Just a rant...

Why is it nothing on a 1911 drops in? Just about every single part, slide, barrel, even mainspring housing needs fitting of some kind because nothing drops in at all. You would think they can manufacture parts for a 100 year old design to consistent dimension... Glocks don't have that problem.

Because parts manufacturers often oversize their products to allow for more precise fitment.  Additionally with slight variations in hole placements it's impossible to really get a good drop in part to work well and safely.  The contact surfaces in a 1911 aren't that large, so things need to be more precise.  

What are you having trouble with?  Sear to hammer engagement or Slide to frame/barrel fit?

When I was building my 80% the mainspring housing wouldn't fit... It would fit by itself but once you installed the necessary parts they would not fit. I had to file the top of the mainspring housing for it to fit properly (or else the grip safety would not work) as well as having to grind the back of the mainspring housing so the pin will go in at all (I still have to place the pistol into a vise to compress the mainspring housing a bit in order to get the pin to align).

Then the hammer has to be ground to one side, otherwise it would hit side of the slide and would lead to a soft primer strike. Thankfully not by a lot.

Finally, the barrel needed a large amount of fitting or else they will not slide in or out of battery AT ALL. It would obviously do it when the slide is off the frame but once the frame is in it's like something is blocking it from going into battery. A large amount of exploratory machining is needed before I finally tracked down what is exactly causing the bind. I ended up grinding the top of the chamber end of the barrel until it would fit the slide.

Unfortunately, the unramped barrel does not feed a round AT ALL. The round nose would dig right into the edge of the chamber and of course is completely jammed at this point. I ruined one round (got pushed in) this way. Frustrated, I decided that I needed to use a ramped barrel. So I get the ramped barrel, a bit more expensive, match grade, "drop in fit". Except not so drop in because it would not slide into battery at all. I filed the top of the barrel again very little (less than .001") and realized that the reason it would not go into battery at all is because the side of the back lug (where the rim of the round is) is too wide and is rubbing against the slide. I machined .015" off of that and now it chambers like a dream.

I will add using a ramped barrel really helps with feed reliability, though obviously I needed to machine my frame to fit.

I just feel like a 1911 being a 100 year old design ought to have parts that just drop in, and not everything needs force fitting because nothing fits. If someone wants ultimate in accuracy (and no, I can't hit anything beyond 7 yards with a pistol so I could care less, if you can snipe a man at 100 yards with it, kudos to you!) they should sell oversized parts separately but stock USGI parts should not require fitting.

I mean stock glock parts fit basically every model of glocks. The only mod I ever have to do to one to make it work is bend the trigger bar cruciform so the sear engagement is improved. Otherwise everything just drops in without needing expensive or specialized tools.

Because it was designed 100+ years ago when machines weren't nearly as precise and there are hundreds of manufacturers making parts to varying different standards.

Well, when you start with an 80% build. you're admitting that it's going to rely on the precision of the final milling to be "in spec".
I've bought several aftermarket parts for a Kimber and also a RIA 1911 and only had to "polish" them to fit / function correctly.

JMB was a wizard.

This.  Frankly a lot of Browning's design suffer from this, as do most of the designs of that era.

This makes me wonder about the quality of the parts you are using. I have used drop in parts many times that did just that, dropped in a worked just fine.

What 80% frame was it ? that may explain a lot - however if you use a 100% quality frame (like a LB) you will still have have fun and games fitting stuff , but you will know all the angles are correct and quality components function correctly after they are fitted

I'm using USGI parts... I guess that's about as bad as it gets?

It still makes no sense that you spend over 1000 dollars on quality 1911 parts and still have lots of fun and games fitting stuff.

I got the frame and jig from Thunder tactical.

Jig was not finished. The hole for the other plate is untapped, and the inserts for the drill guides are missing on the other plates as well as the indexing pin. I get the feeling they are getting out of the 1911 business because most the stuff on their site is AR related.

The idea of a custom gun is that you hand fit each part for the tightest tolerances possible. This makes for a more accurate and reliable gun.

