Linky Love

So the 1911 had gotten increasingly hard to open. It was to the point that I just about had to poke the muzzle against something to get it to unlock. I still hadn't taken it apart for fear of what I might find, my mind having conjured visions of various unlikely maladies: nasty burrs on the locking lugs or suchlike.

While I was up at Sand Burr Gun Ranch last Sunday, I asked Ray Saltzman, who was there to AI for Mas's MAG-40 class, if he wouldn't mind laying hands on it and making a diagnosis.

What the problem turned out to be was the link binding against the bottom of the frame. Now, bear in mind that the gun had gone back to Bob after the first thousand-ish rounds for a checkup and everything looked good. It had fired only about a thousand rounds since then before starting the 2k-round thing. This tight-unlocking problem had just cropped up in the last thousand rounds and had been getting worse.

I'm filing this one under "mysteries". All I can assume is that the link was so close to the frame that all it took was a tiny bit of link stretching and a bit of dirt in the gun to cause the two surfaces to come in contact.

At any rate, Ray spent a few minutes with a file and *bam* the problem vanished. He's a miracle worker. Take your guns to him to get fixed.

Since the gun still hadn't been lubed or cleaned, unless you count Ray wiping the feed ramp with a shop cloth, I figured we'll just put an asterisk next to the whole thing and go back to shootin' up Lucky Gunner's .45ACP ammo. And so yesterday morning found me at the range...

...where the gun disposed of a hundred rounds without a hiccup.

This brings the total rounds fired to 1,200 since the weapon was last cleaned or lubricated, with two failures to go into battery (rounds #356 and #1,085), a failure to feed on round #513, a failure to feed a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #927, and a failure to eject a round of Hornady Critical Duty +P on round #930. 800 rounds to go.
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