Testing, testing

I bought a couple of new magazines for my Series 80 Colt .45 Government Model, as well as a replacement recoil spring. The last time I had fired it, I had one failure of the slide to return to battery. The new spring is a hardball spring, as was the old one, and the difference in strength of the two springs was significant. I didn't want to swap it out until I had a chance to go to the range to test it, which I finally did.

Many years ago, I had bought two of the early 8-round magazines. My gun would never strip the top round. I bought a new 8-round magazine made by Chip McCormick and it worked. I also bought some surplus 7-rounders and one of them repeatedly failed to lock the slide, so I gave it away to the guy who runs the range. He's probably better qualified to apply the necessary bendology to it.

And this is the first time in a number of years that I have made it to a range to go shooting more than once a year. [Yay!]

A lot of people don't like the Series 80 guns. Series 80 Colts have a little gizmo that locks the firing pin in place unless the trigger has been squeezed. This is because M1911-style Colts have a free floating firing pin and, if you have a cartridge in the chamber and you drop it muzzle down, the firing pin can hit the primer hard enough to fire the round. The aficionados say that the extra stuff in the trigger mechanism screws up the smoothness of the trigger. I'm not that expert enough to notice; I have shot a Gold Cup Series 80 and its trigger feels pretty sweet to me. And I do like the safety factor.

I can see not having that safety in a military weapon; the safety plunger gizzie and the spring that motivates it are both teeny-tiny parts. In a civilian context, I don't think the danger of losing them in a disassembly is more than the safety aspect. From what I can tell, soldiers seem to go around with the chambers empty; they cycle the slide when they need to use the gun. On the Navy ships back in the day, the .45s were carried empty with the magazines in a belt pouch. In civilian usage, fully-loaded is more common, so the safety of the firing pin lock is a nice thing to have. (All of this is my opinion, Your Mileage May Vary.)

(Oh, if you do have a M1911 without the firing pin safety, really think hard about replacing the steel firing pin with a titanium one and making sure you have a strong firing pin return spring. That will help reduce the risk of a drop-bang situation.)