Part of the problem is there are dozens of 1911 manufacturers and each one runs different tolerances and dimensions- "glock doesn't have this problem" because only one company makes the product to one dimensional standard. If suddenly 50 companies started making glock copies you'd have the same problem

The 1911 came from a time when people were actually gunsmiths and would hand fit everything. US military 1911's from WWI and WWII had much looser tolerances though and would interchange parts much easier. Today's 1911's have very tight tolerances, most parts are oversized and need to be hand filed down to fit perfectly. But a modern hand fit 1911 is sweet though. But yeah fast forward to modern guns like the Glock and you can just drop the parts in with no fitting. 1911's aren't for everyone and you really need to be a gunsmith to work on them properly. That's why most people prefer Glock's over 1911 these days, no skills required to make a Glock work properly.

Maybe because 50 firms make 1911s, each with their own variations, while Glocks are made by one company?

I saw all sorts of stupidness when I fit my Nighthawk frame and slide in terms of what should be able to be a helluva lot closer toleranced than what it is. The variance between the 8 kits in the class was scary from a modern machining point of view. It was like "Fuck it, they gotta hand fit it, just ship it."

While fitting is required for anything except mass production to armory standards not many folks want that gun.

There are also are fewer parts than a lot of new guns.

Isn't it amazing how everyone things they can build a 1911 like they build AR15's?

1.  When as many companies make Glocks and parts for glocks as there are 1911 companies, yes, they'll have problems.  They already do if you buy some brands of aftermarket parts and mix them up in a build.  I've seen info from one company/owner that says they will only address complaints on guns built with their parts IF the buyer uses their parts or Glock factory parts.  Too many complaints from people buying their parts and trying to fit certain other brands of parts into them.

2.  In the last 40 years I've replaced one barrel, 5 sets of ambidextrous safeties, several grip safeties, several mainspring housings and some barrel bushings and only had to stone one left side thumb safety to get the parts to work?  Buy quality parts and install on quality guns.  True for most brands.

3.  Maybe you shouldn't be working on guns.

4.  Up to now I've only seen magazine issues on one brand/model of 1911 - a Thompson double stack frame that would drop the magazines out of the gun on the first/second shot - magazine catch hole in the magazines appeared to be slightly low, not allowing them to fully lock in when inserted.  I've got standard GI, aftermarket, 7 and 8 round magazines from everywhere/who knows where and all of them run in my Colt 1911 guns, every, single, one of them.

It was designed at a time of more relaxed part fabrication tolerance and lower labor costs for final assembly.

In a production factory barrels of parts would be available.

They would be 'kitted up' and a skilled assembler would take a kit.

By checking after each part was assembled if the last part did not operate it would be thrown back in the barrel and another selected.

The odds of the second part functioning correctly was pretty good.

It was a GI quality gun.

Accuracy work proceeded when required but not for the run of the mill combat gun.

It went bang and the safeties worked.

It is a back up weapon.

I don't really look to build an accurate pistol... my best accuracy is a 8 inch group at 7 yards and without significant training ( a guy standing behind me correct every tiny move I make) I don't really see myself improving. So a 1911 capable of 2inches at 100 yards isn't going to do a whole lot for me. I just need it to go bang every time.

I've played  around with swapping parts between USGI 1911A1's before. Funny, the damn things worked before part swaps and after parts swaps. [all parts were returned to their original firearm]

The 1911 was originally designed to be a drop in new  part and shoot pistol, over the years it has become something else. Want a 4 lb trigger? It isn't going to fit in like the original 6-7 lb trigger design.

FWIW, they weren't anywhere close to being ''loose'' either as made, they were far tighter then one may think no matter the manufacturer then what people today try to claim.

For what it is worth. Based on what you described your frame was the issue. 

And if that individual part does not operate correctly try another one.

A 1911 is a firearm 'pattern' which has been made by (literally) hundreds of manufacturers in countless countries, over a period of time spanning more than 100 years.

