wsimpso1

I have done three pistols by assembling it and very slowly working the surfaces with abrasives on the Dremel, files, emery cloth, and then break the sharp edges. It feels good to have Bob validate it. I have no respect for the surfaces if they bite me, even the safeties and frame get run over to get a smooth whole. Billski

The 870 can be made to load and feed really slick. It does take some judicious clean-up of the feed path. There are a number of forums about a year ago on making the M1100 load well. Search 'em up.. Then you can get any go fast parts you want for the M870. Billski

Thanks for the input. I relieved the extractor to clear cases and the gun runs great. I too have fitted an extra for this gun, and now I am going to buy and fit extras for the others. The gun that broke one had something like 12000 rounds by a previous owner. Billski

GI pattern 30 round mags with 30 in them will not seat easily on a closed bolt. Load to refusal (30 rounds) and then pull two rounds, and they work great. GI 20's work fine with 20 in them. Orlites and some others do actually reload well when full. But not the GI 30. I use the push-pull reload that is taught in tactical classes. You should be able to push the magazine home and have it latch, and then tug to see that it is indeed latched. Better to find out at the reload than later. It has another advantage - thumping the base of the mag to seat it also jams the feed lips against the reciever, with bad things being precipitated: bent feed lips and cracked magazines are the most obvious. Billski

I just had an extractor break, and while fitting the new (Ed Brown) ones, I found that they contacted the tapered part of the extraction groove in the case. This contact was pretty heavy, and prevented the case from being able to sit back against the breech face. With a tool, I could get it back, and it cammed the extractor out some to do it. Hmmm. I checked with Jerry Kuhnhausen, and he actually recommends (in his book) relieving the extractor so that it touches the case only at the bottom of the extraction groove, not on the edge of the rim and not on the forward tapered surface of the groove. Well, that made all sorts of sense to me - I figure that under firing loads, the case will shove back, flexing the extractor and maybe contributing to fatigue (by making the load cycle bigger) and failure of the claw, which is what had happened to the last one. So, are all of your long lived M1911 extractors clearing the case except at the bottom of the extraction groove, or do they hit the cases and leave a mark in the taper? Billski

Raccoon Hunters had a program of USPSA matches and practice sessions, and then all at once, they don't have a program. Anybody know what happened? It seemed like they were off to a good start... Billski

Setting it up on the lathe is a good idea, but I suspect that it will be overkill. Personally, I would just take it to 3/8" on the drill press and then try it out. That will only give you 0.010" bullet clearance. If the bullets put marks on the suppressor (hits it), go up to 25/64", which gives you 0.018" clearance. Keep going until the bullet doesn't touch. You want the clearance kept small to make the most of the gas that you have. Frankly though, I would not expect a whole lot out of a brake on 9mm factory ammo. Now, if you handload light bullets with large charges of slow powder and rifle primers (9mm Major Open Gun ammo) you will have more gas to make the brake work. Billski

"How about if I just shoot it?" I think that TGO said that... and it is a very good plan.

I just re-read my previous post, and the high side of the sum of the clearances between pins and the link is 0.0085", not 0.085" - purely a typo. Pity no one called me on it. I did choose to weld the breach face, but not because it needed it now so much as because I figured that it had to be a little soft - the wear had occurred in less than 6000 rounds. I figured that the welded face would be more wear resistant and last a lot longer than the current condition face would. As for reinventing the wheel, I did not. I just checked through the mechanics using the established dimensions, and found that it indeed works in the simple way that I thought that it had, complete with the slide and barrel engaged to each other well past the time of bullet exit (and well into drainage of powder gases). Simply put, the bullet is driven one way, and the slide/barrel in the other way. The Browning M5/Remington M11 shotgun, Remington M8 rifle, and the various Browning machine guns all use this simple method (taking advantage of Conservation of Momentum). The M1911 link is long enough that combined with going over center, the engagement between barrel and slide is not broken until the bullet is gone and much of the gas has drained from the barrel. In that time, there is plenty of energy stored in the slide to extract/eject the spent case, wind the springs, and allow a complete loading cycle. As to how I estimated bullet exit, well, I know peak pressure and about what the shape of the curve looks like (guns and internal combustion engines have remarkably similar P-t curves). It varies with primers and powders, and even different cartridges all work the basic designs just fine, so the specifics of the pressure curve must not be too important. From the pressure curve, I calculated the force upon the bullet and its acceleration, and calculated bullet velocity and travel, all via numerical integration. I adjusted the scaling of the curve to give 850 ft/sec at 4.7 inches travel, and used that pressure curve to calculate forces upon the barrel/slide, and likewise performed the numerical integration to determine travel and velocity of the slide/barrel assembly. I did make the assumption that the bullet had about 100 pounds of drag on the bore, using up some of the applied force, but not much. I know from a similar setup at Remington Arms (Ilion) in the early 1980's that this method works. In rifled guns, some small drag (compared to the powder gas forces) is needed to make it match perfectly, while in smoothbores, you can neglect friction entirely. In any event, I stopped modeling slide/barrel response once the bullet cleared the muzzle. I did make a quick check of bullet vs powder momentum, and the powder gases are a relatively small recoil contributor (less than 10% here) in a low pressure, small powder charge gun such as a .45 ACP. Now if you load 9x19 to give Major, it will be a lot more, which Open Gun competitors use to run the brake/compensator. And going to high pressure, larger charge guns, like rifles, machine guns, and artillery, the gas exit makes up a much larger portion of the recoil impulse. I do similar things for a living, and thought that by doing some simple modeling, we could all gain some insights into why these things work so well. Billski

