The Art and Science of Keeping Your 1911 Running

[Evil_Ed]

Those are real nice guns. The Custom Shop also made some railed Commanders during that same time.

Even more rare, some of them came with factory threaded barrels. You can find them every now and again on gunbroker...but be prepared to part with a kidney for one.

I have a Combat Unit railgun and it's great - but I'd love to have an actual fitted beavertail on it instead of the drop-in S&A copy unit.

[thatguybryan]

Even more rare, some of them came with factory threaded barrels. You can find them every now and again on gunbroker...but be prepared to part with a kidney for one.

I have a Combat Unit railgun and it's great - but I'd love to have an actual fitted beavertail on it instead of the drop-in S&A copy unit.

Yeah, I’ve seen those too but never one for sale. This one cost 2300 + gunbroker fees which I think is a fair deal. I don’t know what it is actually worth, but I suspect quite a bit more due to rarity.

[SoCalDep]

Two very memorable days.

As many of you may know, I’m retiring from a law enforcement career in a month and around nine days. It’s been a ride, and if one asked me ten years ago if my department would ever allow a 1911 I would have laughed at them.

Fast forward three years and I was standing in front of the Sheriff and executive staff presenting a 1911 proposal and it was approved. A few years later after some testing the STI and shortly after “Staccato” was authorized.

This weekend I taught the last 1911/2011 class I’ll ever teach for my department. I’m the last of the original instructors who started the program. It’s a bit weird because I wouldn’t have been teaching except the “new guy” (a seasoned instructor) got hurt and I was available.

I’ve had the honor of being able to work with absolutely fantastic dedicated and experienced people - great instructors and shooters - and I’ve been able to teach some of the most prestigious law enforcement people around. This class was all “our people”, and while I love teaching outside agencies, this one was special. There were several people who took the class before and wanted more training. There were several people I knew personally on the department, and there were a few people I consider friends. Most importantly, there were a couple guys... One guy was one of my recruits in the firearm portion of the academy and the other has been a perpetual student over several years. Both of them have sought training outside the department, and I even had a tenured deputy who was in prior classes who paid for outside training recently.

It was the group of students you want to teach.

Oh.. but then there was a “catch”.

A storm quite aptly named “Hillary” was inbound. We figured this might interfere with plans so with due warning we were flexible with how we’d proceed.

The class started with my classroom block which is basicallly me nerding out for a few hours talking about safety, disassembly, cleaning, inspection, reassembly, function checks, and the basics of 1911 culture.

We then went to the close range and did about 45 minutes of dry-fire to familiarize with the grip, thumb and grip safety manipulation, and presentation, and finally the draw. This included working at a deliberate pace, finding consistency, and pushing to failure to identify things to work on and how fast its “too fast”.

Then we broke for dinner.

After dinner we zeroed optics. Oh... yea... I forgot to mention. This was the first class I have taught where every single student started with a Staccato or Prodigy and every one had an optic. How far we have come!

Once the optics were zeroed we moved into single-shot draws from varied distances between 10 - 30 yards to establish capabilities. It was about that time that one student realized his Prodigy plate had come loose from the slide (after less than 200 rounds). This is the second gun and sixth time his plate has come loose. Seeing that, I checked my Prodigy that’s had over 1,000 rounds and the plate was just barely loose. I fired two more rounds. A demonstration at 60 yards for a single shot (hit) and at 110 yards (hit). Love the gun and setup, but gotta talk to Springfield about plates coming loose.

Like I said, we did 60 and 110 yards and almost everyone was able to make some hits. It was getting dark so a few had real difficulty at the 110 yard line. Clouds came in from stupid Hillary and we lost a good half hour of daylight.

There were no malfunctions in any of the pistols. Each one was fired with 100 rounds of duty ammunition and around 150 rounds of practice.

That ended our day one and we were to meet at 0630 in the classroom to start day two.

[SW CQB 45]

Two very memorable days.