I think the proper question is, 'Isn't it amazing that 1911 parts sometimes drop right in and work?!'



Larry

read my sig line.   there you have it.

See my sig line, too.

A lot of this happened in a large production mode.

The last few parts (like hammer-sear and thumb safety) could be used to make up for the deviations among the other parts to produce a working safe GI quality gun.

Many of the parts made now are purposely left 'over size' to allow for an improved action (crisper triggers with little grit in the pull) at the expense of more hand fitting.

'Competition' accuracy is tighter then 'combat' accuracy.

You could make the perfect fit 1911 where everything perfectly dropped in and the gun was rock solid, absolutely reliable and more accurate than anything out there... and people would still bitch and cry that it was not hand fitted or custom.

And the inevitable 'tolerance stacking' across multiple parts would ensure it is rather unlikely to happen.

DA revolvers have even more parts and are more of a PITA.

I think they intimidate so many folks a lot fewer people even try to work on them.

I believe if you had a real USGI milspec frame and real USGI parts everything would drop in.  It might rattle a bit, but everything would likely work.

Maybe.

At a mass production factory you just swapped the part for another and tried again.

There is not a large market for mass produced GI quality 1911s any more.

B/c it was designed in 1911 in an era where handfitting of parts was normal, and the Glock was designed in 1982 in an era where handfitting of parts had become an expensive custom process.  Did you buy all Colt parts and have issues fitting them to a Colt frame?  

Glocks are starting to have this problem, btw - look @ the 80% Glock thread, where very often non-Glock parts don't function correctly on a non-Glock frame.

So once upon a time some dude living in Utah or something designs this pistol thing for some company that had a weird obssession with baby horses.  This pistol would go into production in like 1910 or 11 or something, whatever.

Anyhow, this dude's parts designs were given specific manufacturing tolerances (probably by some guys in white coats that wore glasses) dictated by the equipment and resources avaliable at the time. (A large avaliable resource of the time happened to be cheap labor) And bunch of guns were made.

Then some guy in some fruity European country shot some other arch-guy and all of sudden shooting other people became an extremely popular pastime.  Of course this meant more guns were needed so manufacturing tolerances were revised to better suit larger scale production and a few third party contractors were given what I can only assume were very greasy and bourbon stained not-quite-so-blue prints so production demands could be met asap.

Then people started shooting other people a little less often for a time, some parts were revised by new guys in even whiter coats with larger glasses, some German people started shooting people more frequently, more contractors were given etch-i-scetch quality prints, and eventually some patents expired.

Fast forward a little and now joe-bob gun manufacturer comes along and decides he wants to make 1911 clones after watching that one guy in that movie about saving privates kill a tank with one, fuck ya 'merica. So he tells his dudes in black coats (because white coats have fallen out of vogue) and shades to make it happen.  These dudes shovel through pages and pages of poorly drawn and now very musty prints and come to the conclusion that all those old guys in white coats were "morans" and they can totally tolerance these parts better than grandpa.

Little does joe-bob know, but one zip code away billy-bob gun manufacture has same idea and they retolerance as they see fit and steve-bob one zip code away from them does the same and so on and so on with companies large and small.

Now as you may guess, this leads to a lot of confusion when it comes to parts interchangability.  So most places making spare parts decide screw it, we will follow mcdonald' s lead and super size everything, let the customer figure it out.

And there you have it, the reason the crap you buy won't just drop into the crap you bought. My best suggestion is to just buy a fully assembled 1911 put together by people who know what they are doing.  Or complain about it on the internet.

Note: the above post contains numerous historical and factual inaccuracies, please check your sarcasm meter before reading.

They did.
From WWII to Desert Storm, Colt, Remington Rand, Ithaca and replacement parts from a hundred different contractors. The parts all interchanged and they all worked.

Those were battle implements not "Custom Carry" or Match pistols.

The situation is different now.