Ok, I went off and ran a bit of modeling and can report on that. And I still suspect that the breechface angle is what JMB and Colt and Ordinance worked out as making sense for their tolerances and everything with the barrel tilted muzzle down to achieve lockup. Different makers in different eras might work out other numbers. One thing I did was I came up with an aproximate pressure curve that gave me about correct bullet velocities, and then calculated the resulting slide impulses, etc. And then, I worked out what the forces acting on the barrel through the link worked out to. JMB knew his stuff... First off, springs are pretty inconsequential to what is going on. I got forces driving the slide rearwards running from about 2700 pounds (peak pressure) to about 160 pounds (as the bullet reaches the muzzle). Subtract out the 12 or so pounds that an 18 pound recoil spring has in battery and the 15 or so pounds that the mainspring contributes, and you still have 2670 on down to 130 pounds accelerating the slide... Then I worked out the travel of the slide, the link movements, and forces involved in moving the link... The slide moves about 0.135" while the bullet is in the bore, and the first 0.083" is before the link reaches top dead center, or about 8 degrees, and the link is supposedly driving the barrel lugs about 0.003" deeper into the slide lugs. The mechanical advantage is pretty big because of the small angles. Even at the worst part, the friction of the lockup forces only requires about 30 pounds rearward on the slide to cause the lugs to slip. The bullet leaves the bore after another 5 degrees of link rotation, and 0.002" of barrel drop from TDC. Now think about link clearances - according to print, the two pin to hole clearances sum up to 0.001" to 0.085" , so theoretically, at least a third and as much as all of this up and down movement during the actual time the barrel is under pressure could happen without any forces in the link. We do still have to go farther than that to fully disengage the lugs, but then we have to finish the rocket engine effect of the powder gases draining from the bore. So, JMB had allowed for all of the firing forces, and movement, and draining the gases. Pretty cool. Do I think that the system is necessarily without movement between the barrel and slide during firing? Nope, but it could, depending upon how the clearances worked out. Next, I did some calcs about sliding. Hmm, friction coeficients of smooth metals on each other go from 0.08 to about 0.20. Hmmm, a force normal of 1 pound would require only .08 to .20 pounds to make it slip, which works out to a force applied at about angles of 4.5 to 11.3 degrees to make it slip... Which is a whole hell of a lot higher than 0 deg 52 minutes (0.87 deg). Nope, I don't think that the breech face angle has much to do with feeding. I am back where I started from. JMB & Co put that angle in there to make the breech face roughly square to the barrel, which is tilted down about that much. JMB put the barrel link 8 degrees past TDC to give the whole mechanism time to run the bullet out and drain powder pressure before the mechanism would unlock. The engagement and spring forces are so low compared to the powder forces that you can do simple conservation of momentum. And the stuff about the balanced force vector, UGH! Jerry Kuhnhausen writes a hell of a good book about gunsmithing these things, but his version of how it works still don't jibe with the physics and mechanical engineering I learned. And yes, the word is jibe (or gybe), you can look it up. To get back to the original topic, I ended up sending the slide to EGW, and they said that it did not need welding. The wear at the top of the face from barrel impact and case rubbing had gotten my attention, and at my request, they are welding and dressing the face back to new specs, and I shall fit a new Scheumann barrel to that. Billski

