Ian
Notorious member
I need some experienced input on a little issue I'm having with a Colt M1991 stainless steel Commander.
This all started with me changing some stuff, so now I need help getting it back in order.
I took this gun in on trade for some work, and it had been shot very little. The barrel fit was atrocious, with there being enough gap between the barrel hood and breech face to nearly get two thicknesses of business card into. The RH step cut in the slide is what drove the barrel into battery. Wanting to put a threaded barrel on it anyway, I ditched the factory barrel and got a threaded Storm Lake semi-drop-in barrel, which was excellent quality but for a few small things that I'll get to in a minute.
Fitment of the barrel was un-eventful, all that was required was a slight filing of the rear of the barrel hood after squaring and smoothing the horribly machined breech face in the slide. The barrel feet and link were perfectly fitted to the needs of this pistol, meaning locking lug engagement is the correct depth and the barrel doesn't bind the link nor sink down when pressed downward when in battery. Headspace is good. Barrel bushing is a tight fit but doesn't bind the barrel. The vertical and horizontal impact surfaces of the frame have perfect, coincidental contact with the surfaces of the barrel, and the "bowtie" contacts the barrel feet squarely and at the "root" of the feet. The only thing that was out of whack was the feeding relief on the barrel (this is a standard barrel, not a truly ramped one) overhung the feed ramp on the frame, causing stoppages and nasty cuts in bullet noses, so I had to use a sanding drum and Dremel to correct that very carefully and managed to do so without reducing the critical support area of the chamber.
The Storm Lake barrel was advertised as being throated for cast bullets, which is a total lie. Yes, it has the rifling bobbed, but the throat entrance scuffs a .451" jacketed bullet all the way around and barely chambers Federal ball ammo. Also, the grooves in the barrel are grooved indeed, being VERY rough. On top of that, everything was nitride finished which hardened all the rough edges. I shot about a box and a half of ammo through the pistol with the suppressor on it and very early on began having some very slight failures to go into battery, just requiring a bump with a thumb to lock up the slide. This was partly due to me making a snug fit of the locking lugs, but mostly due to slight powder coating buildup in the throat.
Knowing the throat was too tight to begin with, I ordered a Manson .45 ACP pistol throating reamer from Brownells. Don't buy one of these things, they are useless. First, the reamer was advertised to be capable of creating a .454" throat, which it is not, the shank is .452" and the flutes a touch smaller than that at the largest part. Second, the reamer isn't heat treated properly and is too soft to cut warm butter, much less barrel steel. Yes, the barrel is nitrided and thus very hard on the surface, but I first used the reamer on a different Storm Lake barrel (S&W M&P 45) which was stainless steel and all that I accomplished was to roll the reamer's cutting edges inward. After taking a steel and rolling them back and then touching the reamer carefully with an oiled India stone, and also making a wood mandrel and breaking the coating in the 1911 barrel's throat with some 220 emery paper, the reamer again folded up like it was made of aluminum. In aggravation, I chucked it in a cordless drill and chewed on the throat with it for a while, finally succeeding in galling/smearing enough metal to move the throat forward a bit but not in making it any larger.
At this point, the "good idea" faery remembered that I have a .4525" chucking reamer stashed away for fixing revolver cylinder throats, so I retrieved that and went to work. The $15 HSS chucking reamer cut cleanly and easily through even the nitrided groove roots with no issues, further convincing me of the Manson reamer's poor quality. Once to that point, I had to blend the mess out, so I cut the head off of a grade 5, 1/2" bolt and turned a nice lap using a file and drill press. With coarse Clover valve lapping compound, I managed to correct most of the damage done by the manson reamer, enlarge the throat to .453", and blend in the throat with the lands and grooves nicely. The final result is a little longer than I wanted, but has the correct diameter and leade angle, looks good, and I managed to save the barrel.
As a final touch I used a brush wrapped in steel wool and some fine lapping compound to polish the entire barrel. What I had discovered about the rough grooves is that the powder-coated bullets were leaving that dreaded, hard, black fouling for the first inch of barrel. This has never happened to me before, though others mention it fairly frequently. Anyway, I didn't do much to clear up the grooves in the grooves, but did polish the roughness away considerably.
When putting it all back together today to go test fire it again, I noticed something quite unexpected and disturbing: The locking lug on the barrel bushing was severely damaged, almost halfway sheared off. It was a little difficult to remove by hand when I took it apart last, but it never occurred to me to study why. It appears that the slide is hammering the frame under recoil and peening the lug on the bushing. The slide is fine. After thinking on it some more, I remembered that the ejected brass was getting a very bad dent in the side of it from hitting the ejection port very hard and my suspicions were that the slide may have been over-extending on the back stroke or the recoil spring is too weak for the load and suppressor combination.
So I grabbed a 20lb spring and that seemed to be a bit better. Went out and shot a box of my powder coated loads through it and function was 100%. With the stronger spring, brass is now quartering forward and hitting the ground about six feet away instead of going out at 90 degrees and four feet away. The barrel bushing didn't seem to get any worse, if it did I think the lug would shear completely. One problem with shooting using a booster and suppressor is that it's really hard to tell if the slide is slamming the frame too hard, the extra mass and kerchunkiness of the system soaks up a lot of the action jar.
Now for the question: How do I tell if the slide is hitting the frame too hard? My impression is this pistol needs a Shok-Buff like no other pistol ever has, but all the people I know who know who shoot 1911s a lot have told me not to use them and that if a gun needs them, it really has other problems. I don't know what those "other" problems might be. The only thing that comes to mind is a small-radius firing pin stop and dropping back to a 16 or 18 lb recoil spring. It still seems to me that the slide is coming back too far (it goes way past the firing pin disconnect plunger, but I don't know if that is bad or not), and the brass is still getting a severe, creased dent in it from the top rear corner of the ejection port.
