Not to get into the middle of a micturating match, but my grandpappy was the one who taught me the nomenclature of the 1911 back in the 50s, as a freshly retired Brigadier General who had worked his way up from buck Private in his 40 years or so. I cannot remember the FM number I was provided with back then, but I do know that it called the device in question a "slide stop" and I can almost quote verbatim the portion that read "Reloading from an open slide . . . push down on slide stop . . ."b322da wrote:If I might elaborate a bit further, my DI was a veteran of more than five years of combat, and he used the M1911 for what it was intended. He went a bit further than we see in FM 23-35. It was his position that racking the slide is "more gentle" on the pistol, and the slam (as in Slamfire) you get by releasing with the slide stop was discouraged when other than in combat, where the objective was to get a round in the breech in as short a period of time as possible, but, to do it unnecessarily, always, causes unnecessary stress on parts of the weapon. You may disagree if you wish. No problem. I will observe, for what it is worth, perhaps nothing, that those are the same insturctionsI received from the armorer of the AMU -- the guy who had to rebuild these weapons.
Maybe we have a generation gap here, and my long use of the real M1911 colors my position. I will admit that.
In closing, if this is your forum or you are a moderator I will accept your incontinent and grossly rude discipline. But until then I will not. In my opinion safety is never off-topic.
Elmo
Your DI may have formed an opinion about a better way to do it, but that wasn't what the book that I learned from said, and the same goes for the armorer. When I went through Navy Gunner's Mate 'A' School we ran into a lot of fleet GMs who taught their opinion rather than the book, which is not necessarily the right way to do it. As ship's armorer I never saw any particular reason to favor "slingshotting" to reload over pressing the slide stop, and considering that the slide will actually move a little bit farther when slingshotting than using the slide stop, it's the slingshot method that seems to me likely to place more stress on a gun that should easily handle either, having been designed to take the stress of returning to battery from recoil. I fail to see how one method would be any more gentle than the other, as with either you are releasing the slide from far enough out of battery to pick up a round and chamber it, and that requires the amount of energy that the spring that is doing the job is designed to provide.
OTOH, one of the spare parts I stocked the most of in my armory, and according to BUWEPS inventory, was slide stops. Most, if not all 15 of my 1911s were WWII era and before, in the late 60s, some having had armory rebuilds, others just having lived in the fleet for that long, and the slide stop notch showed a little wear on a couple of them, but they still worked quite reliably.
The only slam fire I have ever experience personally was when my beloved but much abused and misused Remington Nylon 66 slam fired due to a buildup of crud that locked the firing pin forward, and it only fired one round and jammed.Excaliber wrote:failing to periodically clean firing pin debris from the firing pin channel, and other similar errors.
Ditto.