The Family is Back Together!

[Forrest Castile]

Family is back together

A little story about neurosis and gun trading and 1911's

I have this little Springfield compact 1911 in .45. Specifically a Springfield Range Officer Compact. Mostly. Partly.





Actually, all that's left of the original pistol is the Frame, Slide, and Barrel. Most of the Fram, Most of the slide, and I suppose all of the barrel. The Frame and Slide have been carved and chewed to my liking making the carry and the shooting more comfortable by rounding edges and curving the mainspring housing.

This little .45 goes with me almost everywhere. It has a 4# trigger pull and very little recoil thanks to a heavy mainspring, a square bottom firing pin stop, and a flat wound recoil spring.

Notice the Carry Style grip safety from Wilson and carry size hammer from Harrison Designs. Small and comfy!

The front strap has been hand checkered by me to 25lpi and is easy to shoot and easy to get back on target.

This gun has failed exactly once in around 15,000 rds. The failure was due to a broke hook on the extractor thanks to the Wilson 47D magazines with worn springs allowing the last round to inertia feed over and over. The new extractor is fine, thanks, and I still like the Wilson mags and change the springs around once a year.

I carry the pistol mostly and a Brommeland Def Con leather OWB holster, and sometimes in a Brommeland Max Con V IWB rig. Always with an offside reload. My preferred ammo is just about anything in a 185gr bonded hollow point, but I'm not too picky. 230gr works just fine too, and as noted, the gun just doesn't fail. It will feed and run anything I've tried, and feeds empty cases without trouble as if that matters for anything.

Anyways, this story grows from here:

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[Forrest Castile]

A few years ago, when everyone was raving about the obvious benefits of the venerable 9mm as a carry caliber due to whatever the feds think matters, I was convinced that I, too, should be carrying a much more practical caliber.

After some consideration and much obsessing about my next carry piece, I decided I needed an STI Guardian, which at the time was only available in a double stack configuration. I studied and worried and Knew this was the pistol for me. Also, knowing I'm cheap, I knew I wouldn't buy one.

The answer was obvious. Build one!

Loving my Range Officer Compact in .45, I figured why not start there, but in a 9mm version.

I watched and waited and ultimately bought a brand new one off Gunbroker for about $800, and started to plan.

After some research, I located company out of California at the time called Limited-10, who made STI copy frames in steel and aluminum. They didn't have an aluminum one available without a rail, so why not, I guess it needed an accessory rail.

Christmas was coming, so I begged my family for gun parts including a tan colored STI grip, trigger, sear, and whatnot, magazines, and whatever else I thought I might need, and I went to work.

The parts went together well, and I learned a lot about 2011 frames and parts, and enjoyed the process thoroughly. The two biggest challenges included cutting the frame down to the proper length at the rail end, around 2" using a wood blade on a miter saw in my shop, along with fitting the frame to my Springfield slide. I use a True Radius on my seers and like Wilson Combat slide stops and thumb safeties.

The mainspring, firing pin stop, and recoil spring are set up almost the same as the .45 version, but with a 22# recoil spring instead of the 24# one in the heavier caliber piece.

After some careful fitting and also some not so careful fitting, along with some fear and sweat, I ended up with a much too tight slide to frame fit.

Not having real gunsmithing supplies, I found some polishing rouge and some gun oil on the shelf, mixed them together, and applied the sludge to the frame rails.

Then, I used a dead blow hammer and not so gently persuaded the slide to join the aluminum frame. A few minutes working the parts together, and I felt somewhat confident moving forward with cleaning and lubricating the two halves, and they slid nicely together without any play.

I then cleaned and oiled everything and put together my fancy new Springfield Range Officer Compact 9mm 2011!

I ran a series of safety checks, was satisfied, and as soon as I could, I took it to the range for some careful testing, and the thing is truly amazing.

17+1 rounds of 9mm with an offside magazine equals 35 rounds in a compact, lightweight, flat shooting, very accurate defensive piece.




