One of the biggest perks of sharing a corner of the shop with Ted is watching his mind work and seeing the way he overcomes the hurdles of a build, or addresses cosmetic issues with guns, or just shows me a new way to fix my mistakes...
And this gun was a particularly good example of just one of the reasons why I look forward to everyday looking over Ted’s shoulder and picking up all the bits and pieces of knowledge that I can.
The gun started off as a fairly simple (in as much as one of Ted’s Signature Grade pieces can) lightweight build, but what gave this gun a wrinkle was the caliber requested by the owner... 9mm. Now 9mm is a well-vested caliber and one that is fairly easy to work with in many different pistol platforms but when applied to the 1911 it can introduce certain, shall we say, complications. But since this was a Signature Grade conversion based on our limited run of lightweight frames, with the customer being able to choose his options, Ted was locked in... so he figured why not make the gun different and better running at the same time by lightening the slide as much as possible.
What you see pictured here is something of a departure stylistically for Ted. The gun features all of the classic Yost Signature Grade standards like perfect 30lpi checkering, round butt conversion, gold line front sight, Kart barrel, flattened and serrated slide top in curved arrow pattern, nitre blued pins, bordered slide, etc. But, in an effort to make the slide as light as possible in order to “help†the gun’s 9mm chambering, Ted also threw in some slide modifications not often seen on one of his builds.
The slide was first treated to a bit of thinning by surface grinding .010†off each side of the slide. After that a heavy bevel was machined along the bottom of the slide followed up front with a set of Hi-Power cuts that are finished at the bottom with ball-cuts... very cool.
Additionally the slide was lightened internally just as the old LW Commanders from Colt used to be. And if all that wasn’t enough one more lightening cut was made behind the firing pin stop. All this dropped a cool
49 grams off the weight of the slide before the sight cuts were even made.
The result... this is a 9mm that truly feels like a .45ACP with half the recoil. Due to the lightening of the slide and the corresponding spring weight that could now be used the gun shoots flat and feels much smoother and better balanced during the firing cycle than the typical 9mm 1911. I usually don’t like those small bore, half caliber pistols but this was one I had a hard time seeing its way home. Enjoy the pics...
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