As many of you may know, I’m retiring from a law enforcement career in a month and around nine days. It’s been a ride, and if one asked me ten years ago if my department would ever allow a 1911 I would have laughed at them.

Fast forward three years and I was standing in front of the Sheriff and executive staff presenting a 1911 proposal and it was approved. A few years later after some testing the STI and shortly after “Staccato” was authorized.

This weekend I taught the last 1911/2011 class I’ll ever teach for my department. I’m the last of the original instructors who started the program. It’s a bit weird because I wouldn’t have been teaching except the “new guy” (a seasoned instructor) got hurt and I was available.

I’ve had the honor of being able to work with absolutely fantastic dedicated and experienced people - great instructors and shooters - and I’ve been able to teach some of the most prestigious law enforcement people around. This class was all “our people”, and while I love teaching outside agencies, this one was special. There were several people who took the class before and wanted more training. There were several people I knew personally on the department, and there were a few people I consider friends. Most importantly, there were a couple guys... One guy was one of my recruits in the firearm portion of the academy and the other has been a perpetual student over several years. Both of them have sought training outside the department, and I even had a tenured deputy who was in prior classes who paid for outside training recently.

It was the group of students you want to teach.

Oh.. but then there was a “catch”.

A storm quite aptly named “Hillary” was inbound. We figured this might interfere with plans so with due warning we were flexible with how we’d proceed.

The class started with my classroom block which is basicallly me nerding out for a few hours talking about safety, disassembly, cleaning, inspection, reassembly, function checks, and the basics of 1911 culture.

We then went to the close range and did about 45 minutes of dry-fire to familiarize with the grip, thumb and grip safety manipulation, and presentation, and finally the draw. This included working at a deliberate pace, finding consistency, and pushing to failure to identify things to work on and how fast its “too fast”.

Then we broke for dinner.

After dinner we zeroed optics. Oh... yea... I forgot to mention. This was the first class I have taught where every single student started with a Staccato or Prodigy and every one had an optic. How far we have come!

Once the optics were zeroed we moved into single-shot draws from varied distances between 10 - 30 yards to establish capabilities. It was about that time that one student realized his Prodigy plate had come loose from the slide (after less than 200 rounds). This is the second gun and sixth time his plate has come loose. Seeing that, I checked my Prodigy that’s had over 1,000 rounds and the plate was just barely loose. I fired two more rounds. A demonstration at 60 yards for a single shot (hit) and at 110 yards (hit). Love the gun and setup, but gotta talk to Springfield about plates coming loose.

Like I said, we did 60 and 110 yards and almost everyone was able to make some hits. It was getting dark so a few had real difficulty at the 110 yard line. Clouds came in from stupid Hillary and we lost a good half hour of daylight.

There were no malfunctions in any of the pistols. Each one was fired with 100 rounds of duty ammunition and around 150 rounds of practice.

That ended our day one and we were to meet at 0630 in the classroom to start day two.

Nice and have fun on your retirement.

I dont know how many hurricanes Cali has gotten but take it from someone who has experienced 8 of them through my lifetime in South TX and I can tell you what I did for each one. They are that eventful and take all precautions that are given. Heavy rainfall is a killer.

[SoCalDep]

Day two started with talk of the impending storm. Ooohhh... I forgot a detail about day #1...

I was doing the classroom block, talking about fitting, tensioning, and dressing extractors (basically saying don’t buy one and throw it in a pistol expecting it to work) when there was a HUGE “BOOM”. The room seemed to shake and I saw debris floating from the ceiling to the floor. There was some “what the hell” and “was that thunder?”... In my limited Tennessee experience I said “it didn’t really sound like thunder...” and without saying much we all walked outside to look around. Turns out a really big branch from a tree fell on the classroom. The damn hurricane (now a tropical storm but it sounds cooler to say hurricane in California) wasn’t even here and trees are falling down. Shit.

So now we’re in day 2 talking about rain in California in August. We might as well have an asteroid coming in.

