At last months IDPA match one of the club members brought in a zip lock baggy of 1911 parts with $200 written on it. There was a complete Essex frame with Colt grips, an old Colt slide (pre-'45), a Crown City slide, a no-name barrel and a Springfield barrel, a regular barrel bushing, a collet bushing, a GI guide rod and plug, a recoil spring, a mag spring, and one mag follower. Everything was pretty beat looking but I thought I might be able to make something out of it all. I told him I'd take the bag and he warned me that no matter what combination of parts he'd tried, he couldn't make a working gun out of it. I figured the worst I could do is sell the parts on line and make my $200 back.
So, I won the match and took the bag of parts home and assembled a gun using the Colt slide, no-name barrel, and regular bushing. I got out some heavy leather work gloves, eye protection, and a thick canvas jacket, just in case things came apart, and took it out back and shot it using 230gr LRN reloads I get from one of my gunsmith friends. Incredibly it fired and even cycled a couple of times, though it had extraction and feed issues. Turns out the extractor claw was broken so I swapped in another extractor that a gunsmith friend had in a drawer. That worked well and took care of the extraction issue but it still didn't want to feed every time, the bullets would get hung up on the bottom edge of the barrel where it met the feed ramp. I took it to another gunsmith I know (the one that I get the ammo from) and after some trial and error he decided the Springfield barrel would work best, replaced the link, did some fitting work, and pronounced it ready. I gave him the Crown City slide and the rest of the left over parts in exchange for the work.
I took it out in the back yard today with a couple of Springfield 7 round mags and a box of the reloads and tried it out again and it functioned perfectly! No feeding or extraction issues, ran like a champ and is actually pretty accurate. I'm going to put another 100 or so rounds through it and if it continues to work well I'll shoot it in our next IDPA match just to show it off.
So.... Yes, it's ugly. Yes, it's a amalgamation of worn out parts. And, yes, it's a pretty good shooter, too! $200 well spent.
Here's some pics-
7 shots @ 25ft, off hand. Not too bad-
So, I won the match and took the bag of parts home and assembled a gun using the Colt slide, no-name barrel, and regular bushing. I got out some heavy leather work gloves, eye protection, and a thick canvas jacket, just in case things came apart, and took it out back and shot it using 230gr LRN reloads I get from one of my gunsmith friends. Incredibly it fired and even cycled a couple of times, though it had extraction and feed issues. Turns out the extractor claw was broken so I swapped in another extractor that a gunsmith friend had in a drawer. That worked well and took care of the extraction issue but it still didn't want to feed every time, the bullets would get hung up on the bottom edge of the barrel where it met the feed ramp. I took it to another gunsmith I know (the one that I get the ammo from) and after some trial and error he decided the Springfield barrel would work best, replaced the link, did some fitting work, and pronounced it ready. I gave him the Crown City slide and the rest of the left over parts in exchange for the work.
I took it out in the back yard today with a couple of Springfield 7 round mags and a box of the reloads and tried it out again and it functioned perfectly! No feeding or extraction issues, ran like a champ and is actually pretty accurate. I'm going to put another 100 or so rounds through it and if it continues to work well I'll shoot it in our next IDPA match just to show it off.
So.... Yes, it's ugly. Yes, it's a amalgamation of worn out parts. And, yes, it's a pretty good shooter, too! $200 well spent.
Here's some pics-
7 shots @ 25ft, off hand. Not too bad-
