10/29/14

Ok, so I left off the story of the gun show with my going home.  There I sorted through the bits and baubles I’d purchased.  I started off by installing the purple Hogue grips on the “new” 1911.  It looks awesome!  Then I installed the muzzle-brake barrel-bushing and extended slide release.  I cycled the action and locked the slide back.  Unfortunately when I released the slide, the hammer fell to half cock with it.  “That ain’t good,” I said to myself.  I tried a few more times and it kept doing it.  I thought, “Well, I have a spare hammer, and I don’t like the one on the gun anyway, I might as well replace it.”  I disassembled the gun and had a look at doing just that but I didn’t have the pin-punch required to swap the hammer strut form one hammer to the other.  I grokked it a bit and finally reassembled the gun.  I fingered I would just take it to a gunsmith and have the hammer swapped while he looks at the hammer fall on slide release issue.  I set that aside and moved on to the 870 barrel.  Yeah, in keeping with the way everything else was going, it didn’t fit.  Well, it fit but there are apparently two versions of the Remington 870.  One has a four-round magazine tube whereas the other has a six-round magazine tube.  Mine is a six-round but the barrel is for a four-round.  The lug on the bottom of the barrel, the one which locks the barrel to the gun, is about six inches closer to the breach, or further from the muzzle if you prefer, on the four-round specific barrel.  If you followed that last sentence… well, congratulations.  Suffices to say, the barrel I bought won’t lock onto my gun without a spacer of some sort.  I went online to see if anyone made such a thing but couldn’t find it.  I read somewhere that there is a video of someone making a spacer from PVC but couldn’t find that either.  I reassembled that gun and put it away.  While telling Larry about the failed attempts at things, I went online and looked into the hammer-fall issue.  The general consensus was that dropping the slide on and empty chamber is a bad thing.  The internet wags said that the act of stripping a round from the magazine slows the slide enough to prevent “sear bounce” which is what I am experiencing.  I grabbed the 1911 and loaded up some snap-caps into the magazine.  I released the slide and what do you know?  Yep, the hammer fell just like before.  I was irked.  I read a little more and someone said they added some tension to the sear spring and it solved the problem in their gun.  So, I once again disassembled the thing and gave a bit of a bend to the sear spring.  The first thing I noticed after doing that was that the mainspring was a bit harder to install and the second was the trigger was a bit stiffer.  I got it all back together, loaded the snap-caps into the magazine, and flicked the slide release.  Huzzah!  The hammer did not fall when the slide slammed home!  I was pleased.  I racked the rest of the snap-caps through and decided to try and evil “empty chamber” slide release… the hammer didn’t fall!  I think I may have fixed it.  I’m torn as to whether I should go ahead and have a gunsmith look it over or not.  I’m currently leaning towards “not.”  I’ll take it to the shop this weekend and swap out those hammers because I really don’t like the chromed cast pot-metal hammer on the thing now.  I also want to swap out the safety lever because, once again, it is a chromed pot-metal thing and is a bit on the “mushy” side.  I will probably take the 870 as well and make a spacer to install the breacher barrel.  We’ll see.  Oh yeah, I will also see about making the “solvent trap” for the Mosin Nagant as well.  Looks like I will be at the shop for a while on my own Saturday afternoon and Sunday!