bbl constricted after peening 1911 frame

It's an extremely controlled slide tightening process using aluminum tightening blocks and an adjustable stop to prevent over-tightening. You work your way up the slide, tightening only the rear 3" or so. Tools are from Alpha Precision (proprietor Jim Stroh). Regarding peening, only the ends, about 1" at either end. You don't peen around the magazine well, too thin. I rely pretty heavily on Jerry Kuhnhausen's 1911 shop manual. The slide tightening tools come with detailed instructions. Oh yeah, I remember noticing another slide tightening tool option from Brownell's. Can't comment on it, no experience with it.
 
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Bob,

Your experience with the Ransom Rest echos mine. I've tried modifying them with shims and other fiddles, but in the end was always able to do better by hand. Moreover, since the gun is light enough to have its performance influenced by how it is gripped, I have the general sense that if you want to know how precisely a gun might shoot in the grasp of human hands, you want to test it in human hands.

The cracks you've seen are likely because you've done more guns than I have. The fact I haven't seen it doesn't mean that much, as I have only been able to follow the guns I own over time. The late Russ Carniak told me one time that he got a heavy hard chrome plate applied and precision ground it when parts wouldn't yield to conventional fitting or didn't appear to have much fitting life left in them. I've never done that, but it always seemed like it might be a preferable approach. I remember reading about the Acc-U-Rails, but also never tried them. The last time I was doing any custom work for a shop, Caspian had started offering a match frame and slide set that had 0.001" clearance out of the box, and using that set as a starting platform pretty much put an end to any expectation of gaining anything from fitting. Not even the purported 5%.
 
Unclenick, you may be right about hand testing instead of Ransom rest testing, however I could never shoot worth a darn off a rest or bags.

I believe it was Ed Brown that said the best way to mount a Ransom rest was to put a large casing pipe deep in the ground, fill it full of concrete and mount the Ransom rest to it, that sure should make the rest solid.

You mentioned Russ Carniak he was one heck of a good smith and from what I hear his daughter Marianne is filling her dads shoes pretty darn well.
I've never had a chance to meet her but everything I here about her is good.

jpsshack , I'm not trying to bust your chops I just want you to understand that tightening the slide to frame fit adds very little to the mechanical accuracy of a 1911.

I believe if you read all Jerry Kuhnhausen has to say about tightening the slide to frame fit he states that "unless combined with full mechanical accuracy modifications, this particular modification is not, by itself, productive of measurably increased accuracy."

You are happy with your results, that's good and there's nothing wrong with learning on your guns.

I wish you the best in your endeavors.
 
Bob,
I wasn't including you in among the naysayers I mentioned. I appreciate your input to the conversation and value the suggestions of my betters. I'm hoping I did no harm to the gun and maybe some good. I've done a lot of accurizing work to the pistol over and above the tightening-Kuhnhausen's graph gives frame-to-slide fit a bit more credit in terms of it's importance-The figure
Was 15% on the mechanical accuracy pie chart. I did see the sentence you mentioned, though taken in context he seems generally in favor of the
practice of improving frame-to-slide fit.
-jp
 
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