Looking at the prints reproduced for Jerry Kuhnhausen's books, it looks like the barrel is parallel to the slide when unlocked, and then the rear end of the barrel is lifted for engagement. The 89 deg 8 minutes means that there is about 52 minutes of tilt, or about 0.060" of lift 4" aft of the bushing. It all fits together... The big surprise is that I did some other looking around about all of this stuff on the locking and the barrel lugs not being able to move relative to the slide and the "Balanced Force Vector", did some calculations, and have some stuff to add, but it will take bit to type it all in, so maybe tomorrow... Billski

Radical Precision Designs, I apologize if I mislead. I was just after the corrosion inhibitors in the antifreeze. The glycol is the means for spreading the corrosion inhibiters around in the media. It is a bit lubricous, but was not the main thrust. Here's the background. Really clean brass and gilding metal will oxidize and turn brown. Not good in commerical ammo. In military ammo, they do not tumble the lube and oxidation off, which leaves it darker and prevents the brown corrosion. At Remington Arms we added an anti-corrosive to our tumbling media for the purposes of keeping bright ammo bright. The anti-corrosive agents turn out to be the same bunch of chemicals as the corrosion inhibiters used in automotive antifreeze. You might play hell trying to just buy the corrosion inhibiters on the market, and then you have to disperse it into your tumbling media - dissolve it in a solvent is the usual way. It could get fussy. Automotive antifreeze already has the corrosion inhibiters dissolved in glycol. So automotive antifreeze is cheap and easy and works fine for the task. No more brown ammo. And no, it does not seem to influence primers and powders. Now these glycols... Hmmm. Let us know how the experiment works out. Billski

This topic, along with a bunch of others, is covered in Pat Sweeny's book on shotguns... M870's and M1100's can have a round get past the shell carrier but not caught by the shell latches. The shell will then slide back and be trapped between the slide and the shell carrier with the round partway in the magazine. Is that what you saw? To fix this, I believe that Remington put the flex tab in the shell carrier. If I remember correctly, the flex tab carrier is supposed to allow you to forcibly cycle the gun, which also loads it. Contributing to this problem is that there are several machining cuts for the mag tube and feed path, each done on a different machine. If the tolerances run the wrong way, you can end up with a bump in the loading path that catches the rim of the round being loaded, making the jam much more likely. My M1100 had that problem. It is covered pretty thoroughly else where, but if you can not find it using the search function, come back to us with questions. Billski

At Lordship Point (Remington Gun Club in Stratford CT, now closed) we had M1100's that had so many rounds on them that the chamber had a step worn in it from the brass cap on the shells. They would be cleaned when they began to malfunction, but it was usually thousands of rounds between cleanings, and some had over 100,000 rounds. They worked fine. In our function test rack (Remington Ammo R&D Labs at Bridgeport), we had three M1100 12 ga magnums with many many thousands of 1 5/8 to 1 7/8 oz magnum shotshells through them. They worked fine too. The burr rolled up inside is part of the deal, but it soes not seem to hurt the functioning. Learn not to reach inside Remington recievers with your fingers. Usually, the only thing a M1100 needs is cleaning and an occaisional O-Ring. EricW has cheap one's that you just replace everytime you clean the piece. Remington's may not be the sexiest guns, but most of them will run for two or three generations of shooters. Billski

