In the following, my comments are in red...other folk's emails are in black. I left off their names. If your email is in here, and you wish attribution, I will cheefully add it back in.
Read on:
Due to a stroke of luck (maybe, maybe not in retrospect) I came across a box of .45 parts, the most prominent was a looooooong slide marked "AMT Hardballer".
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
As anyone who has read the "you might me a gun nut......" thread, this is an obvious invitation to start looking through the parts catalogs.
I did so,and after filling out a very long parts order sheet, I sent an order to Bushmaster, a.k.a. Quality Parts Co.
Before anyone starts giving me a hard time, I've ordered from B a.k.a. QP before and all in all have been pleased with them. I still think they have problems in the customer service arena, but my parts built-up AR-15 clone works very well, thank you.
Anyway, off went my two pages, 29 line item parts order.
Do you know how many parts a .45 auto has? It's a bunch. Do you know how hard it is to compare multiple catalogs and prices and slightly similar sounding nomenclatures? Anyway........
The parts order went off after I had consulted with my gun club FFL holder.
After a couple of weeks wait, he got an Essex *stainless* frame, that mates up quite nicely with the AMT slide. No rattle, no jiggle, and the colors match up too.
Came the big day, UPS did another one of their famous drive-by deliveries. I think that if they could figure out how to launch the package out of the back of their truck, they would.
Or even better, if they could just have an air-fired cannon at the UPS facility on the other side of town, they'd launch from there, and give you a call your package was on its last leg of its journey to you, to watch for it as it comes over the horizon. <g
Incoooooommmmmmminnnnnnnngg!!
THUMP!
Popped the bag open, lotsa packing styrofoam -endless amusement for my cats – and lotsa, lotsa plastic bags of medium, small and itsy small pieces/parts.
Let's see, I recognize the trigger, there's the hammer, oooooohhhhhhh..... what are these little pins?
And this one, that looks almost identical to that one?
I pulled everything out of the bag and put it neatly arranged on a white towel on the table.
<<digression, and a warning>>
If you do this, pay more attention than I did. Or think a little more than I did. Example - I ordered a "Grip Screw, SS".
Of course, this was what I got, a grip screw, singular. What I really needed was *4* grip screws, plural. We'll chalk that up to an OHS error (operator head spacing)
<<digression ends>>
#From there, I started piecing parts together, putting things where they obviously went, and re-arranging them where needed. I did have an old NRA booklet on the .45, and the diagram in the B a.k.a. QP catalog.
Everything fitted. Well, sort of everything. I started to assemble the mainspring housing assembly, and I couldn't find "Mainspring Cap, SS".
I pulled all the packing apart, the shipping box, all the little plastic zip-lock bags, re- checked the towel, questioned my cats.
<<digression, and another warning>>
When you get an order in, read *all* the invoice paperwork.
*All* of it.
Including that little section at the end, about the PARTS THAT ARE BACKORDERED!!!
<<end digression>>
Well, hummmmph. I was already committed, so I got another cup of coffee, puttered out to the garage and contemplated life a minute or so. I grabbed a 16 penny nail, chopped off the head, drilled in the
top, chucked it in the drill press and turned it down. After a couple of minutes I had a very acceptable "Mainspring Cap, field-expedient, Mark 1".
I dropped that in, and a short time had a very acceptable looking .45 clone.
Fitting issues:
I had to stone down the thumb safety to get it to lock up and down into the slide. No big deal, that was expected.
The hammer spur kept hitting the beavertail grip safety top, so more stoning and polishing gave a small gap there.
I had to touch up the slide stop just a little also.
That was the extent of finishing up between the parts I had and the parts I ordered.
I glommed it up with Breakfree and worked the slide, slide stop, made sure the slide would lock back, dry fire, etc., then I cleaned it up enough for a trip to the range.
Hardball, works fine, for the magazines I’ve put thru it. Some old Silvertip gave me failures to feed and smokestacks, but with a cobbled together pistol, that's expected. Straight hardball works fine, flat nose hardball works fine, silvertips feed about 2/3 of the time, so I suspect I’m almost there.
Items to be worked on:
1. Cleaning up the feed ramp to feed hollow points, I'll get around to sometime. Not that big a deal, this is not going to be a carry gun.
2. The half cock notch is there, and will catch the hammer... however, if you pull the trigger, the hammer will fall from half cock.
Hmmm, that's NOT good. In the normal .45 world it 'locks' the hammer from falling. I suspect some too-enthusiastic kitchen-table filing has gone on in the past. After all, this was a parts-bag gun.
