The Dolt

[Art Doc]

In the late 1970s I bought a Colt 22 Conversion Unit for the 1911 pistol. It had adjustable sights and rib making it resemble the Gold Cup upper. I wanted to make it a complete pistol. At that time nobody was making a 22 caliber 1911 so I decided to make my own.

I started with an Essex frame and GI parts. My talents as a gun smith are extremely limited and I struggled with fitting the parts together. Took much longer than I hoped and in the end I was totally unsatisfied with the results. The gun was ugly with the nicely blued commercial grade slide mounted on a parkerized military style frame. The pistol was also unacceptable in terms of reliability. It suffered too many malfunctions in feeding and ejecting and I could never get the slide lock to work. When I mounted the unit on my Gold Cup lower, it fed and ejected but I still couldn't get the slide to lock open after the round.

So I sold the gun to someone who thought he could tinker on it and make it work. Never heard how it worked out for him.

A couple years later I saw another Conversion Unit on a table at a gun show. On an impulse, and despite my previous experience, I bought it. Mounted on either my Series '70 Government Model or my Gold Cup it basically worked OK...except for the damn slide lock which I never could get to function properly.

I hung onto the unit for 20 years or more, using it sparingly and wishing I could find the right lower to make another attempt at building a complete pistol.

Then one day I was perusing the Gunbroker auctions and I spotted a Daly 1911 complete lower. This was nicely blued so it would match the slide, and it even had a trigger that was reminiscent of the one found on the Gold Cup. Even had the straight mainspring housing like the one found on the Gold Cup. I think I paid $250 for it.

I put the unit on the Daly lower and pulled the slide back. Much to my utter shock the slide locked in the open position! Shooting the gun I found I had some ejection problems requiring some tinkering. After some frustration I finally did whatever it wanted done and it now works with excellent dependability (for a Frankengun, anyway). I put on a set of fake ivory stocks that were engraved with a personal symbol (a winged snake-long story) and I had a small, cheap diamond that I had a jeweler friend mount in the right side stock. Doesn't everyone deserve a diamond studded 1911?

The lower came with the extended tang safety and a hammer with a round spur. I would have preferred a standard tang and hammer, but they work and I am tired of messing with this thing.

So here it is. At a quick glance it resembles a 22 caliber Gold Cup. Part Daly and part Colt I call it The Dolt.

 

[Grayfox]

I know exactly what you're talking about. Some years ago I picked up a Ciener Platinum Cup conversion unit at a really good price. At that time nobody made a dedicated 1911 in .22 caliber except the very rare and expensive Colt Ace.
Like you I decided to build up a lower to mount it on permanently. I bought an Essex frame and went to work. Also like you, it was a bit of a pain in the rear. But in the end, it came out to be an excellent shooter.

I don't have a pic of the gun by itself, but that's it at the 7:00 position.

 

[TOM BECKWITH]

As an aside, the Colt Conversion units require a special slide stop to lock the slide open, a #2 as I recall. Will not work with other slide stops. Often misplaced or missing and the regular Colt slide stop will not work correctly.

 

[Cyrano]

I had somewhat the same experience: I bought a Colt conversion unit. It wouldn't fire more than 50 rounds without the floating chamber seizing up. So I sold it. Got another one, a nice, older, unit in a little brown box with a green interior. It didn't work any better. Sold it too. Then got a very expensive, almost new Colt service model ACE. It was as unreliable as the others. Didn't have it long enough to take a picture of it but at least I made money on it when I sold it. I realized why I have a 4 cavity 45 caliber H&G mould and Bullseye powder. Now i shoot my 45 more. I was the dolt.

 

[Big Cholla]

The original Colt conversion slide for 22 LR was designed and built with a floating chamber to create the sensation of nearly the same amount of recoil as when shooting the 45 acp mid-range target load used by Bullseye shooters. I too tried one many years ago and found mine at least was very un-reliable. I gave up on it. Then Ciener in Florida came out with his line of conversion slides that did not incorporate the floating chamber. I bought one for a Commander and found it to be accurate and reliable. I then bought one for a Government Model and found the same. I used to shoot them a lot. Now, not so much because my S&W 617 with the 10 shot cylinder is more fun and more accurate. I wish some one would manufacture a conversion unit for 3rd generation S&W semi-autos.....

 

[rog8732]

I bought in the 70s, and still have, a Colt conversion. Just the other week I pulled it off the built Caspian frame it's been on for the past few years.

My son and I shot it a great deal on a MK IV 70 series frame years ago; and while not the most accurate .22 it was well with-in "minute of squirrel" accuracy.

It would lock back after the last round, and we never had the malfunctions I had heard about.
Somehow I think my use of the old "Tri-Flow" brand teflon oils on the friction part of the floating chamber kept it from jamming up with crud.

Tri-flow like so many products that do exactly what they say they will, must have fallen on the EPA bad list. While the CLP oils supposedly incorporated the teflon formula in todays' shelf products, as good as they are, they are not the great stuff I recall.

 

[gaucho1]

Oh............sorry..........I thought someone had finally started a thread about me..............



Very Nice Gun SP..............

 

[ACP230]

I had one of the conversion units.
Worked much better with plated bullets. I shot a
lot of Remington "Golden Bullet" .22s through it.