Since I was ill I wasn’t doing much and had nothing to write about, but since then I’ve been a busy boy. As you may recall we ended Part 1 with the gun together and functioning.

Now it was time to start the serious stuff, and that means I need to digress a bit…

The Concept

Back in the 1980s I worked at Detonics for a time, and while I was there I got to see a concept/prototype gun called the Speed Master. This used a full-sized Score Master frame, a Combat Master slide and a 6″ bull-barrel with a slide-profile weight attached.

The idea was to have the low reciprocating weight of the Combat Master slide in a full-sized platform with the non-reciprocating weight to allow rapid, accurate fire. The resulting gun was used in the 1984 Tom Selleck movie ‘Runaway,’ about a cop tasked with dealing with malfunctioning robots. It was also carried by Sarah Conner in the 2nd (?) Terminator movie.

As I recall the gun never worked particularly well, but I might be mistaken. The design has a few other issues, like the shortened sight-radius of the Combat Master slide. Also dealing with the long barrel and the barrel weight were problematic as I recall.

Barrel-mounted compensators proved to be the solution to rapid, accurate fire for competition; they were lighter, at least as effective and generally less problematic. Still, the Speed Master concept stuck in head, and I couldn’t help but feel there was something there worth looking into, with suitable changes.

‘Suitable Changes’

The first consideration is the Philosophy of Use- what is the gun for? Simple enough; I want it as a competition pistol/range toy. The ballistic advantages of the longer barrel are not needed, so going with a short slide and 3-1/2″ bull barrel seemed to eliminate a lot of potential issues. The weight could be supported by an extended dust-cover, which would further simplify things from a mechanical perspective. I also wanted the gun to be closer to the stock size and weight of a 1911. Maintaining the full-length sight radius and using improved sights would be good, and since I can tailor the sights to my preferred load I could save money by using fixed sights. Even better, I could use the sights from the Tisas’s original slide.

Phase 2- The Dust Cover

Obviously the easy way to do this would have been to buy a Les Baer frame with an extended dust cover, but this would have cost as much as the entire Tisas Duty .45 all by itself, then I would have had to buy and fit all the shooty-bits to make it work. It just wasn’t in the budget.

As it turns out Caspian sometimes goofs when machining a frame, and they dispose of these buy cutting them through the trigger-guard and frame. I don’t know what they do with the back half, but he section of the frame that includes the dust cover can be purchased for $5 each. I bought three so I could screw up a couple and still be good to go. The lovely folks at Caspian sent these promptly; their customer service is very good.

Now I needed to get the dust-cover cut-off attached to the frame, and this is where it helps to know a lot of people. People like my friend Ernie, who is not only a trained gunsmith but is also a God-like welder. He either owed me a favor or wanted me to owe him one (we’ll sort that out later) so I handed him the bits, explained what I wanted and in very little time it was done. Being Ernie he left me surprisingly little clean-up to do, and even chose the welding-rod so that the weld is barely visible under the blueing. Ernie is truly a master at his trade.

An hour or two of clean-up and some Oxpho Blue and I was ready to proceed. I should note that the finished gun will receive a coated finish, but for the moment the Oxpho will suffice.

A Weighty Matter

So now the weight had a place to be, and I knew the best way to go about making the weight. Being me, of course, I tried to do it the ‘easy’ way first. I cut a section from the Tisas’s slide, then lathe-turned a chunk of steel to fill in underneath and silver-soldered it in place. So I then bored through the dust-cover, threaded the holes in the weight and secured it in place. It looked good and seemed like it ought to do the job.

The thing to do was test it of course. I put a few rounds in the magazine, set up my back-stop and the predictable thing happened.

One the second shot the top of the weight flew off and landed a few feet away. OK, not secure enough. I mulled over the thought of having the weight welded together, attempting to pin the parts and re-solder them etc. Then I went ahead and did it the way I expected to need to do it all along.

I had a piece of 6065 aluminum lying around, and I headed for the bandsaw. After a couple hours of grinding, filing, drilling and cutting I had my new weight. Attempts to blacken it with Birchwood Casey Aluminum Black were, uh, sub-optimal. Just going to have to wait for the coating.

Mounted up on the gun we can now begin to see what the finished product is going to look like. I need to install the sights and do some test-firing. Once everything works there’s a good bit of finishing to do, then the coating.

Looks like we’re going to have one more installment; I need to see if I can get this thing together and tested; there’s an Action Shooting International match I’m signed up for Saturday morning…

Stay safe, and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 9 December 2021

Since Thanksgiving I’ve been on my ass from a severe cold. No, it’s not COVID, I’ve been tested. I also quit smoking, which has made me a bit grouchy but it was past time.

