Last summer I got bit by the 1911 bug in a bad way. Unfortunately, gun money was hard to come by. Then on a local forum an RIA GI model came up for sale, unfired for $350. I was able to quickly sell a Mossberg 500 that I rarely shot and a couple of AR mags and then bring this home on the same day:
The previous owner had done a little polishing on the feed ramp and I bought an arched MSH from him but the gun was untouched aside from that. The next day I hit the range with a 100 box of WWB. The first 4 magazines from 21' gave me this:
I was in love...and a little pain. That 100 round box of ammo left me with a permanent mark on my hand from the GI safety digging in under recoil.
I had already planned on replacing the plain, smooth grips and now was in search for a beaver tail grip safety. I locked out big time and a friend from the same local forum had a stainless Kimber that he had decided to go full custom on, basically only reusing the frame and slide. He offered me a goody bag of parts for a way low price. I essentially got every part out of his frame and the barrel bushing for $50. I did the radiusing and install of the beaver tail myself. I got a set of ed brown cocobolo grips for it and since I had started using it in competition I got a Wilson stainless mag well to speed up mag changes.
The GI sights went in favor of a white dot front and I just had the slide milled and Novak front and rear sights installed. Since a good deal of work had been done I also had my smith do a good polish on the feed ramp and Duracoat the frame and slide matte black. I just got it back together and have not had a chance to shoot it again yet, but I can't wait.
I still haven't tried any HPs through it yet, mostly because its expensive enough to shoot FMJ, but it hasn't had a single issue of any kind so far. Mostly put WWB and Remington through it. Probably getting close to 1000 rounds by now.
All and all I've got probably about $600 total into the pistol as it sits now.
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