1911 Rework

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Let’s face it, some guns are just dogs: poor quality, bad functionality, or looks. Whatever makes a dog a dog can change between firearms, but when the world finds out that a gun company built one, then word travels fast. Gun magazines may be loath to write any bad press about a firearm, but gun owners have no such qualms. If gun nuts find out that a firearm is a piece of junk, then they have no problem saying so. This is the story of one of those dogs.

The Pit Bull before any modifications.

Literally a dog.

The particular dog I am referring to is the Auto Ordnance “Pit Bull.” For those unfamiliar, Auto Ordnance is the company known for the famous Thompson machine gun, which has been featured in every gangster movie ever. Except that at this time, it wasn’t actually Auto Ordnance; it was a company called Numrich, which had purchased Auto Ordnance in the 1950s. Numrich is a gun parts supply company, one that I still use quite frequently as a gunsmith. It currently operates under the name Gun Parts Corporation, but you can find it by searching for Numrich. Apparently, from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, they decided to enter the 1911 market. The Pit Bull began life as a kit you could buy from Numrich that would convert a standard Government-size 1911 to a 3.5” barrel Officer’s model. It wasn’t really an Officer’s model because the gun would still have a full-size grip hanging down from it. Later, Numrich began making whole guns in this configuration and then eventually went to the shorter grip known as the Officer’s size. This is what initially drew me to the weapon, as it sat in the case at my local pawn shop. Mine is the 3.5” barrel with a full-size Government grip. What got me to buy it was the fact that it had an image of a pit bull engraved on the side, and I am a fan of the pit bull breed. I had one for 14 years; his name was Buddy, and it’s cliché, but he was my best friend.

This is my pup from back in his prime.

I did a little haggling and walked out with my new 1911 for $300. It wasn’t until I got home and started doing research that I found out that this gun has almost legendary status as being a real piece of junk. I figured the worst-case scenario is that I have a frame I could build a new 1911 on.

It doesn’t seem like they are all junk. Numrich, as a parts supplier, was outsourcing the production of the Pit Bull’s parts to various companies at the time. It appears that the quality of these parts can vary significantly. If you read testimonials of people who own this gun, they range widely from: “This 1911 is great and has never given me a problem.” To, “This piece of junk has never gone three rounds without jamming.” It sounds to me like buying one of these guns was a bit of a crap shoot. Perhaps you would receive a pile of good parts and it would be fine, or maybe you would get all the junk and it would barely function. So I was a little nervous when I went to the range.

Shooting.

The initial test firing was better than I had expected. I fired about 20 rounds through it, and all of them went off without a single jam or mishap. While this isn’t a thorough test, it did confirm whether the gun would function. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though. First of all, accuracy was, let’s say, dismal. Groups were easily in the neighborhood of eight to ten inches at 25 yards. While this would be suitable for a defensive gun, it wouldn’t be for me. I needed to tighten that up. The second problem —I’m not sure whether to call it a problem or a feature. I am not kidding when I say this. Every single piece of brass that came out of that gun flew up into the air and landed, “plop” right on top of my head. If I had a coffee can duct-taped to my cranium, I could have caught every single piece of brass. While this madness would be suitable for comedic value, I decided that it would have to be changed as well. So, back to the shop I went.

At the shop.

Since the gun actually functioned quite well, I decided that this would be a fun project to invest some time in. Let’s see if I can teach an old dog new tricks and make a decent conceal gun out of this beast.

Upon disassembly, I found some more problems. This gun does not use the same parts as every other Officer’s size 1911 I have seen. The barrel and barrel bushing are not unique. The barrel features a tapered design, a standard among 1911s of this short length. The guide rod, recoil springs, and recoil spring plug, on the other hand, seem… a little unusual. I’m no 1911 expert, but it appears to me that they shortened a classic government-size guide rod, which is common among original Officer’s models. However, this one is extra short, and they chose to use double springs, which was common back in the day but is no longer a standard practice. It creates a bit of a cluster when reassembling and leads to a shorter spring life, but hey, it worked, so kudos to them. The recoil spring plug is short and has rails to keep it in a specific direction —not sure why, but I have seen similar setups on Springfield brand Officer models. All of this means I’m probably not going to be able to get this gun up to par by just throwing money at it, which is an entirely acceptable strategy for most 1911 builds. This is going to require some old-school gunsmithing.