This pistol, like the .45 version, has been amazingly reliable after many thousands of rounds. I've carried many, many different platforms, and the 1911/2011 platform has proven to me to be the most accurate I shoot, and the most reliable I've ever owned.

Now I'm not sure about the reader of this story, but I get little weird about guns sometimes, and I also obsess sometimes about the next gun.

 

[Forrest Castile]

I had my eye on a new offering from Smith & Wesson, the M&P Compact 2.0 in .40 S&W. This distraction from my real guns caught me up, and I hope to someday find forgiveness and sanity, but in the meantime, I had to build up this new find, and through this forum found someone with a Flat Face Forward Set Sear for my new little .40, and ended up trading the single stack frame from my Range Officer Compact, 9mm, for the trigger upgrade kit, a nice holster, and I don't remember what else.



I figured, why would I need the old frame when the new one held just over double the capacity?

Like many gun/parts trades, I felt the regret almost immediately, and after some months, reached out to the guy I traded the frame to with no response.

For whatever reason, the single stack frame became an object of my desire, thinking it would hold 9+1 in the gun, and 10 ads in the offside mag with the right magazine, this would have been a nice slim package in 9mm with a few more rounds than my .45, and a faster shooting piece for the odd occasion that I didn't want to carry Gods given caliber.

I wanted that frame back!

 

[Forrest Castile]

I tried the 9mm slide on the .45 frame with some success, and even went as far as buying a couple of .45 magazines which run great with the .45 slide on the 2011 frame, but I couldn't ever get the 9mm slide to work on the .45 frame with any better than around 99.5% reliability which for my piece of mind isn't good enough. I thought about installing a longer ejector to get it functioning right, but the extractor in the .45 frame is held in place by a broken off 1/6" drill bit, and I'm not sure if I can get the extractor off without ruining the frame, plus, the thing runs so well, and I love it, and don't want to screw it up, since it's the gun that goes everywhere with me..

I looked at 80% frames thinking maybe I would make a new frame for it, but couldn't figure out how I'd cut the rails into the 80% frame without investing in the tooling, and as stated, I'm cheap. I fantasized about using the table saw for frame rail cuts, knowing it was a crazy idea, but not only am I cheap, but I'm arrogant… still tho, wasn't sure…

Then, randomly, I was reading a post here about something or other, and a guy posted that he had a Fram off of a Springfield Range Office Compact he was thinking about trading off for some ammo or something. My pulse quickened. Could it be?

I reached out, and it was. I had found the original frame for this now thickened pistol.

He agreed to sell it to me and we set up a meet.

Now I'm sure you can tell by now, I'm not only capable, but I'm kind of an idiot too.

The mission to reacquire the frame had its own perils including arriving proudly on time to complete the transfer at the wrong gun shop. Racing to the correct gun shop but missing the exit, driving 20 minutes the long was to get to the meeting 40 minutes late with only a couple of drops of gas in my truck, all the while my dear wife sitting at home struggling to be supportive of my antics while cooking pancakes for our two kids and a couple more who had slept over. I lost like 2 years off the end of my life trying to give this chunky 2011 the option of slimming back down from time to time.

BLANK was the fine gentleman who agreed to sell me the frame back, and he was truly a gentleman, and waited patiently while I drove madly around the Willamette Valley, trying to get to our meet up.

The little family is now complete again, and I can happily carry this little setup with either 9+1 in a slim easy to carry package, or in a thicker package with a massive payload, depending on the mood or the mission.

The 9mm Frame has on it a Wilson Combat 1 piece curved magwell. It needs refinished, but fits very nicely. The slide stop is unknown out of the parts bin, and the thumb safety is original, and not my favorite.

Thrown into the mix just for fun is the distant cousin, the CZ Compact converted to SAO with relief under the trigger guard, shaping at the beavertail for a more upswept orientation, and frame redone in Sniper Gray.