Read the reviews at midways site before buying. I have been lucky so far no fitting. Couple of ambi safety installs, mag releases, main spring housings and slide stops.  All dropped in.  Forgot to add triggers too.

By parts count it's one of the simplest pistols in existence.

It is remarkable that for such an old design in an age of far less machine precision an armory and multiple other manufactures could churn out parts that made a gun that worked.

Long before the development of 'geometric dimensioning & tolerancing.'

The disconnector designed by JMB is an incredible of mechanical design.

ATs the gun cycles the pin moves through all four of the corners of the square portion.

While moving up and down and forward and back.

With less than the 'perfect' tolerances (1/1,000) we routinely demand now.

And a disassembly that rivals any on the world even up to now.

the guy designed it with a god damn slide rule!  my gunsmith explained to me all those steps and showed me how it worked andI asked him

"How the hell did he figure that out?"

his response"I know its a god damn miracle!"

Even with GI 1911's there were issues- in clawson's big book he reviews World War Two "interchangeability tests" at the various plants ( Ithaca Remington Rand ) where guns off the line were taken apart and parts mixed. In some cases they failed these tests, leading to various production changes revisions etc. by the end of the war it was Remington Rand ( the typewriter company that never produced a gun before ww2 or after) that had the best rate of quality control and interchangeable parts

How did you put a ramped barrel on a frame that previously used an unramped barrel?
Did you machine the frame?

I don't think it is fair to complain about $1000 in parts when you have no idea how to put said parts together.

The frame is machined.

There are two styles of ramped barrel cuts.

Technically there are 3 as a Lissner will not work on a Clark/para cut without the radius being added to the frame, but a clark/para is fine on a frame that already has a Lissner cut radius.

Back then automated milling machines were scarce and cheap skilled machinist labor was plentiful.

MIM didn't exist.

The 'automated' milling machine used a gear driven mechanism to do a single cut in many cases.

Colt had rows of machines set up to produce 1911 frames.

Many did a single cut.
Trays of frames moved from machine to machine.
Pick up frame from tray, clamp in position on mill, hit start button.
When cut is done remove frame and place on outgoing rack.
Repeat as required.
When rack is filled with completed parts (for that cut)  it is moved to the input wide of the next machine.

Colt was using many of the same machines they started with in 1911.
It gradually led to lower quality guns as the wear caught up with the precision required.

You may be on to something.

Build one using top-dollar parts - you will have to hand fit everything - and its worth it

Your post is what brings me here tonight. I have bought a semi drop in storm lake threaded barrel for a Combat Commander as a supp host. How does one know if it really fits? It has left some witness marks on the lugs the original barrel doesn't have, with maybe 35 reds through it. All the dims I can think of to measure are very close, it just feels slack in the slide in battery with the threaded barrel. Thanks for any advice

What is your upper lug engagement like? or are you talking about the lower lugs into the VIS - where are the marks? semi drop in is never really

Thanks for asking, the marks are on the back side of the bottom lugs, a straight line across, about halfway up. No odd marks on upper lugs to slide. I know I need a real pistolsmith to do this, just trying to learn more every day. I have reinstalled OE barrel in the interim.

ETA  Went to see my smith, he says it wont hurt anything, barrel slide fit was good, hood fit is good, suggested a longer link. I had a # 3 on hand, it helped tighten up the play, will order a longer one yet and see.

So the back of the bottom lugs are hitting the VIS ? can you take a picture or two so we can see what is happening?

ok thanks for your help. after some you tubery about the topic, its evident that my barrel lug is thinner than the original, thus creating the play when gun is in battery. I smoothed off the raised ribs at the rear of the barrel lug that were making the witness marks on the VIS and checked for proper barrel /frame and VIS interaction. All is good there, its just seems the lugs were cut too deep for a nice tight lock up. If it wont hurt my  good Colt frame and slidenI am okay with it.The threaded barrel is toy part. I just dont want to fubar my OE parts. So is it ok to have a bit of fore and aft slop when in battery? maybe .030 inch ?