First things first. The slide was pretty sloppy by today’s standards. For a conceal gun, a little slop in the slide is no big deal. As a matter of fact, a little slop helps the gun to run correctly, and priority number one for a concealed gun is reliability. Hey, it worked for Kalashnikov. Still, I wanted to tighten it up. Now, the proper way to get a perfect fit on a 1911 slide is to TIG-weld the rails and recut them to fit the slide. If this were a target gun, that would be the correct approach. In this case, though, I’m going to use some old-fashioned tricks to tighten up the slide.

The slide needed to be tightened both horizontally and vertically. To tighten up the horizontal slop, the frame is stuck in the vice and squeezed. Be careful, it’s easy to go too far, and focus on the area around the locking lugs. This is the only place a 1911 truly needs to be tight for accuracy and proper operation, that and the barrel bushing. Once that is taken care of, we proceed to the vertical slop. This is done by peening the rails on the frame with a polished hammer. This has the effect of skewing the rails into a diamond shape and filling up the gap in the slide. This also needs to be done slowly, with a lot of test-fitting. Taking out vertical slop this way is not as effective as welding up the rails because, while it tightens up the gun, it leaves little surface area for the slide to run on. This means the repair’s overall lifespan will be shorter than if the rails were enlarged correctly. Since this firearm will be fired occasionally and carried frequently, it is the perfect solution for the problem. If I were throwing money at this gun, I would probably opt for buying a new frame with oversized rails and fitting them. This would solve the fitment problem with this gun and would be easier than welding the rails, while leaving an extra serialized frame for building yet another firearm.

New barrel crown.

With the slide sorted, it’s on to the barrel. Indeed, I could tighten up the groups by adding a match-grade barrel, but I’m trying to keep the overall cost of this gun down. A match-grade barrel would effectively double the price of this build. So I’m going to stick with the factory barrel for now and see what I can do with it. I started by crowning the barrel; this should tighten up those groups a little. The barrel bushing was fitted well to the frame, so no adjustments were needed there.

The punched barrel bushing.

The barrel fit on the bushing was a little sloppy, though, so I used an old gunsmith’s trick and punched two locations below the barrel. This forces the metal up and presses the barrel against the ceiling of the barrel bushing. Much like peening the frame, this solution will not last as long as a new, properly fitted bushing, but it serves the same purpose and is easy to do.

As for the springs, since the gun seemed to run well during the test shoot, I will stick with the setup they are using. If it gives me any problems, I will attempt to find a full-length guide rod and spring that will function in this gun; it may require some modification.

Stoning the sear using an Ed Brown Jig.

How’s the trigger, you may ask? It was actually pretty good. It is light, and overtravel is minimal. There is a good amount of creep, but it’s not enough to warrant intervention. I had the jig, so I stoned the sear to smooth everything out a bit more. Let’s face it, even the worst 1911 has a better trigger than a Glock. The safety was the final modification to the action of the gun; it was very mushy, and I like a nice crisp safety, so with a few strokes of a file to the detent surfaces, the safety was as crisp as a tortilla chip.

Frame-work.

Now that the internals are sorted, it’s time to move on to the frame. The thing that makes this gun unique is that it’s a full-size frame and an Officer’s size slide. Which is excellent for round capacity, but unfortunately, that is just about the worst configuration for a 1911 designed to conceal. Often, on a full-size 1911, the grip pokes out under the shirt and becomes noticeable. To solve this problem, I will convert this gun into a bobtail. A quick visit to the Ed Brown website yielded a bobtail mainspring housing and spring, as well as the jig used for the conversion. The conversion was simple enough, but, as in all things, the devil is in the details, so significant hand-filing was necessary to get it to look right. The grips also needed to be modified.

Drilling for the new bobbed mainspring housing using an Ed Brown Jig.

The bobbed mainspring housing fit before modifying the frame.

The last bit of the frame that needed modification was the ejector. While the current flight trajectory of spent brass was entertaining, I needed to change it before a hot casing ended up down the back of my shirt. This problem can be solved by adding a slight chamfer to the front of the ejector.

The ejector shows the new chamfer, which will hopefully direct the spent casings away from the shooter.

The Finished Pit Bull is ready for concealment.

With all the work completed, it’s time to hit the range. Stay tuned for part two of this article, where I will find out whether all my hard work and well-spent cash will pay off in a reliable, concealable, and obedient best friend.