I'll disassemble and recheck the hammer and re-do it or replace it.
3. The grip safety rarely works. And to think, some folks pay to get it deactivated! Well, this is still not cool. Pull the hammer back, pull the trigger, hard, and the hammer will fall. That's another disassembly, and another evening sometime.
For now, I have a mostly functioning .45. And the price was great!
I don't regard myself as a mechanical guru, other than getting lucky being able to fashion a mainspring cap. Any other part, I wouldn't have been able to do it.
But I think anyone with a reasonable amount of ingenuity should be able to do what I did, and the feeling of accomplishment is great.
Also, it makes it easy to side-step the Significant Other's question, "Did you buy a new gun?" "Oh no, honey, I didn't *buy* one, I just put it together out of these parts". <biting-my-tongue-grin>
Well, it worked with the rifle, and then the pistol. I'll be pushing the envelope with anything else.
Questions? Comments? Feel free. I sure had fun...and the project is not over yet.
Boy, I sure struck a nerve. The following is one of the more polite emails I received about the half-cock notch (this guy had it wrong, see the another email at the end) and using a lowly 16p nail as an improvised part. What’s going on here? If you use a part that is not blessed by the Gahwds of Colt, or at least by Les Baer, then warnings go out, Jeff Cooper gets a personal teletype at his home and a team of trained, elite, counter-terrorist, quality control inspectors carrying $2500 race guns and 10X magnifying glasses come knocking at your door?
Subject: Re: I built a parts .45 - and lived!
Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 08:46:08 GMT
From: ##########################
To: alan.eldridge@dragonbbs.com
The "half cock" is NOT a half cock feature. It's NOT a safety, and it should NOT allow the hammer to drop when the trigger is pulled.
This problem is related to the grip safety problem you have, and is likely caused by a poor fit of the hammer/sear parts. These parts are NOT drop in and need adjustment.
You sound like you're finding the other parts need adjustment. Get the hammer/sear adjusted which should help with the safety problems. A decent smith could probably tune this gun for you, but it might run $200 --and you still have a "parts gun."
A nail is a poor choice of steel for the mainspring cap. The real piece is much tougher steel.
Well, (Steve Martin voice) excuuuuuuuuuuuuussssssssssseeeeeee me! Sorry if I seem to be taking it out on this guy, but this is one of the POLITER emails I got.
Subject: Re: I built a parts .45 - and lived!
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 03:22:59 GMT
From: ########################
To: alan.eldridge@dragonbbs.com
> The grip safety rarely works. And to think, some folks pay to get it
>deactivated! Well, this is still not cool. Pull the hammer back,
>pull the trigger, hard, and the hammer will fall. That's another
>disassembly, and another evening sometime.
A stiffer sear spring may help this. One of the "legs" of the sear spring holds your grip safety out of engagement normally. You may be able to bend the leg of the spring into shape, but be careful – I broke one that way. Need a sear spring with only 2 prongs?
Subject: Re: I built a parts .45 - and lived!
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 19:53:24 -0700
From: ###########################
To: alan.eldridge@dragonbbs.com
about the 1/2 cock. I think that series 80 hammers do not have a notch, just a step. Series 70 hammers have the notch. At least that is what I saw on my P-14.
This guy got it right. Read on.
Subject: Re: I built a parts .45 - and lived!
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 18:28:57 -0700
From: ##########################
To: alan.eldridge@dragonbbs.com
alan,
According to Jerry Kuhnhausen (The Colt .45 Automatic, A Shop Manual) the series 80 no longer has the notch. Just a step about 0.070" wide. It will slow down the hammer but not necessarily stop it. Probably get in the way enough just to screw up the engagement surface! Since, there is a firing pin block in the 80, not that big of a deal if the hammer falls off the step. I put a Cylinder and Slide trigger pull kit in my P14 and it came with a series 70 hammer. Works very positive. In fact, I would think that either the hammer and / or the sear would have to be heavily screwed up to not work properly. I have heard that letting the hammer hit the 1/2 cock full speed will damage the sear surface and destroy your trigger job.
I first found out this stuff when I got a hold of the M1911A1 Field Manual. I did the safety check, and lo and behold, it "failed" the 1/2 cock test! Later on I found out that the 80 is different. No one says exactly why the change happened. Kuhnhausen stated that the 80 pin block is a superior saftey. I am not sure...
Good Shooting...