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 Well I�ve never seen anything about Clark to make me think they don�t know what they�re doing. However, being a gunsmith myself when I look at their list, I do scratch my head.
Now as a gunsmith my PREFERENCE would be to work on Colt�s brand 1911�s that are as close to GI as possible. That way I can build them the way I want to build them and know that it�s all done right.
But there are a lot of reasons I have that preference, and one shouldn�t infer that because other brands don�t make my preference list that A � I won�t work on them, or B � They�re not good guns.
As to the �soft� statement�that�s a slippery slope; what is �soft�? Now if one were to take it in the actual context of the web page cited, then you have to take it in the context that perhaps they�re soft for .460 Rowland use. That doesn�t mean it�s a �soft� slide. Nor does it mean the slide is in any way inadequate for use with a normal cartridge. Like I said, one of my customers has WELL over 10k and probably double that on his custom RIA and when I last saw it, the lugs (as well as everything else) seemed just fine.
Truth be told, RIA slides are a good bit harder than a GI slide, and there are millions of GI guns and slides with a whole lot more than 10k rounds on them that are still in very serviceable condition. If GI slides could serve in the US military for 70+ years, I think the RIA fully heat treated, (GI slides are spot treated) slides can hold up just fine.
So one should be careful about the mental leaps we make when we read such things.
