Ruger SR1911 Light Weight Commander at the range.

[AngryRooster]

I was finally able to the the gun to the range this past weekend. It was much better but I still got the occasional brass to the face. Not many, I think I got 2 or 3 but those may have been my fault. I was there with SWMBO and a friend. We put around 500 rounds through it. A combination of factory (WWB) and some cast reloads. The reloads were 200 grain HP from a MP mold and 230 grain HP from a NOE mold. Both were loaded over 5 grains of Bullseye. Accuracy was better than last time. The 230 NOE rounds were scary accurate.

I was starting to get tired after about 300 rounds myself when I got the few pieces of brass to the face. I was told that I was letting my wrist break a little with the recoil and the gun was twisting throwing it back at me. That's probably what the problem was this time. I did notice brass being ejected in random places when someone else shot though. Sometimes it went to the right, a few times it went almost forward and a couple times it came mostly back toward the shooter but off to the right enough that it didn't hit them. This was noticed mostly with my reloads but we only had a few factory rounds left at that point so we couldn't really compare.

I did get some minor leading in the barrel. I'm disappointed in that since I powder coated the bullets. I'll have to give them a double coat next time and work on my alloy. I wanted some soft HPs and used stick on wheel weights with some tin added. I think they were a little soft since the leading was in the first inch of the barrel then stopped.

Still going to keep the gun and after a couple hundred more rounds and a few boxes of HST then it will most likely become my EDC gun. It's much nicer in the holster than the M&P Pro.

 

[Drail]

It's not fixed yet. Tuning the extractor is only half of the problem (though it is important). The extractor and the ejector must both be tuned to work together to control the angle of the ejected cases. If the extractor hook pulls the cases back into the ejector and the case strikes the ejector either too high or too low - the cases will not go straight out of the port and can be hit by the port wall when the slide comes back which can cause the cases to come back or be thrown forward. A very small adjustment with a file to the face of the ejector makes a fairly large difference. The original 1911 design was setup to throw the cases almost straight up. That is why the early guns all had very high cut ports. The port wall can be modified (lowered) to allow clearance for the empties to go out the side. The early 1911 custom smiths figured this stuff out when guys first started mounting scopes on their guns and the empties had to be thrown out the side so they cleared the scope that everyone suddenly started mounting on their race guns. An empty hitting the scope would commonly bounce back into the port and jam the gun. The 1911 ejection system does not lend itself to high speed mass production techniques very well and there is not a lot of room for variations and tolerance stacking. But in today's world that is how guns have to be built to make a profit. Especially if you are trying to sell them for a low price like Ruger is. Kimber learned this years ago and now Ruger is learning it. At least Ruger will stand behind their product and fix the problem unlike Kimber who just tells their customers to just keep shooting it until "breaks in". I have worked on 1911s since the 80s and I never heard of "breaking in" a 1911 until Kimber started telling people that in order to keep their heads above the mountain of defective guns that were being returned. A 1911 is either in spec and functions straight out of the box - or it doesn't. Shooting it more isn't going to solve the problem.

 

[looney2ns]

Stop using WWB if you don't want issue's.

 

[AngryRooster]

Stop using WWB if you don't want issue's.