Look around at older surplus sites, there's still original M1911 front sights out there, small tenon.
That front sight held in place for almost 110 years. There really are no "tricks to keep it in place"; that's how they go.
There's a lot of reasons to not shoot those original M1911s anymore; extractors break, front sights fall off, slides crack. If you want a banger to just beat at the range, Sistemas are out there and cheaper (with much less historical value)...Caspian makes M1911-clone frames and slides, etc etc etc. Basically, unless you already have a pile of vintage/period-correct replacement parts for all the known parts to break on an early M1911, I wouldn't shoot it at all.