easyrider604
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Greater Vancouver, BC
'The 1911- Myths, Lies And Fallacies' - Patrick Sweeney
- Thread starter Sharps '74
- Start date
easyrider604
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Greater Vancouver, BC
Gotta love the "Colonel". The 1911 started having problems when enthusiasts and gunsmiths who did not understand the 1911's mechanics of operation, started to mess with it. They wanted to shoot lightly loaded target ammo...bad. 200 grain semi wad cutters are not liked by unpolished ramps and unthroated barrels. Powder puff reloads will not reliably cycle slides even with light recoil springs. That's just to start.
Don't mess with a quality 1911, feed it 230 grain hardball (full load) ammo, keep it reasonably clean and lubed, and it will be as reliable as any other pistol. Perfection happened in 1911.
My go to gold cup that I shoot Ipsc with as over 30000 rounds through it with exactly one stoppage and it was a nose dive after a slide lock reload and I've yet to have any parts fail on it which is more then I can say for any of my other semi autos.
An average of 300 rds per week for several years. Most of it lead handloads with Unique. A few cases of GI hardball and commercial.
Last edited:
And today's "myth" .....
"The 1911 barrel has to be replaced every 5,000 rounds for best accuracy"
"I happen to know the source of this one. Back in the early days of Bar-sto, the Marine Corps pistol team would install new Bar-sto barrels before the beginning of each season. Since they'd shoot about 5,000 rounds a year (which was a lot in the pre-IPSC days of Bullseye shooting) everyone assumed that they did so because the old ones were worn out. Not so. They had the budgetary authority to so so, and if they didn't use it, they'd lose it. So they got new barrels.
I have owned 1911s with round counts past 50,000 each that are still tack drivers. My bowling pin gun is over 100,000 and still shoots one-hole groups.
The record that I know of is a 1911 owned by Jerry Barnhart. At one time he was a member of our gun club, and I happened to see his practice routine for the Steel Challenge: He'd park his van on the range, throw out a tarp and haul a five gallon bucket half full of ammo out of the side door. I think it was half full only because Jerry, a small guy, couldn't wrestle a full five gallons of ammo out of the van. He'd shoot it all, pick up the brass and load it all over again.
At one point his sponsor insisted that he only use and own guns sold by the sponsor, so Jerry sold the non-sponsor's gun with a recorded 250,000 rounds through it. He later managed to buy it back, after the new owner put tens of thousands of rounds more through it. Last I heard, Jerry was somewhere past 300,000 rounds through that gun, and it still shot great."
I know of several GI 1911s (some were not even A1s) that were purchased from Lever Arms back in the day for $250, which means Alan Lever likely paid peanuts for them. These guns had seen a lot of service. Some were pretty grotty, rattled when you shook them, but most would group surprisingly well. By that I mean they would keep their rds in the "A" zone of the IPSC "Item" target at 25 yds - in the hands of a good shooter. They were a "starter gun" for many and brought them into the game.
I won a Bar-sto 6" barrel certificate at a national match and ordered one for my Gold Cup. I had it fitted with a threaded sleeve to turn it into a "Pin Gun". Shot like a hot damn. I put the gun back into stock configuration with the original barrel, but I still have the Bar-sto barrel. Should be a lot of life left in it. I toy with the thought of making it a "Pin Gun" again.
"The 1911 barrel has to be replaced every 5,000 rounds for best accuracy"
"I happen to know the source of this one. Back in the early days of Bar-sto, the Marine Corps pistol team would install new Bar-sto barrels before the beginning of each season. Since they'd shoot about 5,000 rounds a year (which was a lot in the pre-IPSC days of Bullseye shooting) everyone assumed that they did so because the old ones were worn out. Not so. They had the budgetary authority to so so, and if they didn't use it, they'd lose it. So they got new barrels.
I have owned 1911s with round counts past 50,000 each that are still tack drivers. My bowling pin gun is over 100,000 and still shoots one-hole groups.
The record that I know of is a 1911 owned by Jerry Barnhart. At one time he was a member of our gun club, and I happened to see his practice routine for the Steel Challenge: He'd park his van on the range, throw out a tarp and haul a five gallon bucket half full of ammo out of the side door. I think it was half full only because Jerry, a small guy, couldn't wrestle a full five gallons of ammo out of the van. He'd shoot it all, pick up the brass and load it all over again.
At one point his sponsor insisted that he only use and own guns sold by the sponsor, so Jerry sold the non-sponsor's gun with a recorded 250,000 rounds through it. He later managed to buy it back, after the new owner put tens of thousands of rounds more through it. Last I heard, Jerry was somewhere past 300,000 rounds through that gun, and it still shot great."
