Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Rock Island Arsenal 1911's.

Thanks James for your post and welcome to the Fire.

Stanimal, Noah and others.....Thanks for the welcome aboard and Kevin....the check is in the mail...LOL....thanks for the support....Ohhh Next RIA purchase...(in 2 weeks).one of the RIA Officer Mdl guns....I cant wait to torture it and see how it does and I will report back to fine folks....shoot straight and be safe

One of these days I'm going to stop spending every dime I have on my kids and buy me one of the nickle .38 Supers. Drop some mother of pearl grips and call it my south of the border special.

Bricktop's okay he just sometimes goes outside and steps in pig shixt then comes back in.

Actually, go with buffalo horn grips, with a good bit of white in the graining, and you're REALLY there.

Oh, you mean Mother of Pearl like these:

http://www.handicraft-vn.com/shop/1...cially-limited-p-1185.html?cPath=101_102

Yeah, buff horn looks much better; but it's just not true south of the border. I grew up knowing a few true blue south of the border types and they had MOP...this gun would be somewhat of a commemorative to these fine gentlemen.

I have to agree on the Buffalo Horn.....Sexy very sexy....and I love .38 super.....Hmmm now I am torn....the Officer Mdl RIA or the Nickel .38 super....See in CA we can only buy 1 handgun a month....decisions, decisions....darn it Kevin...now you have me all confusied

james first welcome to the fire i'm looking foward to future post from you with your knowledge.


kevin thanx as always you have enlightened us a little more also brought any brain to the fire for us to learn from.

I'm guessing bricktop won't come back to this thread now

Actually, go with buffalo horn grips, with a good bit of white in the graining, and you're REALLY there.

This is exactly where my thinking is with my new Super. Cha cha with class.

d.

Mr. Dunn, funny you should mention the Springfield/Brazil marked guns. By chance, I was working in a gun shop with a gunsmith who had graduated in Trinidad, Co back in the 70's and had worked under P. O. Ackley. He is knowledgable regarding the 1911 and is my main influence therein. We were selling the Springfield guns and had several production run batches with serial numbers that were pretty close in digits that had soft sears/sears that went bad, causing misfires and one to double. After this happened (maybe 5 guns total), we never had another problem and in fact, for a time, had a Nowlin (I think it was) custom gun back when compensated were rare. It was a beautiful firearm, and I never heard of any other problems with those guns, FWIW.

Perhaps this is a partial source for some of those rumors? Did you ever hear of similar issues? I work in manufacturing procurement, so my thought is that this was simply a "bad" batch of parts and only a small amount at that. Have you ever heard of this?

Thanks!

Welcome to the Forum!

Guy's what happen to Brick Top?

I have enjoyed and learned from Bricktop's informative posts. His style is sometimes a bit over the top for my tastes and I think he is operation on prejudicial opinions on this subject but he is still a keeper in my book. Besides, sometime he is fun.

James Dunn, welcome to the 'Fire. What a time to join! Your posts are most welcome.
Cole, nice thing to say. Good on you.

Geez, damn near forgot: KG, you have brought a lot to the table.
Thank you.

Add my welcome to the Fire and thanks the KG for his posts too.

Thanks for all the good posts. Glad I stuck it out and read this thread.

Eventually, I have to weigh in only because it's against my nature to sit on the sidelines for very long.

"Softer" metal is not necessarily a bad thing on certain guns. With semi-autos, the hardness of the two mating surfaces must differ for consistent operation. But that's beside the point.

I once owned a 1903 Winchester 1886. The metal of that rifle was so soft, I couldn't imagine it taking the stress of high end .45-70 loads, yet, it was determined around the time I was being born in the 50s, that these guns would not wear out from stress due to the genius of their design.

My 1909 Argentine Mauser in .35 Whelen is a keeper. Yet, some custom gunsmiths believe their metal is too soft for high end loadings. Still, it's considered one of the most desirable actions from which to build medium calibers in custom Mausers. The .45acp is not a high end cartridge and soft is, as soft does.

There was a time when the Colt's Gold Cup was determined by "experts" not to have the longevity of other models because it had a "lite" slide. Of course, there was a time when this was gospel, long after that had been corrected...yet "experts" continued to write and re-write this every chance they had to sell print.

There are frauds here. Men of the school that "he who speaks the loudest, has to be right." Mostly, they are hen-pecked minor functionaries who have nowhere else to go to feel important. Often, they are people unsatisfied with their station in life have to find a platform from which to browbeat others. The internet is a place where pencil-necked geeks can assume "Captain America" proportions.

I've got this old Gold Cup - slightly modified. It took me through half a dozen years of competition and uncounted rounds fired. No peening. Heck, the frame rails still have some original bluing on them! Yet there are still experts who decry them for custom work because of the "lite" slide.

One old gentleman who waxed quite a few butts in Texas, used a bone stock 1911A1 with a cracked frame well after it should have been retired.

Some people talk a good game. Some people speak from experience. On the internet it's tough to tell. But one thing for sure, I am a lot more likely to believe something written by someone who posts their name and photo, than someone who does not. If you stand behind your name, you have a lot to lose if you lie.

Dan

Springfield has always worked with a number of sub-contractors for internal parts, pins and springs. James has worked with all those same contractors and, 1- I'll bet he could tell you the name of the early Springfield contractors (but I doubt he will, because that's always kept hush-hush), and 2- James would tell you that a great deal of those sub-contractors have rather shady reputations.

Also consider. Back in the early '80's is when these subcontractors began switching to investment casting to save a buck and under-cut the next guy. Early cast parts went through some real teething problems, and that's probably the source of trhe soft sears in those early springfield guns.

The sub-contractors I'm talking about have always marketed the OEM's and billed their parts as good "stock" parts, but everyone knows they're not top notch quality. Don't get me wrong, they're not bad parts, but they're not Wilson Combat for sure.

Since James is darned near family with these parts makers, he has always been one of the very few private individuals with access to those OEM parts and that's a big source of the 1911 parts he sells. James also sells the top notch stuff.

James is also known for always having the collector stuff. Need an honest to goodness Commercial 1911 long trigger, James is the first guy to check with. Need a pre-War Super .38 Slide, check with James (those don't last long...they're gone about 5 minutes after he gets them).

I don't know how much time James will spend at the Campfire; he's not much into forums. I hope he comes back, because that man is a HUGE wealth of knowledge...unfortunately much of the most interesting knowledge would get him in HOT water with all the manufacturers if he ever shared it...Most times, he won't even share the dirt with me, and we've been close friends for damn near 30 years.

There were as I understand it some issue with soft sears and hammers in the early Springfield guns. This came about for a couple of reasons. To get around the "Import Mark" issue SA would import Frames, Slides, Barrels and some other parts then assemble the guns here in the USA using some off the shelf commercial parts. Some of those came from a vendor in the Orange County Area of California. The Sears and Hammers were soft and not hardened after finish machine work. This happened to a very few guns and the then rumors took off like a flushed quail. After SA got in trouble with the lack of Importer mark deal...all the parts were then made in Brazil at IMBEL. Few places in the world have the attention to quailty as IMBEL. After that the issues with "sub standard" contracted parts ended...and we now have the SA 1911,s that we all know and love.