Any risk to cutting a dovetail in an old Reminton Rand slide?

[The Dumb Gun Collector]

Guys,

I have an old Remington rand slide that has allready been worked ov by some home gunsmith who thought he would dehorn it with a rusty file. I am thinking of making it into a sort of faux-soc but I haven't decided if it is wise to go with stake on or dovetailed sights. I understand the advantages of the dovetail but are these ancient slides sufficiently heat treated, etc to have this done without risk?

Does anyone know wheeee you can find any old school millet front sights?

[.45fmjoe]

The front of the slide and possibly the slide stop notch (depending on when it was made) are heat treated. You should be fine. However, if you shoot it, the slide will probably crack behind the ejection port since they weren't heat treated there.

[wesprt]

While it would be high on the neat factor to use a GI slide but they were much softer and more prone to failing from use. I saw a GI slide in the shop someone brought in for us to look at after they dropped the hammer on the slide once without the FPS in place and the hammer strike left a DEEP indent in the metal and completely deformed the firing pin channel.. that's how soft they are. I've seen a bunch of cracked ones. In 1937 they started spot treating slides but guns made for the military never received the full HT that commercial models got starting in the mid 40's, at least on any kind of large scale.

[Lincoln7]

If it makes you feel better, the early style MEUSOCs used staked on front sights.

[CAVDOC]

lots of 1911 slides (GI issue since this is our subject) have lots of mileage on them without breakage. Hell, some of the 1911's still in service still have ww2 era slides on them and are still running. Back in the 1960's the only choice in guns to build up for competition were new colts or old gi's and back then due to low cost many old gi guns were used as base guns and shot thousands of rounds.
on the other hand, yes you could customize a slide and have it crack in a few hundred rounds or never. no way to know for sure, but the same could be said of modern parts too.
If I had a slide in possession and wanted to use it on a build I would do it. if I were building from scratch I'd probably go with a more modern part.