Anyway, we did the brief disassembly, inspection, lubrication, reassembly, and function check before heading to the range. I was checking my weather radar app as were others and it seemed we’d have a couple hours before the rain, so we did as much stuff as we could on paper before the rain hit. We did a drill right off the bat to “test” our accountability cold with no warmup. Then we shot some strings to work trigger control while always working on manipulation of the thumb and grip safety and presenting the pistol efficiently. Lastly we did a fun drill involving target transitions, various size/shape targets, and all are numbered 0-10 so we can have students shoot things like the penal code for murder, the square root of nine, the year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (had a whole academy relay either not shoot or get that one wrong a few years ago) and how many planets are in the solar system... I like a bit of controversy.

Then came the rain... It was solid, so we transitioned to steel. See... I’m retiring so, being in CA, and being summer... I figured I wouldn’t need my rain gear, so that got turned in two months ago. Sooo... I got soaked. Not a little. Like I couldn’t have been more wet had I jumped in a pool. I was carrying my Staccato P with ACRO P-2 and Surefire X400 Turbo in a Blackhawk L2D T-Series holster. It ran with 100% reliability through my demonstrations and limited shooting, but what was even cooler is that all of the other Staccatos and a Prodigy ran with almost 100% reliability. A student’s Staccato had two stovepipes with our practice ammunition, but that was early in the day and it ran 100% after that. I hate to “blame” malfunctions on ammunition, but our practice ammo tends to be on the lighter end of functionality. Guns should run with it though, and I think he was applying too much pressure to the slide with his support thumb while shooting. After fixing that the problems went away.

It poured for the rest of the class and those guns just kept going. A fellow instructor jumped in and ran his Dan Wesson PM-9 which was totally reliable with Metalform 10rd mags. The student who’s Prodigy optic plate came loose ran a Springfield 9mm Loaded Target and that ran 100% as well (he had previously installed a 13lb recoil spring on my recommendation which fixed consistent failures to feed).

We did strong and support hand shooting with safety manipulation. We did multiple drills reinforcing accountability over short and long strings of fire. Ultimately we covered reloads, target transitions, movement, and worked an evaluation course of fire that we adapted because by the time it was done the rain had caused both my ear protection and PACT shot timer to fail.

By the time it was all done each student had fired between 700-800 rounds, and most of them in heavy rain. Most of us decided not to add additional lubrication to see how far the guns would go. Most of the guns had no malfunctions. The couple that occurred seemed isolated and did not repeat for several hundred rounds.

I’m super impressed with the performance of all of the pistols (10 Staccato P’s, a Springfield Prodigy 4.25”, in addition to the Loaded Target and PM-9) a with a bunch of people who were wet, cold, and tired, shooting a LOT of rounds in the rain.

I was proud that my last 1911/2011 class went well, the students were enthusiastic and had fun, braved a “once in a century storm” and tested their equipment including optics. We did a debrief, took some pictures, shook hands, and eventually left.

After a while I did dry out, ran out for some groceries, and upon returning I parked in front of my current residence (a motorhome here in CA). As I looked at my phone to see the status of this “crazy” storm, my car started to sway pretty significantly side-to-side. I thought “Is this the wind coming in?” and looked up to see no leaves or trees moving. As I realized it was an earthquake I literally laughed out loud that after a tree falling on the classroom, a “once in a lifetime” storm, that now we had an earthquake.

Tennessee here I come!

[Spartan1980]

I saw that on the news about the earthquake in the middle of a hurricane. That has got to be a sign!

[JAH 3rd]

Cali definitely got it going on. SoCalDep, enjoy your retirement!

[03RN]

If it ain't raining, we ain't training.

[358156hp]

If it ain't raining, we ain't training.

Oh the memories associated with that line.

Thanks, I needed that.

[03RN]

Oh the memories associated with that line.

Thanks, I needed that.

I'm actually curious what you associate it with. I was a Hawaii Marine. It prit near rained every day there.