full height, the grip safety has to be fully compressed, or there is no bang. If you take your file and remove some of the steel from the bottom edge of the grip safety tip, the grip safety will have to be depressed less in order for the tip to clear the trigger bow.
Clearly, if you file all the tip off, the grip safety will not block the trigger at all. Instead, file the lower surface until the grip safety has to travel about one-third of its pivot into the frame, to clear the trigger bow. One-third is enough to keep the trigger locked in place if you should drop your gun, yet will ensure every time you want your 1911 to fire, your grip safety is clear and won’t prevent you from shooting.
The Ed Brown grip safety requires more work. Fit as you would above, until the thumb safety will insert through the frame and grip safety. Install the thumb and grip safety. Press the grip safety all the way into the frame. Note that it will go into the frame slot, and past the edges of the frame. Since these edges are very sharp, you cannot shoot the pistol without blending them to the grip safety. Install the mainspring housing. You don’t have to have the mainspring in it, and it is probably a good idea to remove them, as things are going to get messy. You can even use a sacrificial mainspring housing if you wish. All it will be doing is holding the grip safety in place.
Place masking tape across the bottom of the grip safety to hold it down. Put the frame on your holding bar. Use grinding stones or a sanding drum in your hand-held grinder to reduce the edges of the frame, grinding them down toward the grip safety. You want them flush to the grip safety. Once flush, re-contour. You can’t leave the new edges square, but you also can’t get too radical in rounding them, as there is only so much steel there. Once you’ve blended the frame look at the thumb safety in its down, or fire, position. You will have to grind its rear curve to match the curve of the frame. Once all the edges are blended, switch to 220-grit cloth and polish the frame, thumb safety, and grip safety.
Unlike the installation of other grip safeties, once you are done installing an Ed Brown you will have to refinish the frame, as the whole rear, from the mainspring housing up, will be bare steel. On a stainless 1911, you’ll have to match the surface texture of the new areas to that of the rest of the pistol.
Which beavertail grip safety is the right one for you? You will have to try the pistols of other shooters at your club, with a variety of grip safeties on them, to find out what works for you. You may find any beavertail grip safety improves your shooting; you’ll notice no difference between brands.
Basic de-horning simply breaks edges and radiuses them. More is required for sensitive skin or daily carry. Every sharp edge must be removed.
Before you take the pistol apart, rub your hands over it. Mark the edges needing beveling with a felt-tipped pen. These will be your filing guides.
Start with the slide. File a .065 inch wide bevel on the back edges and bottom rail. On the front of the slide either file the slide itself or install a bushing the same size as the slide, and file the bushing flange.
After you bevele the edges go back and slightly round them with the file. Switch to 220-grit cloth and use a shoeshine motion until they are smoothly blended. Repeat with 320-grit and 400-grit. Do the same to the frame. The sharp edges of the hammer must be rounded to keep them from rubbing you raw. Do not round the base of the hammer, which rests inside the frame. Round any remaining felt-tip markings.
Before you have the pistol refinished, take it to the range and shoot it to make sure you’ve smoothed everything. If you carry your pistol, wear it for a few days to be absolutely sure you’ve eliminated every nasty edge. It is expensive to address “one last” problem after it has been sent to the finisher.
Skateboard tape and clamp-on panels work to keep your grip from slipping, but they aren’t quite permanent. To make a permanent change in the grip of your 1911 you must work on the metal of the frame. Once the frame has been altered, however, you’re stuck with it. You can’t go back and re-do it. Be sure what you want.
To stipple the frame you need a centerpunch and a ballpeen hammer.
When you’re locating a spot for drilling, you hold the centerpunch directly against the metal and strike it. In contrast, to stipple you must hold the punch 1⁄2 inch away from the frame before striking.
Right-handers begin by holding the punch in your left hand as if you were trying to write with it. The point will be up, where a pencil eraser would be. Turn your hand over, resting the back of your hand against the frame or vise. From this position, the blow of the hammer drives the punch into the frame, leaving a mark, and your flexed fingers pull the punch back from the frame after the impact, ready to strike again. Move the punch over slightly and strike again.
