I went tire shopping

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The pawn shop I use for my FFL was a block away so rather than sit in the tire waiting room I went down to check out what was at the pawn shop.  You might see where this is going.

They had this 9mm Fusion Freedom Gold in the case.  After some back and forth I was out the door for $400.  The gun had some holster/carry wear as well as some dings in the grip panels.  And the action felt - well not quite right.

During the detail strip a small sliver of steel came out. Took me a bit to figure out what it was, but it was the half-cock ledge.  Many 1911's don't have a half cock anymore, and I certainly never use one, so I am not losing sleep over it. Whatever force was needed to break it off is a little more concerning, but the action feels very good now. That bit of steel was certainly the issue with how it felt at the shop.

I also found some surface rust here and there, so I hit the whole frame with degreaser, then steel wool over the rust, then dawn and hot water.  From there the frame and slide went into boiling water, then over to the parkerizing solution until they stopped "fizzing".  Back to the water for a rinse, then out, dried, oiled, rubbed down with grease and brushed out with a stiff plastic bristle brush.  I also taped off the checkering on the grips and then sanded down the smooth section and re-coated it with boiled linseed oil.

It cleaned up really nice.  Very happy right now.  Should get it out to shoot next weekend, hopefully it runs as good as it now looks.

I am thinking of picking up a 38 Super barrel for it as I have always wanted a 1911 in 38 Super to go with my Witness Stock III.  I also found it has the larger 40/10mm breech face, so of course I will add a 10mm barrel to the mix too.

[John A.]

The pawn shop I use for my FFL was a block away so rather than sit in the tire waiting room I went down to check out what was at the pawn shop.  You might see where this is going.

Say no more.  I do see where this is going.

Just sitting there at the garage is boring.  Plus, exercise is good for you.

[The_Shadow]

Very nice Mitch!

A while back PSA had the DAGGER 9mm on a good sale and they use much of the Glock 19 parts and magazines.
I had won 4 magazines (18 round) from Jagemann company giveaway, so I was in the market for a G-19 and the Palmetto State Armory Dagger Compact 9mm Pistol with DLC Slide & Carry Cuts, Black was just the ticket.

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Updates:

Above I posted a picture of the "pretty" side of the gun.  After it's trip to my parkerizing tank the other side had a small 1/4"X1/3" blemish on the slide about 1/2" in front of the slide stop notch, centered top to bottom.  I attributed it to my haste in not actually suspecing the part but letting it sit on the bottom of the park tank, which has some scallops.  I figured contact with the bottom was the cause.

Saturday I couldn't stand it anymore and decided to run the slide through again.  It came out better this time, but that spot is still visible in the right light. It is enough better it doesn't bug me now.  You have to really look for it at this point.

I normally don't remove a front sight for a quick trip to the tank.  I degrease well using soap and hot water, then acetone or denatured alcohol.  After the first session I noted some white substance coming out from under the front sight.  During this second round the denatured alcohol finished off whatever adhesive was there and the front sight slide out of the dovetail under moderate finger pressure.

I proceeded with the rest of the cleaning and refinishing process then circled back to the sight.

I don't have to the tooling to properly measure the dovetail in the slide.  But either that dovetail is large or the sight is small.  It pushes in 90% of the way with barely any resistance, and can be easily tapped through. Since it is a used gun I can't say for certain this was a factory issue, but it seems likely since it is the factory sight. Even though I can picture "bubba" installing a sight this way, I can't imagine why they would have removed the factory sight if it was properly installed.

I "grew" the sight bottom taller with a broken piece of high speed steel and a ball peen hammer. It now need the correct persuasion to get into place.  But I will be ordering another front sight from Harrison and will report back if the slide dovetail is undersize.

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Small update.

Cleaned up the broken face on the half-cock.  I fixed the angle to match a series 80 style.  It will catch the hammer and hold it in case of a slip when manually cocking the hammer over a live round.  This practice is not part of my manual of arms for a 1911, but I wanted it to function in an expected way in case someone else is handling it.

I would have like to re-cut it with a hook that would hold the sear against trigger pressure, but I don't have any tooling to make a cut that fine.  I may look into getting something, but for now I am oK with the status.

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Got some range time today.  Was able to run about 100 rounds of various ammo through the gun. right up front...Some of that ammo is KNOWN to be underpowered enough that is doesn't always run guns reliably.  I got too skimpy with the Win231.  I had three stovepipes and one failure to extract with that ammo.  Hardly the guns fault.

Factory ammo from Speer, Remington and Armscor all ran perfectly, even in 10mm mags.  I only had one 9mm mag.  I ran 10mm mags from Wilson, Ruger, Brownells and Chip McCormick using 9mm ammo with zero failures.  They will all feed an empty case as well.

I shot five 5-shot groups using various amm0 at 25 yards using a table as a rest, but without any bags or other support.  The table below tabulates the "best 3 of 5" accuracy per the Mas Ayoob school of thought that the best three from your hands are usually the same as a 5 shot group from a rest.

Armscor FMJ 115 Grain (A group): 3.5"
Speer Gold Dot 124 Grain +P:  1.25"
Remington Golden Saber 124 Grain +p: 1.75"
Handload JHP 124 grain 4.0 gr W231:  3.5"
Handload SWC 128 grain 4.0 gr W231:  3.5"
Armscor FMG 115 Grain (B group): 1.5"

Overall Average:  2.5"

Overall impression: Very favorable, especially given the price I paid. At the $800 I see these for on gunbroker I would be very pleased.

Before shooting I pulled the fire control components out and gave them a quick polish on cardboard.  I think adjusted the over-travel on the trigger and found a new issue, or maybe an old issue. When the sear has cleared the hammer hooks, it did not clear fully the half-cock.  That "battering" is probably what broke the nose of the half cock.  I took a file to the hammer radius and created clearance.  I do not know if this issue is caused by the hammer being out of spec, or the relationship of the sear pin and hammer pin holes being not to spec.  Or if an oversized hammer just has to be fit for this and mine wasn't.  But it is corrected now.

I have never really understood a 9mm 1911. I now understand.  9mm will never take the place of my 10mm love, but this is a very fun to shoot package.

I ran a couple of drills at 25 yards.  Five shots in three seconds on a pink helium cannister, standing two hands;  Easy.  Five shots in three seconds right hand only; easy.  Five shots left hand (off hand for me);  I dropped one and used the full time.

The other drill was impromptu.  I was shooting at the cannister and it fell over and started rolling left to right across my range (private property range, me only).  I just keep shooting at is rolled and made 8/8 hits on a moving target two handed at 25 yards. The first two shots were the ones that knocked it over.