Mastiff54

Hello all, I found the forum looking for information on a what barrels made you smile in your 1911's. I have been building 1911's for quite a few years now and admire John Brownings genius. My 35 year career was spent in manufacturing and quality for the largest car and truck drive-line manufacturer in the world. There I had the privilege of working with amazing people who taught me that I had a lot more to learn all the way until the day I retired. My specialties were heat treatment of metals, precision machining of gears, shafts and bearings, and assembly. My passion is making tooling to make stuff which is how I segued into gun smithing. My brother dragged me kicking and screaming to the land of smoke after hunting, shooting and building my archery equipment for 25 years. As the bones got older, the stomach got bigger and the eyes got worse I find that he did me a favor since it is a lot easier to squeeze than pull. I have aslo built Mauser's in 25-06 & 8x57, Mini-Mausers in 17 Mach IV, Black Rifles in .223 and .308. All are custom, built exactly the way my brother and I want them. I have used Fusion parts for most of my 1911's, Clark parts for the 460 Rowlands, JP, DPMS, Krieger and other parts for my black rifles. Steve at ADCO has been a great source and is now helping me add supressors to most of my firearms. Never too late to save what hearing the factories and muzzle blasts left. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences

I have used DLC on both Stainless & Carbon frames, and I had Springer put the Class III Hard Anodizing on my lightweight Officer that I use for CC. I practice a lot with all of my pistols and both coatings have performed better than any other finishes I have tried. None of these coatings make the base material harder and if you try real hard you can break through the coating. But I think it takes more to mar these finishes than it does to damage any baked on finish. Both the DLC ahd the Class II HA also have excellent friction (or lack of it) characteristics. I run my guns in the winter using Lock-Ease which is liquid applied graphite with excellent results in temps well below freezing. If you decide to use either finish make sure you call and talk to Scott before preping your parts, I learned the hard way that glass beading them is a no-no because it gets silicone into the material. Springer precision was great to deal with.