You do not have to swing the hammer very hard to make an impression. The harder you strike, the larger the mark. In the center of the area you will stipple, swing briskly. At the edges, tap the hammer, so you can precisely control the location of the strike. Once you have a feel for the technique, all you have to do is repeat it several thousand times. If the tip of the punch becomes dulled, stop and sharpen it. Sharp tools make for sharp-edged and clear strikes. Dull tools make for shallower, less-sharp strikes.
It is not just the tip of the punch that will dull. Stop when your arm gets tired. Don’t hurt yourself swinging too many times in your first sessions. You may have to spend three hours or more stippling the front of your first frame. If you try to do all that in one day, your arm will be so tired you risk hitting things, not the centerpunch.
The beauty of stippling is that you can always go back and fill in with more stippling any areas that you didn’t completely cover during the previous session. If you want to spread your stippling work over the course of several weeks and a number of trips to the range, no problem. If after you get a better feel for the technique you want to give the frame a coarser, heavier stippling, just stipple right over the old work.
Checkering is both hard and demanding work. Unlike stippling, in checkering it is impossible to correct mistakes. The work requires a checkering file, with the number of lines per inch of the pattern cut into the file. To checker, work the file over the frame, keeping the lines straight and filing parallel grooves.
Simple in description, checkering can be very difficult to execute. The beginning of the process requires a heavy but steady hand on the file, while the end requires a delicate touch and much time spent peering through your magnifying visor.
You can see the process; keep them straight and parallel, and get them all cut half-way deep.
Once the verticals are established, then cut the cross lines, again, halfway deep.
If you are going to checker, spend the money on a checkering guide. Without a guide, you have only your hand and eye to keep the lines straight. You may feel like you’re going crazy trying to keep the file straight, and until you learn the technique, you will checker wavy lines. If you cannot afford the checkering guide, but must have a checkered pistol, practice on mild steel bars. Buy one or two from Brownells, in .750-inch diameter, and checker these until you are happy with your efforts. Then start on your pistol.
To use the guide, strip the frame. Lock it in the guide. Set up to cut the verticals first. Establish the lines but do not cut them to full depth. Set the horizontal guide, and make your first cuts near the bottom of the frame. Adjust the thumbscrew to move the guide up so your next set of lines just overlaps the first set. Continue up the frame until you have established the pattern.
Dykem the frame and go back over the horizontal lines until you have cut them to their full depth. Switch to the vertical lines and file them to full depth.
Pull the frame out of the guide, Dykem the checkering again, and put your frame on your holding bar. Take a three-sided needle file and follow each line across the frame, gently filing the Dykem out of the lines. You aren’t doing this to remove metal, just see how deep the lines are, and how they intersect. The Dykem will show where the lines are too shallow or too deep. Once you know where, use a needle file to adjust each line in depth until all of the points are sharp, and all of the bottoms of the lines are even.
Correctly executed checkering is beautiful. It is also very sharp. Correctly finished checkering will feel as if it could draw blood when you squeeze hard. For a very aggressive feel — large diamonds that can really grab your hand — checker your frame in 20 lines to the inch. This is relatively easy to checker. It is, however, very hard to shoot. Unless you work with your hands for a living, 20 lpi checkering will be so sharp and aggressive your hands will object to the abuse. A less aggressive pattern is cut 30 lines to the inch. The lines here are shallower, and more difficult to cut. The file will wander if you are not extra careful. 30 lpi is also easier on your hands if they are office-soft.
Occasionally someone who wants to show off, checkers a frame 40 lines to the inch. It is very delicate and exacting work, and must be done flawlessly to look right. Even finer than that are checkering files in 50 and 75 lines to the inch. All three of these smallest sizes are most commonly used on the rear of slides and the tops of slide ribs, applications that cut down glare when sighting.
After all the lines have been laid down, then it is a matter of cutting them all fully deep, evenly deep, and each diamond sharp and square.
