Well, he claimed RIA's were "soft", I called him on it, he couldn't back up anything he said, I and several others provided data contrary to his claims, he called everyone names, got all butt-hurt and left.
I've got no dog in this fight, but apparently Clark Custom Guns thinks that the Philippine made 1911s have soft steel and shouldn't be considered for their 460 Rowland conversion.
I read this when I was looking for a 1911 to convert to 45Super/460 Rowland. I just figure that Clark Custom has to have a pretty good handle on this stuff and avoided the cheap imported 1911s when I made my 1911 purchase.
http://www.clarkcustomguns.com/rowland.htm#faq I know we've been down this road before, but it would be interesting to know why Clark also lists the Dan Wesson and the Taurus with RIA as "Undesirable " for the mod. This should be a clue....
Lists Taurus but says Springfield Armory is okay. Last time I checked, Taurus made the forgings for Imbel, who makes the frames for Springfield. Interesting.
Actually as a gunsmith there may be guns I choose not to do full custom jobs on and that has nothing to do with metal quality, but aesthetics. Some makers pay more attention to detail than others, and often that is reflected in price.
The Armscor guns have been around for a good decade or more, if there were serious issues, I think something would have popped up by now.
I don't know what Clark's issues are, or how many guns they've seen to make a statement that slides are soft. I have worked on about a half dozen RIA's for various people and have yet to see anything out of the ordinary where metallurgy is concerned, but I have noticed that externally they're not made real "pretty". That said, I've never worked on an Armscor gun that has been converted to .460 Rowland, who knows; maybe that extra abuse exposes flaws that regular cartridges don't. I know two of the RIA's that I worked on had over 10k rounds through them (one I'm sure had a LOT more than 10k, he was a died in the wool IDPA competitor and competed every weekend). Again, nothing noted out of the ordinary. But that's standard pressure .45 ACP which isn't exactly easy on guns, but isn't abusive either.