This all started with me changing some stuff, so now I need help getting it back in order.
I took this gun in on trade for some work, and it had been shot very little. The barrel fit was atrocious, with there being enough gap between the barrel hood and breech face to nearly get two thicknesses of business card into. The RH step cut in the slide is what drove the barrel into battery. Wanting to put a threaded barrel on it anyway, I ditched the factory barrel and got a threaded Storm Lake semi-drop-in barrel, which was excellent quality but for a few small things that I'll get to in a minute.
Fitment of the barrel was un-eventful, all that was required was a slight filing of the rear of the barrel hood after squaring and smoothing the horribly machined breech face in the slide. The barrel feet and link were perfectly fitted to the needs of this pistol, meaning locking lug engagement is the correct depth and the barrel doesn't bind the link nor sink down when pressed downward when in battery. Headspace is good. Barrel bushing is a tight fit but doesn't bind the barrel. The vertical and horizontal impact surfaces of the frame have perfect, coincidental contact with the surfaces of the barrel, and the "bowtie" contacts the barrel feet squarely and at the "root" of the feet. The only thing that was out of whack was the feeding relief on the barrel (this is a standard barrel, not a truly ramped one) overhung the feed ramp on the frame, causing stoppages and nasty cuts in bullet noses, so I had to use a sanding drum and Dremel to correct that very carefully and managed to do so without reducing the critical support area of the chamber.
The Storm Lake barrel was advertised as being throated for cast bullets, which is a total lie. Yes, it has the rifling bobbed, but the throat entrance scuffs a .451" jacketed bullet all the way around and barely chambers Federal ball ammo. Also, the grooves in the barrel are grooved indeed, being VERY rough. On top of that, everything was nitride finished which hardened all the rough edges. I shot about a box and a half of ammo through the pistol with the suppressor on it and very early on began having some very slight failures to go into battery, just requiring a bump with a thumb to lock up the slide. This was partly due to me making a snug fit of the locking lugs, but mostly due to slight powder coating buildup in the throat.
Knowing the throat was too tight to begin with, I ordered a Manson .45 ACP pistol throating reamer from Brownells. Don't buy one of these things, they are useless. First, the reamer was advertised to be capable of creating a .454" throat, which it is not, the shank is .452" and the flutes a touch smaller than that at the largest part. Second, the reamer isn't heat treated properly and is too soft to cut warm butter, much less barrel steel. Yes, the barrel is nitrided and thus very hard on the surface, but I first used the reamer on a different Storm Lake barrel (S&W M&P 45) which was stainless steel and all that I accomplished was to roll the reamer's cutting edges inward. After taking a steel and rolling them back and then touching the reamer carefully with an oiled India stone, and also making a wood mandrel and breaking the coating in the 1911 barrel's throat with some 220 emery paper, the reamer again folded up like it was made of aluminum. In aggravation, I chucked it in a cordless drill and chewed on the throat with it for a while, finally succeeding in galling/smearing enough metal to move the throat forward a bit but not in making it any larger.
At this point, the "good idea" faery remembered that I have a .4525" chucking reamer stashed away for fixing revolver cylinder throats, so I retrieved that and went to work. The $15 HSS chucking reamer cut cleanly and easily through even the nitrided groove roots with no issues, further convincing me of the Manson reamer's poor quality. Once to that point, I had to blend the mess out, so I cut the head off of a grade 5, 1/2" bolt and turned a nice lap using a file and drill press. With coarse Clover valve lapping compound, I managed to correct most of the damage done by the manson reamer, enlarge the throat to .453", and blend in the throat with the lands and grooves nicely. The final result is a little longer than I wanted, but has the correct diameter and leade angle, looks good, and I managed to save the barrel.
As a final touch I used a brush wrapped in steel wool and some fine lapping compound to polish the entire barrel. What I had discovered about the rough grooves is that the powder-coated bullets were leaving that dreaded, hard, black fouling for the first inch of barrel. This has never happened to me before, though others mention it fairly frequently. Anyway, I didn't do much to clear up the grooves in the grooves, but did polish the roughness away considerably.
When putting it all back together today to go test fire it again, I noticed something quite unexpected and disturbing: The locking lug on the barrel bushing was severely damaged, almost halfway sheared off. It was a little difficult to remove by hand when I took it apart last, but it never occurred to me to study why. It appears that the slide is hammering the frame under recoil and peening the lug on the bushing. The slide is fine. After thinking on it some more, I remembered that the ejected brass was getting a very bad dent in the side of it from hitting the ejection port very hard and my suspicions were that the slide may have been over-extending on the back stroke or the recoil spring is too weak for the load and suppressor combination.
So I grabbed a 20lb spring and that seemed to be a bit better. Went out and shot a box of my powder coated loads through it and function was 100%. With the stronger spring, brass is now quartering forward and hitting the ground about six feet away instead of going out at 90 degrees and four feet away. The barrel bushing didn't seem to get any worse, if it did I think the lug would shear completely. One problem with shooting using a booster and suppressor is that it's really hard to tell if the slide is slamming the frame too hard, the extra mass and kerchunkiness of the system soaks up a lot of the action jar.
Now for the question: How do I tell if the slide is hitting the frame too hard? My impression is this pistol needs a Shok-Buff like no other pistol ever has, but all the people I know who know who shoot 1911s a lot have told me not to use them and that if a gun needs them, it really has other problems. I don't know what those "other" problems might be. The only thing that comes to mind is a small-radius firing pin stop and dropping back to a 16 or 18 lb recoil spring. It still seems to me that the slide is coming back too far (it goes way past the firing pin disconnect plunger, but I don't know if that is bad or not), and the brass is still getting a severe, creased dent in it from the top rear corner of the ejection port.