To checker the rear of a slide, remove the slide from the frame. Take out the firing pin retainer, the firing pin, and extractor. Place a steel plate or bar against the bottom rails of the slide, and clamp the plate and slide rear end up. The plate will be your guide. Hold the checkering file against the plate and move it to the slide. Work the file back and forth, holding firmly against the plate to keep the file straight. Only a checkering file will cut in both directions.
After establishing your first lines, tilt the file down to follow the curve of the slide and cut a few more. Once you have a set of lines established, pick up the file and move it over. Position it so half rests over the lines and the other half over fresh slide. Use the established lines to guide you in cutting the next lines. Proceed until you finish moving up. Unclamp the slide and rotate it a quarter turn, so the plate is now against one side of the slide. Follow the same procedure from one side to the other. Apply Dykem and use a needle file to clean up the lines.
The feed ramp cut into a 1911 barrel removes steel from the bottom of the chamber. If the ramp is cut too far forward it may extend past the web, or strongest part, of the case. A hot load in an improperly ramped barrel will bulge the brass. A maximum-pressure or overload can blow out the side of the case. This usually trashes the magazine, occasionally damages the extractor, and sometimes causes injury to the shooter. To avoid this entirely requires the chamber walls exist all the way around the case, all the way back to the extractor groove. Unfortunately, this can’t be done and still have a barrel ramp that matches the frame ramp. Someday, somebody might design a pistol that accommodates a chamber like this, but it won’t be a 1911.
As you can see, the ramp means more steel on the barrel, and the frame has to be machined to accommodate the ramp.
A barrel with an integral feed ramp has the ramp as one piece, not split between the frame and barrel.
To do a bobtail job on a 1911, you need the fixture and the new mainspring hosing.
Therefore, barrel makers have re-designed barrels where the ramp is attached to the barrel. The integral ramp barrel changes the geometry of the feed ramp, letting the chamber have support farther back at the bottom. Different barrel makers use different ramp dimensions. The three main types are Clark/Para-Ordnance, Wilson/Nowlin, and Bar-Sto. All the ramps work, but they are not interchangeable. As an example, you cannot simply fit a Bar-Sto ramped barrel to a Para-Ordnance pistol. You must either modify the barrel ramp or the pistol frame. Installing a ramped barrel in a frame not designed for one requires milling a slot in the frame to provide room for the new barrel ramp. This can only be done with a mill. An enterprising machinist might do the work without a fixture, but because the fixture makes the work so much easier it would be foolish to proceed without it. Cominolli makes such a fixture. Complete with instructions, the fixture allows you to mill all the various ramped barrel configurations.
Clamp the fixture, line it up with the drill press, then insert frame and drill the new pin hole.
Install the new mainspring housing in the frame, and put the cross pin into it.
This is what the new hole looks like, and your work has just started.
Now you grind.
Filing is simple; blend the surfaces and don’t get bored and make a mistake.
A carry gun is usually a problem if it shows. In most jurisdictions, “concealed” means concealed. With the 1911, what often shows is the bottom of the frame, at the mainspring housing. So Ed Brown invented the “bobtail.” Simply put, it turns what amounts to a square-butt 1911 frame, into a round-butt 1911 frame even comparable to an S&W revolver.
Here Marianne is rounding the edge of the frame, having blended the frame to the new mainspring housing.
The process is simple, but involved and hard work. You’ll need the bobtail mainspring housing and the Ed Brown fixture to drill and cut. Strip the frame, and install the fixture into the frame. Use the lower hole to locate the fixture, and the upper hole to drill the new hole.
Then remove the fixture, clean up the drilling burrs, install the new mainspring housing, and grind, file, polish the frame until the lines of the frame match the lines of the bobtail mainspring housing. If you are careful, you won’t mar the new mainspring housing. If you aren’t; you’ll either have to buy another new housing or blend over your mistake.
Again, this isn’t difficult, but you’ll need a drill press to do it right. And, a bench grinder makes it easier, but you can do it with files, a Dremel, sanding cylinders, and patience.
Once you have ground it as close as you dare, then it is time for the files.
Once you have filed, then you polish with emery cloth. The end result is ready for bluing, or other frame work.