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1911 chamber smoothing


t1nm4n

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I have an old 1911 parts gun, literally made from parts my dad brought back from Vietnam. The barrel I believe is relatively new in comparison. I know from my days in CAS we used to smooth the chambers for our shotguns so rounds would slide in and out better on the double barrels. Is this something you would want to do with a 1911, I hear people talk about ramp smoothing/polishing does it matter with the chamber for a SA? See attached pictures to tell whether or not it's too rough.

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I think it's a pretty decent shot of how rough the chamber is, hard to get those up close shots with a lil canon powershot.

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I had another question regarding carbon and leading fouling in the barrel, along with corrosion, first picture I believe is carbon build up and the second I think is corrosion of the barrel, both I know will affect accuracy, but this is just a plinking gun for the most part, not like I will ever try and shoot past 50yards, and nothing for points. What is the best stuff to get the carbon lead build up out of the barrel, I have been using KG carbon and fouling remover, and this barrel is in much better shape then when I first inspected it.

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From what I can tell this just looks to be really ground in carbon/lead fouling, been tough getting this all out.

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From different light sources the best I can tell this is corrosion in the barrel, at what point do you scrap the barrel cause corrosion has gotten to bad and comprimises the integrity of the barrel? appreciate your help.

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You can polish the chamber with a fine craytex bit on a dremel followed up with round wool buffer and some semichrome. That will do the job and not hurt anything. Just take it easy and stay away from the case mouth end of the chamber and the rifling. As for cleaning, I've found that Outers Foul Out is hands down the best method for tough cleaning jobs.

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Polishing the chamber is a bad idea.

If it runs now, you can only hurt it.

The fouling in the barrel looks like lead. I would just keep shooting, and see if it gets worse.

Just curious, but why is it a bad idea?

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I believe your right on the fouling it's just lead, I worked at cleaning it some more and it's less than it was. It shoots straight enough for what I use it for and I'm sure it shoots straighter than I can shoot.

I understand if it works don't fix it type thing, but is chamber smoothing actually a bad thing, or the ability of screwing up a functional barrel what your getting at? I appreciate the any insight you might have, and as I don't want to spend more than is needed to make this smooth shooting pistol with as few problems as possible during the course of fire. If I'm correct in how things work in a 1911 as with any cartridge weapon, the case expands slightly in the chamber, if the chamber is rough the cartridge could stick to the chamber walls, thus making it more stressful on the extractor and cause the extractor to prematurely fail or wear out. I gather extractor failure has many causes, but having to yank the cartridge from a sticky chamber seems to be one of the biggest I would think, this might just be me over analyzing things, but it makes sense in my mind. I plan on putting a lot of lead downrange with this gun, so anything that will make it shoot smoother and more consistently is a plus I would think.

Again thanks for the responses and I will have to think about it some more before smoothing the chamber any.

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I might give it a try, this is kinda my learning gun I guess, granted if I break I'm sure my dad will have a bill ready and waiting for a gun he claims to have put together from spare parts he got in Vietnam. Sentimentality sure is expensive these days, lol.

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If you're going to use a Dremel, get some of their hard white felt bullet style bobs and their red polish. You might have to melt the polish a little to get it to stick to the felt bobs but they work great at polishing the chamber. Variable speed model is best run at about half max speed.

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Try some Bore Polishing Paste from Brownells and be careful. You can affect the chamber length, which will destroy accuracy. Or enlarge the chamber which will drop your velocity. But I've done it on about all of my autos.

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Ok, so I'm starting to get the impression it is a good thing, didn't think about the consequence of pressure loss with the chamber getting enlarged, it's not a compensated gun so that shouldn't affect reliability, just accuracy and fouling in places I don't want to clean as much. Thanks for the help, I should probably let someone who has done this before do it, but I will give it a try. Worst thing is I have to purchase a new barrel and then I get to start the learning curve all over again.

Thank you for you help and information, Will look into the white buffing wheels and their red polishing paste.

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I have a similar gun story.My dad brought his 1911 home from WW2 and I have been shooting it for 52 years!The original barrel looked like yours and I polished it out without any problem.I have replaced the barrel and done several upgrades in the gun and shot 10's of thousands of rounds since.Each new barrel or new auto-loader gets the ramp and chamber polish job!I now shoot several Auto-loaders and they all run great!

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I have a similar gun story.My dad brought his 1911 home from WW2 and I have been shooting it for 52 years!The original barrel looked like yours and I polished it out without any problem.I have replaced the barrel and done several upgrades in the gun and shot 10's of thousands of rounds since.Each new barrel or new auto-loader gets the ramp and chamber polish job!I now shoot several Auto-loaders and they all run great!

I appreciate the story, I decided to give the ramp polish a shot, it turned out alright I think.

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Hard to see, but there is a rough spot at the bottom edge of the ramp, is it important to get that polished, when looking at this with the mag in, I don't think the bullets will rub anywhere near it, so I think I will leave it along for the time being. It's not the best job in the world, but I think it turned out alright.

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