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My Bulged Barrel: The bulge is easily felt about an inch past the muzzle. Notice the inside distortion.
Choosing a barrel for this kind of project can be as difficult or easy as you want it to be. Please save yourself endless aggrevation and poor results by only considering a high-quality part. Cheap barrels fit poorly and shoot even worse! Only a high-quality barrel is worth the time and expense it takes to fit it to a 1911. My shooting ability cannot tell the difference between barrels rifled by button, broach, hammer-forged, or electro-chemical machining. Due to their quality and favorable price, I quickly settled on a standard, Kart 5” barrel for this project.
Kart’s barrel is a forged 4150 steel part made to national match standards. The one I used differs from the EZ-fit part the company offers and comes oversized in the hood, upper lug, and lower lug areas. It takes a lot more work to properly fit this type of barrel to the frame and slide. The bore came mirror smooth but I did not appreciate the sandblasted finish on the outside surfaces. In any event, Kart makes an excellent barrel that fits my project needs very well. .
I combined the Kart barrel with a stainless EGW bushing and a Ed Brown Hardcore slide-stop. The EGW bushing has a thicker design than a standard military point. The Ed Brown slide stop is a durable part and matches closely to the .195” (larger) barrel lug cutter from Brownells.
I’ll tackle the fitting this weekend and outline the steps for anyone that wants to attempt the job!
Over twenty years ago, I found a good deal on a new Springfield Armory 1911 in .45 ACP. It is one of their mil-spec models with a parkerized finish. Out of the box, it had reasonable accuracy due to a reasonably tight frame to slide fit. I actually cherry-picked this pistol among a dozen or so pistols the gunshow vendor had on his table. On the third time it was fired, my younger brother managed to bulge the barrel with a bad reload. I can only guess that a squib lodged one bullet in the barrel before he followed up with a second shot. it took me quite a while to beat on both the pistol and my brother to figure out what happened. The stock barrel was ruined but every other part of the damaged pistol showed no damage and minimal wear.
This pile of parts formed the basis of my newest 1911 project. A simple barrel replacement has grown into a full-fledged custom job. After all, there is a vast array of tools and high-quality parts that can improve the stock Springfield. It's hard not to get carried away! Of course, this availabilty is a little misleading for an inexperienced gunsmith. The 1911 design is difficult to fit and reliably accurize. It takes an extraordinary amount of patience, tooling, parts, and technical know-how to be successful. Still, this fact should not dissuade anyone from gaining the knowledge it takes to build or simply add custom touches to a 1911. A ruined part or two may be the price paid for gaining experience.
I just embarked on a new blog dedicated to the shooting sports, the outdoors, and just about anything else I may be working on. I'll do my best to fit in a little writing every day about the things I enjoy most. There will be considerable writing about reloading, bullet casting, general gunsmithing, and custom arms. I have a wide variety of interests and I just may throw in articles on general woodworking and furniture/cabinet building.
