From War Horse to Wonderful.... Crane fit.
May 11, 2015 7:49:24 GMT -5
dougader, awp101, and 2 more like this
Post by 2 Dogs on May 11, 2015 7:49:24 GMT -5
This one started as an old wartime Colt 1917 45 acp I purchased on Gunbroker. To say it had seen better days would be an understatement. This old warrior had dings, dents, gouges, pits, scrapes, that made me wish it could talk. It has been sometime since I started doing some clean up on it. I recently revisited it after I got Ray to do some remedial welding on the line between the trigger guard and the the grip frame. There was a seriously deep gouge there, but it cleaned up. I have a little bit more work to do on the sideplate side. I had to send the sideplate to Harton to re-cut the Rampant Colt emblem. When it came back, Alan offered the advice, "just polish around the emblem...." Geez, Thanks Alan. That's like tip toeing thru the cactus garden barefoot!
This has been bar none the most difficult clean up project I have ever tried. I have certainly seen a few that needed some good work to get the lines right, but this guy was pretty far off plumb everywhere and then some. Plus, it has more curves and contours than a bowl of spaghetti. Again, the goal here has been to reclaim and reestablish the good flats and contours and to achieve what I call a honest high 220 grit finish. There was no surface that did not have to be carefully filed. Starting with stones would have been folly as the level of ugly on this example ran too deep. For the purposes of these photos, and to give you an idea of what we started with the flats of the grip frame were left raw. These too will be cleaned up prior to final finishing. These old 1917s have quite a few small delicate parts as well that required a good deal of time to polish. Total time in this one so far is about 30 to 40 hours of hand work. Figure that at average shop time of 55 bucks per hour....
I have yet to decide on its final configuration. I still need to address the stocks as well as the cylinder and crane. It beats watching TV tho!!
This has been bar none the most difficult clean up project I have ever tried. I have certainly seen a few that needed some good work to get the lines right, but this guy was pretty far off plumb everywhere and then some. Plus, it has more curves and contours than a bowl of spaghetti. Again, the goal here has been to reclaim and reestablish the good flats and contours and to achieve what I call a honest high 220 grit finish. There was no surface that did not have to be carefully filed. Starting with stones would have been folly as the level of ugly on this example ran too deep. For the purposes of these photos, and to give you an idea of what we started with the flats of the grip frame were left raw. These too will be cleaned up prior to final finishing. These old 1917s have quite a few small delicate parts as well that required a good deal of time to polish. Total time in this one so far is about 30 to 40 hours of hand work. Figure that at average shop time of 55 bucks per hour....
I have yet to decide on its final configuration. I still need to address the stocks as well as the cylinder and crane. It beats watching TV tho!!