44 AMP said:
Realizing its a bit of thread drift, but I have to speak to this..
You SHOULD be able to, IF things are in GI spec, you can. Sadly, with so many different makers of parts and guns today, and no one ensuring they match the original specs, the reality is you can't count on drop if fit and function.
In my GI days, we weren't taught squat about fitting parts. You had a bin full of spares and you just replaced the parts. Once in a while, you would get a part that would not drop in and function, when that happened, you tossed the part and put in another one.
You could take a dozen pistols completely apart, pile all the parts together, stir them around, and then build a dozen completely functional pistols out of them, NO FITTING.
Now I admit you will be hard pressed to do that with a dozen commercially produced 1911A1s from different makers today. You OUGHT to be able to, but you can't, because todays makers have "improved" things...
Sir,
While I realize this was the case, there were things done by the military to ensure parts fit. For example, if I recall correctly (and I may not) the original blueprints specified a barrel link whose only function was to drop the barrel's lugs from battery.
Also, again if I recall correctly (it's been a couple years), the 1911 in the WWI era rode the link into battery and stood on the lugs, whereas by the 1911a1 they had the pin standing the link in some cases.
You'll have to double check me on this. I don't have a heck of a lot of time to go back and refresh my own memory right now.
Still, there were things done between the 1911 and 1911a1 to maximize "swappiness" of parts.
I recall 1911 Tuner (where has he been, anyway???) saying once that he learned to work on the things by necessity -- making them run in Vietnam when they happened into the hands of regular troops.
The bins you speak of are reminiscent of the way the Mosins were refurbished, and the results we see now.
They were taken apart, good parts went in one bin, bad parts were scrapped, and complete rifles were assembled using the mixed lots.
Some new parts were obviously included: Ejectors seem to be one part that were new. Sears were perhaps another, as there seems have been trigger fitting protocol so that the triggers didn't flop about.
I do know that these parts were fitted well by the Finns, though, to the point that almost everything was hand-fitted to a greater or lesser degree.
I guess maybe we shouldn't talk about the Finnish and Russian versions in the same post, but we kinda' find ourselves there, don't we?
The Finns showed what the Mosin could and should be. The refurbished Russian Mosins are only the starting points; they do need to be fitted.
Something strikes me here: Generally you can toss a bolt from another Mosin into pretty much any existing one and it will headspace correctly. The same cannot generally be said of Lee-Enfields due to their rear lugs, nor of Mausers due to their non-rimmed cases which headspace on the shoulders.
Regards,
Josh