RIA CUSTOM WADGUN

Tried to do this as reply and couldn't.

Anyway in answer regarding RIA as build base.    
I have built/ had built 2 full custom wad guns from RIA / Armscor frames and slides.  My builder likes them to work from. The one my son campaigns shot a 99-5x slow at
the 2014 DMW.  It and he shot a 100-4x "POSSIBLE" at the 2015 DMW.  I have also built 3 dedicated lowers for conversions from RIA frames.  In addition I own 4 stock
RIAs that are great pistols.  You could say I am a fan.

beautiful pistol.

I see Acu-Rails...

Jerry Keefer wrote:I see Acu-Rails...

Keen eye there Jerry.   My son's Armscor wad gun does not have rails.  I sent this one and a SA  mil-spec to Doug at the same time. Got a deal on shipping etc.
Man is he great.  Its like lubed glass on glass.

I have a Citadel .45 which is part of Rock Island,
done by a smith that worked for bob chow. 
$500 +- for the gun
$300 for burris fast fire 3 with install.
$700 for accuracy job and bluing.
$1500.00 and it shoots just as good or equal to my les baer.
Just my 2 cents.

What kind of scope rings?

rich.tullo wrote:What kind of scope rings?

those are weavers, same as I use on all my guns, cost about 25 bucks and they never loosen up.

It's great to see that these pistols are up to our task. I'd heard cautionary tales about them staying tight. Hopefully, they keep shooting possibles at the long line.

I'm of the opinion that any good BE pistolsmith can build a competitive 1.5" @ 50 yard pistol out of any 1911 frame and slide. The difference is starting tolerances. A well made frame/slide will be easier or less time consuming to build. The ones that are out of spec require more time to accomodate for the errors. I personally don't care to work on the low end 1911's because it doesn't pay/profit me enough for the extra time involved. But to be truthful, the absolute worst pistol I ever built was a late series 70 Colt. The frame was 0.015" off to one side where the barrel bottom lugs slide into frame. The slide lugs were off center 0.015" the opposite direction. What a royal pain in the ass to accomodate for. I would've preferred not to build it, but it was a close friends pistol. It turned out excellent and even earned 'leg' points, but it was a loser from a gunsmithing profit perspective. This year alone I've seen 3 new Philippine pistols break with less than 100 rounds through them. If all the internals are replaced they're not to bad. But to each their own. I doubt we'll ever see a HM show up to the line with one.
Jon

Jon makes an excellent point.  I used a Citadel (Phillipine) platform when I built my 12" twist 9mm described elsewhere on this forum earlier this year.  I chose that platform because it was inexpensive, and the gun was an experiment.  I did all of the work myself, so the $ outlay was low.  I did replace most of the fire control parts as part of the build, and the experiment turned out well.  It remains to be seen how long the gun will hold it's 1.5 inch accuracy as the round count builds up.  But if I were sending a gun off to Jon or someone else to build out, I would have chosen a different platform because of the $ involved in the gunsmithing.