My 9mm project was a pretty cool idea, and it sort of works… but it very much doesn’t also. Once I got it working reliably enough to pay attention to accuracy I noticed there was an issue. Bullets are keyholing at seven yards. This is not conducive to accuracy…
This did not happen before the dust cover was extended and the weight added, which narrows down the search for the cause. It turned out that while I had been careful to insure the hole in the weight was well-centered on the barrel I had not accounted for the fact that the barrel points slightly downward when locked up. After exiting the barrel the bullets were coming quite close to the lower edge of the opening in the front of the weight. It seemed likely that the muzzle-blast within the confined interior of the weight was exerting asymmetric force on the bullets, causing them to tumble.
OK, I can fix that. I honed out the inside of the weight so that the bullet will remain centered in the ‘tunnel’ until it exits the weight. Time to test fire…
124gr. JHPs- fully half destabilized and key-holed at seven yards,124gr. LRN bullets over a moderate load- 4 out of 5 key-holed.
No-go. Bullets are still not flying true. Something is awry, and it’s something to do with the weight. Bugger.
There are several options at this point, and some question about where I go from here. The issue isn’t that I wanted a fast ‘race gun.’ I wanted to see if a specific concept, a short slide and barrel with an extended fixed weight, would work. It looks very much like it doesn’t. From that perspective the gun is a complete success; it answered the question. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but that’s really not the point, is it?
I invested over $800 in this gun so far (if one includes magazines) and I am not going to let that go to waste. It will become a useful, functional gun. The question is what kind of useful, functional gun? The options for using a fixed weight with a full-length barrel have pretty much been explored and compensators proved to be a better mousetrap, so there’s not really any new ground to break there.
Not sure what’s next for this project, but whatever it is will I’ll have fun doing it.
I stripped off the Aluminum Black; it looked like hell. better shiny than that!
The 9mm 1911 is all in one piece. Weight is finished, sights are mounted. All ready for finishing work? Not quite. First it needs to work. Yes, after 300+ rounds it does work. Mostly.
The first range trip happened yesterday. I’d decided load some 124gr JHPs over 6.2gr. of Unique, and hand-cycling led to my first discovery. Here’s a note about this; the ability to hand-cycle rounds from the magazine does not guarantee the gun will cycle, but in my experience the inability to do so means it won’t. It’s a place to start, not a definitive test.
In hand-cycling I found the gun prefers that flat-nosed bullets (and hollow-points) be seated rather deep. OK, this isn’t a maximum- pressure load, it can take a bit more pressure. I backed the charge off to 6.0 gr. and seated the bullets relatively deep. This worked. Mostly; the gun does not like two of the Sig-Sauer magazines. Fair enough, that’s an easy fix. Also it’s shooting very low; another easy fix, just shorten the front sight.
Looking pretty good, though I think it will look better once it’s completely finished.
I stopped at Pinto’s on the way home and picked up the two Mec-gar magazines they had in stock. Mec-gar makes a good magazine, so I thought it worth trying. Besides, more magazines is better. *Nods wisely*
On arriving home I shortened the front-sight and commenced to reloading. I loaded a hundred more of the 124gr. JHPs, and then decided to load some of the 124gr. LRN bullets I had also bought at Pinto’s. After consulting the reloading tables I selected a modest load of 4.5gr. of Unique.
First thing this morning I headed back to the range to try things out. I promptly discovered was that the gun is still shooting low. No worries, plenty more sight to ‘adjust.’ The second thing I noticed was that my 124gr. RNL loads were a bit too modest; they often failed to cycle the gun. Ugh. OK, back to the jacketed loads. These continued to work fine from the Sig Sauer magazines but there was an issue with the Mec-gars. Occasionally the lip of the cartridge would catch on the back of the barrel-hood and stop the gun. Pushing down on the cartridge would cause the gun to go into battery, so this seems like a simple fix; if I chamfer that edge this will stop that from happening.
Ok then, shorten the front sight, chamfer the edge of the barrel-hood and load the 124gr RNL a bit hotter and it looks like we’re there. Time to head into the shop, makes those fixes and do some more reloading. After lunch. Priorities.
Oh, no target pics from today’s range-session; I forgot to take my phone. Well, they weren’t that impressive anyway. Double-taps are reasonably well-grouped but significantly faster than usual; the TISAS’s excellent trigger helps this a lot. Not sure exactly what the future will bring, but I do know that more practice won’t hurt…
Stay safe and take care,
Michael Tinker Pearce, 11 December 2021
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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.
Nothing wrong with that! 7 Yards.
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 Detonics Speed Master prototype
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.
Tom Selleck wielding the Speed Master prototype in the 1984 movie ‘Runaway.’
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.
Long, heavy and somewhat flawed in execution, but perhaps on the right track?
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.
With the gun together and functioning it was time for the next step…
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.
Mischief Managed! The dust-cover is extended.
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.
Weight version 1.0)screws not shown)
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.
Yeah… not unexpected.
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.
Not pretty, but it works.
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…