Some things to think about and a strong caution: Ammonia is poison to work hardened copper alloys and will cause splits. Bullet jackets, primer cups, and cartidge cases all qualify. Hoppes #9 has ammonia in it. Cleaning cases with any ammonia based solvent is BAAAAD! I know, you don't use much, and you have gotten away with it, but one kabboom from a case split, and you will wish that you had not. The biggest question that you need to answer with regards to tumbling is: What do you want? Assuming that you use carbide dies and you don't lube cases: The minimum is "I care about the ammo feeding and firing on cue, then extracting and ejecting". Beyond that there is "I want my brass shiney" and "I don't want my brass to turn brown while it sits around". Different stuff for different needs: Clean is best accomplished with walnut - it is hard and has abrasives imbedded. It will lean the outside of the cases and most of the ash from the inside. If you de-prime first, then tumble in walnut, you will have gotten most of the primer ash out of the primer pocket too. Walnut may put a frosted finish on brass. Walnut wears out and gets dusty - when it takes too long or leaves your ammo dirty, it is time to toss the tubfull. Your ammo will work fine when just clean; Polishing requires a finer grade and softer abrasive than walnut, and corncob with a bit of jewler's rouge is the easy way to do this. Jeweler's rouge is Fe2O3, so it is a lousy polishing agent on steel, which means that it won't wear on your gun. Clean and polish with corn cob/rouge will take longer than with walnut, or you could clean with walnut and polish with rouge treated corn cob. Corn cob does not wear out - you can add more rouge, but when it gets dusty, it is time to replace it. Polishing looks nice, but neither the gun nor the target cares. If you must have polished, have at it. "No brown ammo" is another topic. I have acid fingers and that has made really clean cases acquire brown fingerprints. A long time ago, I learned that a tablespoon of automotive antifreeze in the tumbler with each batch of brass puts enough glycol and corrosion inhibitors on the cases to keep them from turning brown. Me? I de-prime cases and then tumble in walnut, treated with automotive antifreeze. My primer pockets get cleaned and the cases stay corrosion free while they wait their turn to be shot. Now for rifles, you will want everything clean once (walnut) and then after sizing you will need to clean off the lube (corn cob/antifreeze). Rouge added to the lube removal run makes 'em pretty too, but is hardly necessary. Some folks add small amounts of mineral spirits to keep down dust. Later Billski

Thanks Benny!

Wesselman, you crack me up. And Hostetter, you have too narrow a definition of fluids and inadequate appreciation of the complexities imposed by thermodynamics. Credentials - I have a BSME, five years working for R&D at Remington Arms, then collected an MSME while doing research in computational fluid dynamics (designing elements), and am now doing fluids and vibration isolation for a living. Fluids encompass both liquids and gases. In a lot of the FEA (Finite Element Analysis) the deformation of solids as the computational currency, although CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) tends to work in other forms. To do this correctly, you do need compressible fluid models that also take into account thermodynamic limitations (sonic velocity, energy available, flow around discontinuities, etc). One of the big things is that the gases accelerate towards their sonic velocities whle they are expanding, cooling adiabatically, and their sonic velocities are coming down with the temperature and pressure which is reducing their motivation. You want to recover the maximum momentum, which means that you want to let it get up to speed before you turn it, but the longer you let it get up to speed the slower it wants to go, so you have to catch each batch at its best spot... Then you have to turn it to give the muzzle a shove in the best direction. Ultimately, which direction you want it to shove can become quite empirical too. Yeah, making up a virtual screening experiment then a full up virtual designed experiment that covers all of the design and operation variables, modeling the resulting comps, running them on the models and analyzing them is possible. Heck, I would bet that somewhere the fluid modeling, complete with the conservation of momentum, thermodynamics, and everything else, exists somewhere. You could also build some of the comps, instrument them, and check if your models represent reality. If they do, then you could lean on designed experiment results and build the ultimate comp for rifle and pistol. Another way is to go about the Buckingham PI methods of defining what is going on, and eventually deterimine for your self what variables are important, in which way, and how to apply them. That sounds like a awfull lot of work. And then you get to enter a crowded cost driven market of a few thousand nut cases who mostly are not worried about making their Open Pistol work with less recoil and flip and even fewer who are not worried about their Open or Tactical Rifle moving less than it already does... I would rather load ammo, go to range, go flying, and work on the homebuilt airplane. EricW, that my friend is why no one has done it. Too little payoff for too much fuss and cost. Remember that you can get together with a few buddies, spend a couple hundred dollars a piece, buy one of each that is out there, test drive them all, and then buy the one that you like best for your blaster. And you know what? Max Michel and Travis Thomasie are still going to burn down the stages way faster than you can. So will Brian Enos. They spent their time on the range and dry firing... Billski

Flexmoney, Thanks for the response from an experienced hand. Yeah, it does seem a tad soft; Wear from the barrel contact is 0.015 to 0.020", which is significant, but probably not enough to mess with feeding if I dressed it down that much and got the surface relatively "right"; Yeah, this gun sees a bunch of 172 PF ammo in IDPA and USPSA; Sending it to EGW for face welding and remachining is looking like a really good idea - fix the out of shape face, machine it correctly, and presumably with a fairly hard surface. Their website shows this work for $50. The slide can go ugly the rest of this season, and be refinished along with the rest of the gun over the winter.

