Colt 1911 - Remington R1s

This was the second CO2 pistol I ever bought (if I'm being honest it was second only by a couple of minutes), my first one....well, you've probably already guessed, it was a Dan Wesson 715. Both came 2nd hand to me and in a deal that I just couldn't resist, the DW715 was as new but the Remington 1911 had seen some good use and showed the tell tale signs of a well 'favoured' gun. Initially I was going to sell it as I'm a revolver type of guy, so I had to try it out to make sure that it worked, that was (looking back now) a fatal mistake, as I instantly feel in love with the bloody thing, lol.
So after much thought and consideration, I stripped it down, one piece at a time. The first time to remove all traces of the paint and check the condition underneath, once I was happy with it I set about the polishing, again one piece at a time, all by hand, every step. Unfortunately there's no quick way and it really is a labour of love. There's is nothing better (in my opinion) than the human eye and the well trained hand, as long you are prepared to put in the hours and hours of work on it you'll be rewarded with something special, very special indeed.

As for materials, well a good selection of abrasive paper 120-240 for the first pass and 320-600/800 for the second pass. After the second pass well it's grinding powders to go from 600/800 to the final 1200 and a cotton mop on a pillar drill for the final polish with jewellers rouge.

Would I do it all again, well yes I would and I have ! Albeit not to the very final polishing stage but my other 1911 (which there's pictures up of) started off in a much worse condition and the poor thing had a broken hammer.

These are the sellers pictures...




And that turned out like this....



If you have a lot of love for the gun you'll go through the hardship, if not you'll never get round to finishing it.

I should really update my pictures for this gun as I've lowered the ejection port a bit further and changed the grips (again)....











You can't beat a bit of nice Bianchi leather.....

I would sincerely love a set of Remington grips on it but when I saw those Colt ones I was like,"Dear Lord, they're stunning", so I just had to buy them. Once I do find a Remington set (one with the big 'R' on them) I'll swap them over but until then they're staying on the gun.

Thinking about it, I might just have a go at making a set of them myself actually now that I've got the chequering tools, how hard can it be ?

A steel wire wheel and a pillar drill buddy