I know of several GI 1911s (some were not even A1s) that were purchased from Lever Arms back in the day for $250, which means Alan Lever likely paid peanuts for them. These guns had seen a lot of service. Some were pretty grotty, rattled when you shook them, but most would group surprisingly well. By that I mean they would keep their rds in the "A" zone of the IPSC "Item" target at 25 yds - in the hands of a good shooter. They were a "starter gun" for many and brought them into the game.
I won a Bar-sto 6" barrel certificate at a national match and ordered one for my Gold Cup. I had it fitted with a threaded sleeve to turn it into a "Pin Gun". Shot like a hot damn. I put the gun back into stock configuration with the original barrel, but I still have the Bar-sto barrel. Should be a lot of life left in it. I toy with the thought of making it a "Pin Gun" again.
Last edited:
hatman1793
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
I can’t wait for the “full length guide rod” myth vs the standard spring guide rod!
Amen to this. Tried 200GR SW in my SR1911. Not a super light load but not a happy firearm.
I hear ya on this one. I have had 1911's with full length guide rods and some without. I have never noticed a difference in performance and/or reliability with either. I have tried just about every manufacturer under $2K and just don't understand where the "unreliability" myth came from. My current Colt will eat anything I put into it including weird shaped hollow points of differing weights. No matter though, it usually gets fed a strict diet of full-house hardball which has NEVER FAILED after an uncountable number of rounds.
The only issue that I have ever had with a 1911 is when a mag has been slammed into battery with too much force and it gets over-inserted and the gun gets completely locked up. I think this may be a mag issue or something that can be solved with the changing out of the mag release for one that sits a couple thousands lower. Could happen with any gun I guess.
All that being said, I still shoot my 1911 more accurately than any pistol I own, including my duty pistol which I have probably shot much more.
Just my $.02 worth.
Sweeney and other gun writers think they are in the "ingenious solution to a non-existent problem" class.
I had one in my Gold Cup "Pin Gun" and never had a problem with it.
Two SR1911s in this household and they both eat 200 SWCs with aplomb. Loaded over 4.2 Tite Group.
Are you sure it’s not Toilet Paper?
Not likely !!! TP is too precious a commodity these days. You have to wrestle a package of it out of the arms of little ol' ladies at Wal*Mart.
hatman1793
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Come on Sharps ‘74! Start the full length guide rod myth. I dare you!
I think I covered that earlier ..... my own experience was limited to one gun (Gold Cup set up as a "Pin Gun") and it was quite satisfactory.
Last edited:
This next "myth" should generate a few comments .....
"Drop a 1911 and it will fire"
"This is another test I've personally done. Well, Ned and I did. He had a hi-cap 1911 that had been hacked on, experimented on and was pretty much one step from the smelter. The slide and it's internals were untouched. He machined a weight to fit in the muzzle, a weight that did two things: It brought the total mass up to that of a loaded pistol, and it kept the 1911 muzzle-down when dropped.
Supposedly, the inertial firing pin of the 1911 can be overcome by impact, and the firing pin will drive forward and set off the primer. So we put a primed case in the chamber and began dropping it. We did this in front of a full class of police officers who were there for a 1911 armorers class. No secret tests, no hidden results.
The floor was the poured concrete floor of an indoor range. The impact could only have been sharper (higher G forces) if we'd dropped it onto steel, but not by much. The result? No mark on the primer, up to about nine feet. I guess if we'd gone to a balcony we might have gotten more results, but we didn't have a balcony. So if a 1911 does fire when dropped, this isn't the mechanism that causes the discharge.
What does? Beats me, if it actually happens. Between the inertial firing pin, the grip safety and most impacts being less than nine feet, I don't know what would cause a dropped 911 to discharge. Unless it was someone trying to avoid punishment from their own AD/ND by blaming the 1911 instead.
Nah - that'd never happen."
This controversy is obviously what led to the Series '80 firing pin block, a lawyer inspired solution to another "non-existent problem". Suffice it to say that if you drop a loaded, cocked and locked 1911 in service, you probably have more to worry about than a discharge.
I have a mix of 1911s with and without the block. Two, SR1911s are Series '70 by design, an R1 has had it removed and replaced by a custom gizmo. The SR1911s have nice, crisp trigger pulls, the R1 has what could only be described as a "target-grade" trigger pull. My Series '70 Gold Cup has the trigger pull you'd expect on a Gold Cup.
My two Remington 'Commanders' (one blued, one SS) have the Series '80 block in place. One has the best trigger pull of the lot, the other has a barely perceptible movement as the linkage moves before final let off. I'm not going to touch it.
"Drop a 1911 and it will fire"
"This is another test I've personally done. Well, Ned and I did. He had a hi-cap 1911 that had been hacked on, experimented on and was pretty much one step from the smelter. The slide and it's internals were untouched. He machined a weight to fit in the muzzle, a weight that did two things: It brought the total mass up to that of a loaded pistol, and it kept the 1911 muzzle-down when dropped.