OK, the last time I asked about this topic, the discussion became unpleasant. Let's deal in results with each repair type and see if we can keep emotion out of this discussion. I am about to fit a new barrel to my Colt Series 70 .45 ACP pistol, and have a worn breech face, both from contact with the hood and from feeding cartridges. The hood of the barrel (an early 1990's Olympic Arms barrel with other problems) had big chamfers on both the upper and lower edges, and thus a narrow face in contact with the breech face. There is a case radius shaped wear mark above the firing pin hole in the breech face. I have received advice that I should dress out the wear, and fit the barrel to the new position of the breech face. I have also received advice that I should have an insert installed and then fit parts from there. No one suggested trashing the slide. I still wonder if that would not be the best plan. So folks, have you had this problem repaired? What method was used? Did it work? How well did it last? I want to accumulate some numbers here, so the more of you that have experience with these methods, the better. Thanks! Billski

cking, In my set of prints (Jerry Kuhnhausen's books), the breech face angle says (Ref) next to it. In my training, that means it is a reference dimension for setting something up, and is not intended to be a held dimension, with tolerances applied. Perhaps elsewhere the face is toleranced, and John Travis did indicate that a tolerance existed for this dimension. In any event, the angle is hooked up to the locking lugs forward of the ejection port, and I have to assume it is for establishing the locking lug dimensions with the barrel tilted slightly down at the muzzle. Why JMB and Colt wanted the muzzle down I am still noodling on. Does anybody have any real history to lay on us? Anyway, I think that I know why JMB and Colt did some other things related to this, but I have to look at my drawings before I go shooting off my mouth (my keyboard?) any further. Billski

I was not aware that early M1911's had soft slides. My pistol is a Series 70, made by Colt in 1979, so it is hard. Using a metal straightedge, the wear is really pretty small, only a few thousandths, so I will dress it out and fit the new barrel, then finish the chamber and set headspace with my chamber reamer. I recognize that doing so results in the extraction groove sitting deeper relative to the extractor. Considering that many .45's actually headspace on the extractor, this one will have a better chance of actually headspacing on the case rim, but apparently that is just not a problem. Thanks again for your thoughts! Billski

WOW, what a thread. And no one has picked up on my error about Alex Wakal's F-2- He decreases the size of the chambers as he goes forward not increases them as I erroneously wrote earlier. Also, in rifles, chambers do tend to run bigger than one caliber, probably because they have so much more gas to deal with. I must comment that I did remain mostly in the physics because that was my interpretation of what was requested, but I can never resist traversing into engineering because that is where the practical comes out. Hey EricW, you go guy! Empirical design is what we already have a bunch of. A more analytical approach could yield a more compact and effective design, but I am quite busy with airplanes and my profession to embark upon that task. George, I love ya, you read and understood my post too! And then Radical Pistol Designs (sorry, I can not recall your name right now), understands the physics too. THis can be quite a discussion. Hmm, A few more misconceptions to clear up: Burning outside the barrel - By the time peak pressure is reached in the gases, which is well before the bullet leaves the bore, the gun powder has pretty well been consumed and the reactions have almost completely gone to completion. All that is left is adiabatic expansion. Now those who remember high school chemistry (that was long time ago for me) know that when a gas decreases in temperature, electrons make quantum decreases in energy from higher to lower energy states and emit photons then. So we see fire as the gases make decreasing energy jumps - as the gases expand. The burning happens, then as the gases travel away, we see the flames. That is why we should point the fire extinguisher at the fuel, not at the flame. This is not to say that more burning can not occur once the bore is uncorked. The powder is oxygen deficient, so some of the gases (various HC's, H, H2, and CO) are ready to burn some more when mixed with air and ignited. This event gives big muzzle flashes and sometimes flames at the ejection port and/or gas cylinder vent too. But as I say, that requires mixing in some more air from around the muzzle and ignition, usually by incandescent ash particles from the primer back in the rear end of the gas column, so it happens pretty late and largely outside of the brake or comp. Brakes vs Comps - Semantics, really. It is all about what you want the redirected the gases to do, whether you reduce muzzle rise or recoil. In our current recoil operated Open Pistols, yeah, you need to leave enough recoil to work the gun, and that leaves you some gas to vent in directions to eliminatel muzzle rise or lateral walk. In gas op rifles, we primarily want the push countered by a pull, and most of the effort is put there, with a little spent on controlling muzzle rise or walk. Changing angles. Hmmm. For our work we tend to have brakes and comps that are made using orthogonal thinking. Yeah, baffles and vent holes at 90 degrees to the barrel axis. Open shotguns have the JP mid barrel mounted brake at larger angles. For .50 BMG rifles and the like, they use bigger angles, and the thought is obviously to get even more direction change on the gases. While it works, these rifles become terribly anti-social to shoot. And the recoil reduction is beyond what we have use for in 9mm Major Pistols. While the rifle rules do not yet prohibit them, if someone shows up with a Major Rifle with backward angle ports, I suspect that it would quickly be banned because no sane RO could follow you closely enough through most stages. Ah well, food for thought and more discussion. Billski

