Polishing feed-ramps. Yay- or-Nay?

[RangeRat83]

Thinking about polishing the feed ramps on some of my handguns, but heard dissenting opinions regarding the practice. Some say that creating a super-smooth surface will enhance reliability/shootability; while others say it will reduce my gun to an nonfunctioning dumpster fire. If anybody has experience with this please let me know.

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[edslhead]

Ive done a few and it made no difference that I could tell.

 

[BPOR11]

Thinking about polishing the feed ramps on some of my handguns, but heard dissenting opinions regarding the practice. Some say that creating a super-smooth surface will enhance reliability/shootability; while others say it will reduce my gun to an nonfunctioning dumpster fire. If anybody has experience with this please let me know.

Polishing is good, removing material and changing the geometry is not good.

 

[GOG]

If rounds are hanging up when feeding, then a polish might be helpful otherwise it's not really necessary.
But as long as it's just a polish it certainly won't hurt anything.

 

[BPOR11]

If rounds are hanging up when feeding, then a polish might be helpful otherwise it's not really necessary.
But as long as it's just a polish it certainly won't hurt anything.

Exactly

 

[OldTengu]

Take the dremmel and some polish to the feed ramp, until it's mirror shiny. Had the same issue with an ATI Commander, fed round nose no issues, hollow points it would sometimes hang up on. A felt tip polisher and some Mother's Mag polish and it now feeds Federal HST's reliably...

Good advice from @nammac

 

[P7M13]

As long as you ONLY polish.

 

[edzz]

Some guns yes, some guns no.
This is the type of question that is some what hard to answer without knowing your mechanical competency. I've seen a lot of guns screwed up by well meaning modifications that can really harm performance and resale value.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

I always polish feed ramps regardless of out of the box functionality for 2 reasons:

1. Cheap insurance. Having a smooth polished surface reduces the likelihood of a round hanging up there and reduces the amount of force required to get the slide into battery.
2. It makes cleaning the feed ramp a whole lot easier.

I've polished dozens and never had it cause a problem.

 

[nwslopoke]

I had feeding issues on my Bersa BP9. There was a slight nick on the feed ramp. I sent it back. They polished it. While the imperfection is still visible, many hundreds of rounds later no issues.

 

[Jonnyuma]

I agree with all of the above and have absolutely nothing of value to add.

What am I even doing here?

 

[bbbass]

Same.

It really can't hurt anything as long as it is polishing only.

My wife's Taurus .380 pocket gun was hanging up loads. I polished, didn't help. I bent the mag lips out, helped a bit... seems to be the nature of the micros due to the steep feed ramp angle.

 

[Stomper]

Rule #1: If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Rule#2: Don't talk about rule #1.

 

[AMT]

If you are looking at smoothing out feeding "issues", and maybe even putting your mind at ease, yes POLISH ONLY. No abrasives. (as mentioned before)

If you want to take it one step further, you could also polish the breach face too. When the slide is pushing on the back of the shell, it will allow a smoother surface to ride on.

YMMV.

 

[Ura-Ki]

Agreed with above, if it ain't broke..................
Have had several 1911s with feed ramps ( Non Colt) that were less then smooth and while not really needing to polish the ramp, they did need to be tuned to feed HP, so while I was doing that, I hit the ramps and slicked them up! My M-92F and my Jericho 941 got polished, just because I felt like it, and it didn't change ether one for better or worse, but I do notice that any that have been polished tend to show less fowling on the ramp then ones left rough!

 

[bbbass]

Rule #1: If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Rule#2: Don't talk about rule #1.

What's Rule #9?

 

[TTSX]

8-6-7-5-3-0......... Nevermind

 

[bbbass]

What's Rule #9?

Need a hint?

 

[v0lcom13sn0w]

if not removing material and ONLY polishing then "yay"

 

[ma96782]

The rules apply.....

Done correctly = good

Done incorrectly = bad

Some, might/will take kindly to it. While sometimes, the gun itself maybe/is just a cluster#@^k to begin with. But then maybe, it could improve it a bit or not. Sooooo confusing?

It's your firearm, son. LOL. BTW, my son loves to do "modifications" to his Glocks.


Aloha, Mark