Prior to that I did test-fire the 9mm project-gun, and it needed a bit of tweaking but it works. It did exhibit an odd thing; it locked back with one round still in the magazine. It turns out that I need a different slide-stop for 9mm. Who knew? Everyone but me, apparently.

Anyway I’ll be getting back to work soon and this project will be progressing further. Happy Holidays, Take care and stay safe.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 2 December 2021

I’ve alluded to a 1911 project in 9mm but details have been a little vague. This post will help that to a degree but there will still be questions at the end. Please bear with me. I’ve got a plan but what I plan and what actually takes place ain’t never but similar, to quote the immortal Jane Cobb. The plan is evolving.

The plan is to build a rapid-fire pistol for competition, which makes 9mm a no-brainer. In terms of shooting quickly and accurately 9mm is ‘Cheat Mode’ in the 1911 frame. More bullets and less recoil also serve the mission so 9mm it is.

After careful negotiations with The Mistress of Finance and taking into account the generous contributions of my Patreon supporters we established a modest budget for the project. In a world where money was no object I’d have started with a custom Caspian slide and a Les Baer frame, but I don’t live in that world. Top-of-the-line components were for the most part not going to be a thing, and I needed to save what money I could for where they did need to be a thing if that should occur.

After pricing frames and internal components I determined that I could meet my goals for significantly less money by starting with a donor gun rather than buying the parts individually. This would also save a lit of time assembling the gun as I would be starting with everything in place and working. After careful research and consulting with people who should know I bought the TISAS .45 I reviewed in a previous post. Caliber wasn’t particularly relevant as I would be replacing the slide regardless. I had my jumping-off point.

Because, uh, Reasons

Since I first got to fire one in the 1980’s I have known that the Detonics Combat Master was maybe the best stock .45 ever for double-taps. The light reciprocating mass of the short slide, fast lock-time, and other features combine to bring the gun back on target very quickly. In 9mm it just gets better. It has it’s downsides like the very short sight radius, heavy weight and truncated grip, but overall they are great self-defense guns.

Many of these are easily addressed; the idea of the short slide combined with a full-sized grip has been done, as Kimber does in their Pro-Carry series.

The perception of softer recoil and fast recovery between shots make this Linda’s favorite 1911 configuration in .45 ACP. This concept is the starting point for my 9mm project, but it’s just the starting point. It’s going to get much more complicated than that.

Getting Started

With the TISAS in-hand I could get started while still waiting for other components to arrive. I began with optimizing the grip-frame.

The standard flat mainspring housing provided with the gun needed modifying both for shape and better traction. I blended the edges first so that the back surface of the safety provided a single smooth arc from one edge to the other and I rounded the bottom edge as well. I then cut 20 line-per-inch (LPI) checkering on the mainspring housing. This creates a comfortable but grippy surface. I also blended the edges of the ‘speed-bump’ on the grip safety to present a similar smooth arc.

I also hand-cut 20 LPI checkering on the front of the grip-frame. I increased and blended in the undercut on the trigger-guard as well. There’s still finishing work needed on the checkering, but it already provides a fantastic and not overly abrasive grip. That was all the work needed on the frame for the moment.

The 9mm Slide.

Originally I planned to get a fully custom slide from Caspian, but that would have entailed significant expense and an unacceptably long time-frame for delivery. On Ebay I found a 3.5 RIA 9mm barrel for $69 and a matching slide for $119. That’ll do. I removed the .45 ejector from the frame and fitted the barrel and slide to the frame. The barrel needed extensive fitting to the frame as it was a ramped full-support barrel but the TISAS has a conventional frame. Machining the frame to accept the barrel would be an incredible PITA with my tools so I adapted the barrel instead, converting it to a conventional-profile barrel. The EGW recoil assembly and guide-rod (About $73 incl. tax and shipping) also required a bit of fitting, but that was almost inconsequential by comparison.

As currently set up the gun will easily hand-cycle rounds from the Sig Sauer 9mm magazines I selected to feed the gun, but I am likely to need to do some feed-ramp work if for no other reason than my brain says I should.

In a couple days the 9mm ejector will arrive, and after installing that I’ll test-fire the gun before going to the next steps. Those next steps are where things are going to start to get crazy. Suffice it to say the GI sights on this slide will be replaced and some other issues will be addressed as well.

OK, the obvious question is, ‘Why not a 2011?’ The answer is simple; they’re expensive. Expensive enough to break the budget, in fact. So 1011 it is.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode ‘Gunsmith Wannabe’s Gone Wild!’

Stay safe and take care

Michael Tinker Pearce, 22 November 2021.

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