The Big Secret
I spent some time on the phone going over the details on this compelling example of the multi-caliber notion. Apparently, in spite of Terry’s casual “Oh, it’s not a big deal” attitude, there were a few, um … “challenges” as he called them. It was a big deal.
Starting with a Caspian frame and slides (except the Colt ACE unit), Terry went to work. He stressed he likes to use Caspian because it’s essentially one-stop shopping.
“From the frames and slides, to the safeties, firing pin stops, firing pins, ejectors and the rest, Gary Smith and the gang at Caspian take good care of their customers,” said Terry. “In this case, I asked Gary to make sure all the sight cuts were the same and the slides the same. It makes final fitting much easier. I used Kensight adjustable rears and Novak fronts, and since all the cuts were the same, I knew just what needed doing to fit each one. And that’s another good thing about this sort of a set, you end up with the exact same sight picture on each one.”
There’s a big secret on how to fit slides in different calibers to all work on the same frame on a 1911. According to Terry, only the 5″ .45 ACP 1911 uses a “certain” design in ejector, and the slide is cut to fit it. All of the other calibers use a different style of ejector. So I asked Terry how he made it work.
“That’s the secret,” he said, laughing. “If a good pistolsmith thinks about it hard, they will likely figure it out. But I’m going to make ’em work for it in this case,” he said through the grin on the other end of the phone.
So in this case, suffice to say, Terry carefully fits all the slides to a single frame, then fits all the barrels into those slides and to that frame — and then a miracle occurs — and it all works.
“I will say I used ramped barrels for each caliber, and had the frame cut to fit them. Then, I fit the first barrel — the .45 — making sure everything ran right, the set-up was accurate and it fit the frame perfectly. Then I basically chased that set-up with the remaining slides and barrels. A couple of the calibers needed several barrels before I found one I could fit correctly. I used Clark, Barsto, Ed Brown and KKM barrels and the stock Colt barrel lives in the .22 ACE unit,” explained Terry.
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