1911’s in general, 9mm versions specifically

[zdc1775]

I'm shocked there's not much mention of the MAC 9ds comp here yet. $850 on a good sale. 4.25" or 5" bull barrel, bottom pic rail, comes with optics plate for an RMR, easily replaceable different trigger lengths from the factory. It seems to be the new hotness amongst the budget 2011 world right now and everything I've seen says it's for good reason. Doesn't seem to take much work to make reliable. Polishing a spot or two, couple of spring adjustments, red-dirt trigger, seems to make very happy owners.

It's certainly caught my attention. Anyone found differentley?

So I bought one a few months back, took it out of the box and did absolutely nothing to it before I ran ~500 round through it and the only reliability issue I had was with a few rounds where the slide didn't fully close, tapped the slide home and kept going. But it was horribly over sprung and had one of the worst 1911 triggers I have ever used.

After that, I fully disassembled it, polished everything, stoned the sear and hammer hooks, replaced the recoils spring, firing pin spring, and mainspring, tuned the sear spring and extractor, installed an optic, and lubed everything up. Now it has a slightly less than 3lb trigger with a very clean break, and has ran another 2,500 or so rounds with zero issues.

So overall, I think it is a good option for people who have the knowledge and ability to fit and replace parts, and tune a 1911. Not quite so much for someone who wants to just grab a gun and run it.

 

[Bc45]

When tuning the Wilson extractor is this a good video to use as a guideline? Wondering if anyone has a different way to check if extractor needs to be tweaked and how they tweak it.

 

[RockAndSage]

When tuning the Wilson extractor is this a good video to use as a guideline? Wondering if anyone has a different way to check if extractor needs to be tweaked and how they tweak it.

That's one method, which might be something I'd use in the field or at a range if I didn't have access to a work bench. The danger is that it's easy to overdo it, especially with the very wide variety of steels and heat-treatments out there on extractors. Just go really slow, in minor increments.

The old-school gunsmith method had a little more precision, but was still more on the art and experience side of things, rather than actual measured precision - you lay the extractor across the top of the open jaws of a vise, and tap it with a hammer or a hammer and punch to put more or less arc into the extractor, just a few light taps at a time, and check the fit. You get better at it the more you do it, but it definitely offers more control than what was in the video.

What I don't have any experience with, but suspect could be pretty effective, are some of the extractor adjustment tools, like Weigand's. These tools are set up to allow you to apply pretty specific arcs/bends in an extractor, using a screw and stop-screw setup, without over-doing it.

 

[Howler65]

When tuning the Wilson extractor is this a good video to use as a guideline? Wondering if anyone has a different way to check if extractor needs to be tweaked and how they tweak it.

Jason Burton also has an old extractor tuning video that is worth watching…

 

[Dobermann]

What I don't have any experience with, but suspect could be pretty effective, are some of the extractor adjustment tools, like Weigand's. These tools are set up to allow you to apply pretty specific arcs/bends in an extractor, using a screw and stop-screw setup, without over-doing it.

For those who are wondering: https://jackweigand.com/products/1911-extractor-adjusting-tool/



I think this tool, or one like it, was referenced in the first of Sweeney's 1911 books.

I've not used one, but here's a thread from the 1911 Forum about it, along with some comments about tension amounts: https://www.1911forum.com/threads/weigand-extractor-tensioning-tool.1034272/

There are some other threads about extractor fitting and tuning listed at the end of that thread.