In the last post, we saw how Browning's magazine was designed to contribute toward controlled feed. The magazine releases the round gradually and holds onto it until the extractor has picked it up. It was simple and it worked, even with a 90 degree breechface.
But, Mose was all too aware of the negative side of mass production. When an entity is cranking out 2,000 magazzines an hour, there are bound to be a few that don't quite do everything they should. If a round was released too early and/or too abruptly, there was a good chance that it would lose contact with the breechface. When that happens, the slide winds up chasing the round...bumping it...and bumping can easily result in it getting ahead of the extractor and that means that the possibility of a misfeed or failure to go to battery.
At the very least, it would force the extractor claw to climb the rim...which although Browning foresaw and designed his extractor to tolerate it occasionally...was still hard on the extractor and leads to premature failure.
Enter the angled breechface.
Should a magazine fail to adequately hold onto the cartridge long enough for the extractor to pick it up...or release it too abruptly... the angle worked to not only slow the cartridge's upward movement, but more importantly...to force it to remain in contact with the slide and thus under control.
So, there was no magic...no secret, vital function of that angle. It was simply another one of Browning's redundancies. A Plan B...a backup to the magazine. A "just in case" measure. A move to eliminate or greatly reduce the possiblity of a failure to function.
Which brings us to modern production. It's been a while since I've seen that angle on a 1911 slide. Even Colt let it fall by the wayside. It's faster, cheaper, and easier to machine a square than a taper, after all. The early Springfields adhered to it, but no more. I feel that all of this...along with the move to parallel-lipped magazines with early, abrupt release points...figures heavily into many of the malfunctions that we hear so much about, along with extractors that lose tension quickly or fail outright.
I also doubt that the manufacturers of other designs that operate with the Colt-Browning tilting barrel locking system use it, either...or even know about it.
All this is why I so often repeat the mantra:
The 1911 pistol was designed to function. If it's correctly built to spec, and fed decent ammunition from a proper magazine, it WILL function. It doesn't have a choice. It's a machine.
But, Mose was all too aware of the negative side of mass production. When an entity is cranking out 2,000 magazzines an hour, there are bound to be a few that don't quite do everything they should. If a round was released too early and/or too abruptly, there was a good chance that it would lose contact with the breechface. When that happens, the slide winds up chasing the round...bumping it...and bumping can easily result in it getting ahead of the extractor and that means that the possibility of a misfeed or failure to go to battery.
At the very least, it would force the extractor claw to climb the rim...which although Browning foresaw and designed his extractor to tolerate it occasionally...was still hard on the extractor and leads to premature failure.
Enter the angled breechface.
Should a magazine fail to adequately hold onto the cartridge long enough for the extractor to pick it up...or release it too abruptly... the angle worked to not only slow the cartridge's upward movement, but more importantly...to force it to remain in contact with the slide and thus under control.
So, there was no magic...no secret, vital function of that angle. It was simply another one of Browning's redundancies. A Plan B...a backup to the magazine. A "just in case" measure. A move to eliminate or greatly reduce the possiblity of a failure to function.
Which brings us to modern production. It's been a while since I've seen that angle on a 1911 slide. Even Colt let it fall by the wayside. It's faster, cheaper, and easier to machine a square than a taper, after all. The early Springfields adhered to it, but no more. I feel that all of this...along with the move to parallel-lipped magazines with early, abrupt release points...figures heavily into many of the malfunctions that we hear so much about, along with extractors that lose tension quickly or fail outright.
I also doubt that the manufacturers of other designs that operate with the Colt-Browning tilting barrel locking system use it, either...or even know about it.
All this is why I so often repeat the mantra:
The 1911 pistol was designed to function. If it's correctly built to spec, and fed decent ammunition from a proper magazine, it WILL function. It doesn't have a choice. It's a machine.
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