[CoolHand]

Originally Posted by rlile

Belle....huhh......I stomp through there on my way to Vichy...
got kin folk there.....
went to UMR.....
I know right where that turkey rests

You too huh?

Small world man. In 2006 I graduated from UMR (while it was still called UMR) with a bachelor's degree in Mining Engineering with an emphasis in Explosives Engineering. It was a great school then.

I started my business and learned to operate my machine tools while I was going to school. Needed some way to pay for things, and keep myself in cheeseburgers.

Originally Posted by Kerry Pinkerton

Beautiful work Ryan. I need to talk to you off line about your 1911 work. I'm building one this winter. It ain't metalshaping but it sure is difficult and you've clearly got a gift for gunsmithing. I'll send you a PM.

Regarding your Ford, what areas do you intend to work on?

Well, the plan is to get the chassis built (fabricated tube chassis, with a cage, eventually), hang the body to get the stance right, then chop the top and get that all roughed back together, then build the cage to fit the body, pull the body and finish weld the chassis and cage, then mount the body again, slick up the chop, and repair all the rust and "wear and tear" damage from years of abuse.

The fender arches and the leading edges on the front fenders and the trailing edge on the rear fenders are the worst. Lots of fatigue cracks, tears, and general damage to those four pieces. The rear pan is semi-crushed from a rear end collision, not too bad, but it bent the frame a bit and pushed a crease into the bottom of the rear pan on the passenger side. That one's going to be a bitch to get out without tearing something up, but I'm gonna try it.

When I get that all done, I want to look at pushing the front of the front fenders out and rolling the grille shell out at the bottom, to give it a very slight rearward rake when looking at it from the side.

The plan is to run it without the big bumpers (Front or Rear), so I've gotta get the leading and trailing edges into an eye pleasing shape. That one is going to be a seat of the pants kind of deal, that I can't really plan anything for until I've got the front sheetmetal back together and the car down on the ground at ride height. Have to play it by ear, I guess.

Originally Posted by mr.c

1911's, you bring a smile to my face. The only one that I have welded on was to make a long-slide bowling pin match piece. It's a shame that we don't have an applicable category here. Perhaps I will send you a pm as well. I wouldn't mind tightening the slide clearance on that piece.
By the way, excellent photography.

Thank you. PM's are quite welcome, but I don't want to derail the topic here with a lot of gunsmithing advice out on the public boards. I will render whatever assistance I can through PM though, absolutely.

The only thing I didn't have to weld on that Essex were the frame rails, because the .22LR conversion doesn't really use them, certainly not like a real 1911 slide does.

On that double stack commander, I had to weld the rails on both side to tighten the fit side to side. Up and down, the thing had plenty of meat to fit it tight to the slide, but the frame was a few thou too narrow to tighten up the fit side to side, so I laid a short bead fore and aft on both side rails and refit them to tighten that up. Worked like a champ.

Welding on high dollar parts like that is a little stressful, but sometimes you don't have a choice. When a guy is paying two or three grand for a pistol, he expects the gaps to be perfect, and rightly so. In a perfect world, the parts would all be oversize enough to accomplish this without involving the TIG machine, but as we all know, reality diverges from perfection a good bit of the time.