After All this Time, I Found It!

My father (a long time bullseye pistol shooter) recently moved from his house to an apartment in a retirement center. Today my buddy and I were cleaning out more stuff from his basement near the old reloading/ gun cleaning bench. I ran across something that had been missing for probably over 20 years. I slipped it in my pocket. After we had sorted and hauled out quite a bit of stuff from the old house, I went over to do some things for my father at his new apartment. While hanging some pictures, I remembered that I had the item in my pocket. I pulled it out and showed it to my father. "Look what I found!", I said. His eyes lit up and he asked, "Where did you find it?" I told him and he said, "I remember seeing it go flying, out of the corner of my eye!" He never really ever forgot about it. Finding that 1911 recoil spring plug made my father's day.

It sure does a heart good, doesn't it?  Enjoy your dad while you can, little things like this are awesome.

-ron

Nice!!!  Its the little things in life!!!

Better than Peter Pan's aged friend finally finding his lost marbles!

Hardest lesson I've learned might be WHEN to stop searching the floor for a lost bit of whatever. I'm capable of devoting insane amounts of time to such searches. 

Congratulations, and thank you for helping your Dad. People doing that honors them and makes the world a better place.

Now, how not to lose it again! I had a similar 'malfunction' while disassembling my Kimber quite a few years ago. I searched for the recoil spring plug for a week or so and finally called the factory for a replacement (they did not sound too surprised). I was very careful from then on not to do that again. Probably a decade later I moved something and there was the missing plug which was promptly placed on my 'gun bench' as a reminder. The reminder was not as it turned out very effective as last year I 'did it again'. Haven't found the errant plug but I did know just where to get the replacement!


Bruce

Um, doesn't anyone use that little tab inside the recoil plug that sorta hangs onto the spring?

Not 100%, but tweaking one so the spring "screwed" a little bit into it saved my bacon twice with this problem over the past 20 years...

GrumpyOldMan wrote:Um, doesn't anyone use that little tab inside the recoil plug that sorta hangs onto the spring?

Most of the "non-Colt" 1911s that I've owned over the past 20 years do not have that little tab punched on their recoil spring plugs. I've had to resort to ordering the EGW plugs that do come with the little tab on them.

When I did it I easily found it.  It was mixed in with the glass shards from the ceiling light I hit

Every one who owns a 1911 has a plug or 4 somewhere in their basement.

rich.tullo wrote:Every one who owns a 1911 has a plug or 4 somewhere in their basement.

And out of my subconscious comes ANOTHER reason to be looking for a house without a basement...