Your description of the physics IS interesting... The device works by turning the gases. Assuming a brake on a gun with a clean muzzle and then a brake, In sequence, (and risking explaining the obvious) you get: One momentum change as the gases exit muzzle, and this one pushes back on the barrel; Another momentum change as expanding gases get turned to the sides by hitting the back side of the first baffle, and this pulls forward on the barrel; Another momentum change as the remaining gases clear the hole in the second port, and this one pushes back on the brake; Another momentum change as those gases get turned by hitting the back of the second baffle, which pulls forward on the brake; And so on. Now let's get a few things straight here. You are not concerned with maintaining flow velocities. Nope, not at all, you want to change the direction of the flowing gases as much as possible. So how to do it. Hmmm. First we have to know that the speed of sound in a gas is related to its temperature, and the speed of sound in the gun gases at the muzzle is quite a bit (1.5x to 2.5x) above the muzzle velocity as the bullet uncorks the end of the barrel, after the gases expand without heat exchange with the surroundings, but as they expand the temp drops and so does the speed of sound. And this happens very quickly after the bullet leaves the bore. Next part is that except in very specific circumstances (this IS rocket science) gases will not flow faster than their local speed of sound. So, if the gases are expanding rapidly, it will be cooling rapidly and its speed will drop rapidly. So, to get those gases to transfer as much momentum as possible, you want the gas up to speed, but no more than that. For high temp gases on the first baffle of both open gun ports and on rifles, a lot of folks think that 1/2 to 1 caliber is about right. Untill the bullet passes through the first baffle, very little gas gets through to the second chamber. Once the bullet clears the first baffle, much of the gases will flow through the first baffle and enter the second one. The next chamber will get the gases that come out of the first baffle instead of going out the sides, the temperatures (and velocities) will be somewhat lower here, but there will still be a lot of gas coming out. Some folks think that another 1/2 to 1 caliber chamber is about right, while others have demonstrated to themselves that the second baffle should be further out than the first... This make sense, with less pressure available to drive the gases up to speed, they will accelerate up to local sonic more slowly, and local sonic will be lower too, so you might need a bigger chamber. Anyway, the gases keep getting their directionchanged abruptly by the second baffle until the bullet clears it too. And so on with third (and fourth, and so on) baffles. With lower and lower temps and pressures and sonic velocities available, at some point, you quit seeing benefit and stop adding baffles. Interestingly, on pistols, several baffles spaced the same distance apart is the norm, while in rifles, some brakes have baffles equally spaced, and some have short distance on the first, longer to the second, and still longer to the third, and we do have max size rules on rifle brakes (for non-Open guns). Alex Wakal's brake is an example of this... I hope that helped... Billski.

My Ford Fusion is great. All four seats are big and roomy, rear seat folds, trunk is huge, gobs of room for two guys and all of the guns. Might be a bit tight for those three-gun carts unless the cart collapses or it can go on a Yakima rack on the roof. I and buddy who is 2m tall stuffed all of a weekend's worth of gear and snowboards into mine, and he still put his seat back and reclined. And then we got 29 mpg at 80 mph. Mine is fun to drive with the four-banger and manual trans (It actually performs fine with the I4), and the V6 version is a bit of a hot rod. Billski

I am doing a similar fuss over a used Springfield, bought the right S&A beavertail, contoured it to match my Ed Brown safties, and burned through at the hammer recess in the middle of the beavertail. What bastard it has turned into trying to fix it. Don't have TIG, only Oxy-Acetylene. I am buying a new S&A and I will just be much more careful about the bottom of the beavertail. So, be careful under the hammer recess. Billski