Supposedly, the inertial firing pin of the 1911 can be overcome by impact, and the firing pin will drive forward and set off the primer. So we put a primed case in the chamber and began dropping it. We did this in front of a full class of police officers who were there for a 1911 armorers class. No secret tests, no hidden results.
The floor was the poured concrete floor of an indoor range. The impact could only have been sharper (higher G forces) if we'd dropped it onto steel, but not by much. The result? No mark on the primer, up to about nine feet. I guess if we'd gone to a balcony we might have gotten more results, but we didn't have a balcony. So if a 1911 does fire when dropped, this isn't the mechanism that causes the discharge.
What does? Beats me, if it actually happens. Between the inertial firing pin, the grip safety and most impacts being less than nine feet, I don't know what would cause a dropped 911 to discharge. Unless it was someone trying to avoid punishment from their own AD/ND by blaming the 1911 instead.
Nah - that'd never happen."
This controversy is obviously what led to the Series '80 firing pin block, a lawyer inspired solution to another "non-existent problem". Suffice it to say that if you drop a loaded, cocked and locked 1911 in service, you probably have more to worry about than a discharge.
I have a mix of 1911s with and without the block. Two, SR1911s are Series '70 by design, an R1 has had it removed and replaced by a custom gizmo. The SR1911s have nice, crisp trigger pulls, the R1 has what could only be described as a "target-grade" trigger pull. My Series '70 Gold Cup has the trigger pull you'd expect on a Gold Cup.
My two Remington 'Commanders' (one blued, one SS) have the Series '80 block in place. One has the best trigger pull of the lot, the other has a barely perceptible movement as the linkage moves before final let off. I'm not going to touch it.
My 1911 likes 6.2 gr of VV 3N37 with a 200 gr LSWC. No issues.
easyrider604
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Greater Vancouver, BC
Have you tried dropping a 1911 on its cocked hammer?
Last edited:
I must say that I'm disappointed that the "dropped 1911" myth didn't generate more discussion. Oh well, moving along .....
" A 1911 has to be loose to be reliable, or, conversely, accurate 1911s are not reliable."
"Maybe in the old days. And maybe not even then. We all grew up using military surplus 1911s , and they were all reliable. But their reliability was not necessarily related to their rattle. The Latin phrase 'post hoc, ergo proctor hoc' (after, therefore because of') does not apply here. Just because those surplus 1911s were both reliable and rattly does not mean that their reliability was because of the rattleness. - no more than it was because of their Parkerized finish. They were reliable because they were reliable.
I also have a bit of inside info on the matter of "unreliable" target 1911s. The fellow who taught me a lot about shooting, Mike Karbon, had a trick: he could induce malfunctions. He was not alone in this. Mike learned to shoot for the Navy, and he could take a 1911 Bulls Eye gun and make it stovepipe. His trick, and that of many other Bulls Eye shooters, was to closely watch the target. If they threw a shot out of the 'X' or 10-ring, they'd then induce a malfunction, get an 'alibi' and reshoot the string.
Once a few shooters started doing this, it became easy to blame the "fussy and unreliable 1911" for one's occasional malfunctions. When IPSC began to be popular, it did not allow for alibi reshoots. Those competitors wouldn't stand for unreliable pistols, and to no great surprise, their 1911s worked just fine. You may remember my article of last year where I put four different 1911s through abusive mud and dust tests, where none failed to work.
Two were relatively loose in fit, and two were tightly fit."
I have the article he was referring to and it was a brutal test that started with driving over the guns on a gravel road! The other tests were equally as brutal and grueling. That that with your polymer framed wonder guns!
When we early "Combat Pistol" shooters started to shoot with the BCRA at regular matches using the Inglis Hi-Power, we were always amused by the call - "Alibis?" after a string of fire. Our first reaction was - "WTF?". Then we found out why their guns were so "unreliable'' compared to our commercial Hi-Powers and 1911s.
We shot with them not because we enjoyed THEIR game, but we wanted to get their support and participation in OUR game. I regret that the good ol' boys of the Regimental tie club did not see fit to do so. They regarded us as the spawn of the devil. In the end, we had our revenge in that I won their annual shoot, was presented with a beautiful embroidered blazer crest, got hoisted in the chair (as per their custom) and carried around to the accolades of the crowd. Not really. It was the "Combat Pistol" shooters that carried me amid the glum faces of the BCRA types.
But - I cheated. These guys were allowed to put emery cloth (skate board tape had not yet been invented) on the front and back straps of their pistols (so much for that lovely Inglis decal!) , had the mag safety removed from the pistols they had been issued months earlier and moved the front sights on the models with dovetailed sights. This was not in accordance with the 'rules' which required all guns to be "as issued".
