I don’t trust any mass manufactured, QC compromised, off the assembly line gun to be used stock for self defense.

Somewhere way north of 95% of them function reliably with all ammo.

Some are finicky with ammo.

A very few are lemons, often because of one out-of-spec part, or some stacking of tolerance limits. Sometimes a part was assembled incorrectly, be it a spring, a pin, or whatever.

Guns are machines with complex moving parts designed by people with a profit motive. Cheaper materials (MIM) assembled by less skilled folks with fewer meaningful checks sometimes produce a substandard gun.

Given an out-the-door <$650 gun is not custom fitted with high quality parts, careful assembly and rigorous proof firing, including accuracy, I feel an obligation to prove or even improve my new gun, often even before I shoot it.

Why?

I want my gun to function perfectly right from the beginning. I have had many new guns hiccup in the first 200 rounds. That doesn’t take me back to the zero confidence I have for an unproven gun—it takes me below that confidence level because now I know it is not reliable for EDC. Now the proofing will take even longer. Stress.

So, I detail strip and clean a new gun, inspecting each part for quality, function, finish, fit. Knowing a part is MIM, I’ll just replace it with steel. If a mating part benefits from being smooth, I polish it, and that is a lot of parts. Yes, I sometimes use a Dremel; other times 800 or 1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper by hand. I polish the inside of the barrel with bore paste to get rid of tiny machining burrs. I remove sharp corners and edges. I may enhance the grip.

I may install aftermarket parts that are superior to OEM parts so the gun will be even more reliable, accurate, shootable for me.

I coat the parts with oil that bonds to the metal and put it in a low temp oven for 20 minutes. I reassemble with grease everywhere there are moving parts.

This takes me 3-5 hours depending on the gun and my familiarity with it. I call it bonding. In truth, for a small investment in parts and materials, I am effectively turning a $450 OEM gun into a $1200 custom gun that will shoot more comfortably, reliably and accurately for me from the first shot onward.

Never had a failure because everything is run through extensive dry firing, including with dummy rounds, before live firing. I know and can feel the gun. Yep, I still test it live fire for ~200 ball rounds and then 50 of my carry load.

I hear those of you who say this should not be necessary. I hear if you experience a problem (very unlikely) send it back. BTDT. It’s aggravating, out of my control, often doesn’t work when returned, and you rarely actually find out what they did to fix it. And it takes a silly long time. If a cheap failed part is replaced with another cheap part, what’s gonna happen? If a guy has to repair X guns a day to catch up with the backlog, and he’s the newest guy on the line anyway, has your quality improved—or maybe decreased?

I enjoy getting to know a new gun intimately, and I have an increased pride in ownership because of the way it feels and shoots accurately and reliably. It’s worth it to me.