Making a long slide

[Kilroy08]

I've been itching to build a 1911 for a while now.

My dream gun is a 6" long slide with barrels for .45 ACP and
.400 Cor Bon, no beaver tail nonsense, Hogue wrap around grips, and some nice target sights.

After watching the Shotgun News for a while, it seems that Sarco is the way to go for a budget build.

My question is this. How much of a pain in the butt would it be to cut and extend a slide? 6" slides are around $270 plus shipping! I'm a machinist and fairly competent with welding.

I'm assuming square everything off, V grind, and TIG it together, then dress and refinish. Oh, and fab up a fixture to situate everything in properly for welding.

[wellfedirishman]

Give Rock Island Armory a call. I purchased a complete 6" top end from them for about $350. Barrel, slide, and target sights installed.

I had to fit it myself, that was straightforward. The gun turned out great.

[Kilroy08]

I talked to them a couple days ago. All long slide stuff, both complete guns and slides are out of stock for at least 4 months.

$350 complete would be worth the price of not making extra work for myself,call back in 4 months it is.

It will probably take that long to set the money aside for my project anyway.

[MBTcustom]

Buy the book "Pistolsmithing" by George C. Nonte, Jr.
It has detailed instructions on how to do what you are proposing, as well as a wealth of other info about how to properly tune and modify a 1911 any way you can dream of. It is also extremely helpful dealing with S&W builds. The pictures are B&W but are very disciptive, and he writes in a way that is both detailed and easy to understand.
Also, its a pistol, not a model airplane. Things need to be done right! Save your money and give the build the equipment and tools that it needs. If you are building this so that you can get yourself a cheap longslide, forget it! You would be better and safer and cheaper off if you just buy one outright, and at least then you would have a functional pistol. If you go at this half cocked, you will save $50-$100 getting a dangerous piece of junk that you don't like shooting. If you invest in the knowledge, and look at it like a learning experience, you will do well and you will improve yourself through future builds.
I speak from experience. I had read about pistol building and been taught by my father. I wanted to put that knowledge to use so I bought a cheap 1911 and customized the heck out of it. I thought it would be a relatively cheap and fun project. It ended up costing me almost as much as I paid for the gun in the first place and it took hours and hours. I learned a lot, and the gun was quite impressive, but i ended up coming to the conclusion that you never win taking shortcuts (unless you just take great pleasure in jacking up a perfectly functioning firearm) It makes much more sense to save your money and get what you really want, or save up your money and patently make solid educated changes to your gun that will get you the most bang for your buck. There is a steep learning curve with this sort of thing, and it takes money and time. If you are patient, and calculating, you can cut the slide and extend it, but if you have that much patience, you wouldn't have a problem saving up the coin to buy the proper slide, or wait until it comes available.
Let me put it to you another way, what if you bought a used truck and became aware later that the previous owner had wrecked it, and decided to cut the frame off right behind the cab, and weld on a new rear end. Assuming this guy had no prior automotive experience, how safe would you feel driving down the freeway?

[williamwaco]

Buy the book "Pistolsmithing" by George C. Nonte, Jr.
It has detailed instructions on how to do what you are proposing, as well as a wealth of other info about how to properly tune and modify a 1911 any way you can dream of. It is also extremely helpful dealing with S&W builds. The pictures are B&W but are very disciptive, and he writes in a way that is both detailed and easy to understand.
Also, its pistol, not a model airplane. Things need to be done right! Save your money and give the build the equipment and tools that it needs. If you are building this so that you can get yourself a cheap longslide, forget it! You would be better and safer and cheaper off if you just buy one outright, and at least then you would have a functional pistol. If you go at this half cocked, you will save $50-$100 getting a dangerous piece of junk that you don't like shooting. If you invest in the knowledge, and look at it like a learning experience, you will do well and you will improve yourself through future builds.
I speak from experience. I had read about pistol building and been taught by my father. I wanted to put that knowledge to use so I bought a cheap 1911 and customized the heck out of it. I thought it would be a relatively cheap and fun project. It ended up costing me almost as much as I paid for the gun in the first place and it took hours and hours. I learned a lot, and the gun was quite impressive, but i ended up coming to the conclusion that you never win taking shortcuts (unless you just take great pleasure in jacking up a perfectly functioning firearm) It makes much more sense to save your money and get what you really want, or save up your money and patently make solid educated changes to your gun that will get you the most bang for your buck. There is a steep learning curve with this sort of thing, and it takes money and time. If you are patient, and calculating, you can cut the slide and extend it, but if you have that much patience, you wouldn't have a problem saving up the coin to buy the proper slide, or wait until it comes available.
Let me put it to you another way, what if you bought a used truck and became aware later that the previous owner had wrecked it, and decided to cut the frame off right behind the cab, and weld on a new rear end. Assuming this guy had no prior automotive experience, how safe would you feel driving down the freeway?

A blast from the past.

I used to have that book. I "Accurized" several military 1911s using that book and they were surprisingly accurate.


.

[MBTcustom]

It is still available to buy. You should grab a copy. It is my favorite all time gunsmithing book.
I just wish he had written as "in depth" about rifles!

[bob208]

back in the day we would buy demilled 1911 slides and weld them together to get the length we wanted. the hard part is keeping thing lined up.

[williamwaco]

It is still available to buy. You should grab a copy. It is my favorite all time gunsmithing book.
I just wish he had written as "in depth" about rifles!

Ordered it from Amazon.

[tenx]

considering you have to invest in a good slide to start with and a doner slide to cut up and weld, dealing with alignment issues, welding, refinishing and maybe heat treatment when done it just seems to make sense to go with a factory 6 inch longslide. my first choice is caspian, excellent quality, guarenteed heat treatment and overall demensions and they stand behind their parts. their prices are not bad, you get what you pay for.