So, I went to the table of "issue" guns brought there by a Weapons Tech from CFB Chiliwack, told him I was ex-Regular and wanted to pick my own gun. He knew what I was up to, smiled and told me to have at 'er! I picked one that didn't have a gritty trigger pull by inserting an empty mag that had a bright shiny surface where the mag safety shoe engaged the mag. No drag = better pull.
Next I culled the mag supply for similar mags with wear from the mag safety. I wasn't worried about a mis-feed from a worn mag as I had the "alibi" thing going for me. Then I disassembled the gun to get rid of the excess oil typical of stored Army weapons. Now I was set.
The rules allowed a sighting relay of so many rds to be fired at 25 and 50 yards. I held at 6 o'clock on the '10' ring at both distances and fired the required rds. I then knew how much "Kentucky" windage to allow for during the match. If I recall correctly, I had to hold at one o'clock at both distances, well out of the '10' ring in order to hit centre. It worked.
" A 1911 has to be loose to be reliable, or, conversely, accurate 1911s are not reliable."
"Maybe in the old days. And maybe not even then. We all grew up using military surplus 1911s , and they were all reliable. But their reliability was not necessarily related to their rattle. The Latin phrase 'post hoc, ergo proctor hoc' (after, therefore because of') does not apply here. Just because those surplus 1911s were both reliable and rattly does not mean that their reliability was because of the rattleness. - no more than it was because of their Parkerized finish. They were reliable because they were reliable.
I also have a bit of inside info on the matter of "unreliable" target 1911s. The fellow who taught me a lot about shooting, Mike Karbon, had a trick: he could induce malfunctions. He was not alone in this. Mike learned to shoot for the Navy, and he could take a 1911 Bulls Eye gun and make it stovepipe. His trick, and that of many other Bulls Eye shooters, was to closely watch the target. If they threw a shot out of the 'X' or 10-ring, they'd then induce a malfunction, get an 'alibi' and reshoot the string.
Once a few shooters started doing this, it became easy to blame the "fussy and unreliable 1911" for one's occasional malfunctions. When IPSC began to be popular, it did not allow for alibi reshoots. Those competitors wouldn't stand for unreliable pistols, and to no great surprise, their 1911s worked just fine. You may remember my article of last year where I put four different 1911s through abusive mud and dust tests, where none failed to work.
Two were relatively loose in fit, and two were tightly fit."
I have the article he was referring to and it was a brutal test that started with driving over the guns on a gravel road! The other tests were equally as brutal and grueling. That that with your polymer framed wonder guns!
When we early "Combat Pistol" shooters started to shoot with the BCRA at regular matches using the Inglis Hi-Power, we were always amused by the call - "Alibis?" after a string of fire. Our first reaction was - "WTF?". Then we found out why their guns were so "unreliable'' compared to our commercial Hi-Powers and 1911s.
We shot with them not because we enjoyed THEIR game, but we wanted to get their support and participation in OUR game. I regret that the good ol' boys of the Regimental tie club did not see fit to do so. They regarded us as the spawn of the devil. In the end, we had our revenge in that I won their annual shoot, was presented with a beautiful embroidered blazer crest, got hoisted in the chair (as per their custom) and carried around to the accolades of the crowd. Not really. It was the "Combat Pistol" shooters that carried me amid the glum faces of the BCRA types.
But - I cheated. These guys were allowed to put emery cloth (skate board tape had not yet been invented) on the front and back straps of their pistols (so much for that lovely Inglis decal!) , had the mag safety removed from the pistols they had been issued months earlier and moved the front sights on the models with dovetailed sights. This was not in accordance with the 'rules' which required all guns to be "as issued".
So, I went to the table of "issue" guns brought there by a Weapons Tech from CFB Chiliwack, told him I was ex-Regular and wanted to pick my own gun. He knew what I was up to, smiled and told me to have at 'er! I picked one that didn't have a gritty trigger pull by inserting an empty mag that had a bright shiny surface where the mag safety shoe engaged the mag. No drag = better pull.
Next I culled the mag supply for similar mags with wear from the mag safety. I wasn't worried about a mis-feed from a worn mag as I had the "alibi" thing going for me. Then I disassembled the gun to get rid of the excess oil typical of stored Army weapons. Now I was set.
The rules allowed a sighting relay of so many rds to be fired at 25 and 50 yards. I held at 6 o'clock on the '10' ring at both distances and fired the required rds. I then knew how much "Kentucky" windage to allow for during the match. If I recall correctly, I had to hold at one o'clock at both distances, well out of the '10' ring in order to hit centre. It worked.
Last edited:
