At Pachmayr and my shop, The Auto Shop, we never welded rails, only peened. If a customer ever saw how we would pound the crap out of a slide, they would be horrified. I'm sure the methods are much more advanced and sophisticated these days.
Since you brought it up, here is my philosophy about slide tightening.
It is only relevant if you intend to test the gun in a machine rest. In my opinion, here is why.
Accuracy is simply having your sights, slide and barrel coming consistently into battery each cycle.
The sights and slide are fixed so the only other challenge is to get your barrel up into the slide consistently.
This is accomplished by a proper fitting barrel bushing, the barrel hood fitted and lastly the proper fit of the barrel bottom lugs fitted to the slide stop.
If the relationship of the sights to the slide and the barrel are all fixed, or as one solid unit, to me it does not seem to matter if the slide moves slightly around on the frame.
I proved this many times by the accuracy of my guns being shot off the bag, not out of a Ransom Rest.
Again, this is just my opinion.
Absolutely agree, glad to hear you say it. Frame to slide fit is 99% snob appeal and 1% performance. It's the biggest expenditure of dollars for the least return.
