This gun would not have fired a full magazine it simply couldn’t have.
Further inspection revealed that the front stud of the ejector had broken off flush with the frame- stuff like this is why I maintain that MIM has no place in a carry gun. Another ‘loose tooth’, just like the extractor. With the gun cleared and locked open, I wiggled the ejector. I reloaded the mag and repeated, only to be rewarded with a fail-to-eject every time. I cleared it and started again, and it tossed out all but the last round. I slapped the gun back together and loaded the magazine with Wolf hardball, and started to hand-cycle the gun. A little careful fitting produced the proper “snick” in both directions. Since I knew the factory thumb safety was suspect, I found an old GI safety in the parts bin and swapped it out. In fact, I’d have to say that the top of the frame and underside of the slide were actually finished better than the Springfield MilSpec I rebuilt, the year before. The holes and ports in the frame were in-spec and crisply done, and the rails on both parts looked real good. The gun was ultimately purchased for a fraction of its retail price and I went to work on it shortly thereafter. The extractor wobbled around like a loose tooth.
The thumb safety was all but inoperable, requiring two hands to get it into the “safe” position. The finish bore a few handling marks and the barrel was nothing to write home about, with “chatter marks” plainly visible in the rifling ahead of the chamber. This particular dealer knows me well and has no problem with me tearing down a prospective purchase. Then I found a local dealer with a new “WWII” model, which had seen some rough handling by prospective customers. The apparitions of these problem guns haunted me. I had owned one of the early guns, and worked on several more that were owned by law enforcement acquaintances. Prior to Auto Ordnance being acquired by Kahr in 1999, A/O’s 1911’s garnered a checkered reputation. I wanted a gun that I would take pure-GI parts scavenged from gunshow tables- including barrels & firing pins. The fact that they are one of the few 1911 makers who, by their own account, work off pre-war blueprints was another significant factor. The fact A/O guns are American made was a substantial consideration. After pricing various guns, and reading of significant QC improvements by Auto Ordnance since “the Kahr change” I decided to add them to the list of possible base guns for the project. The finished product was to be reminiscent of the old “hardball guns” of the ’70’s maybe high-profile fixed sights, basic accuracy and reliability work, and not much else. and wanted the base gun as GI as possible. I get the urge to do a 1911 “semi-build” every so often.
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