Remington Rand Questions

[cmr314]

Hello, this is my first posting, and hopefully I can get some answers from the experts. I just inherited a Remington Rand 1911A1 from my father, and need to piece together its history. Dad knew the whole background of this pistol, and had it written down somewhere, except I can't find it in any of his stuff.

This 1911A1 has serial number 9810xx, has the proper "FJA" stamping, a very light ordnance crossed cannon stamping, "P" stamping next to the magazine eject button, and has the usual "United States Property" and "M 1911 A1 U.S. Army" stamps. The barrel is stamped "HS", it has the proper style slide stop, safety, MSH, hammer on it. However, it has a Colt slide on it, rather than a Remington Rand slide. The phosphate finish is near 100% on this, and the action is extremely tight fitting.

Dad had told me this was an early Remington Rand pistol (he purchased from NRA in the early 1960's). When he received it, the pistol did not appear to have been fired. When he researched it, he was told this was an early production pistol, using out of house supplied parts, and also that this was a known run of duplicate serial numbers. Dad was always pretty thorough when he researched guns, and I only wish I could find the original writeup he did on this one.

Hopefully somebody can chime in, and verify this history for me, so I can record it for my future reference.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Duane Hansen]

Many of the pistols purchased through the old DCM program were arsenal rebuilds. It looks like your pistol falls into this catagory with the typical changed parts and refinish. It was luck of the draw during that time, you could get a new in the box pistol or a totally mismatched rebuild.

Some of the very first Type I RemRands has some Colt small parts on them to get production going but your pistol is a Type II and in a much later serial number range to have any Colt parts on it. They never did use any Colt slides on RR pistols even in the earlier pistols

[cmr314]

OK, assuming that it was an arsonal rebuild, what type of markings would I find on the pistol to indicate it was a rebuild (what types of marks, and locations where these marks would be found on the pistol)? The absolute last thing I want to do is mess up any collector value to this pistol. And yes, I'm still looking for dad's original research/writeup on this pistol (I'll find it in one of his gun books eventually).

[oldcanuck]

Not all Arsenal rebuilds or Maintenance Depot rebuilds were marked. The ones that were marked are typically seen on the LH side of the frame in front of the slide stop, or the RH side below the serial number. Arsenal initials can be found in most of the good reference books, but the most common are AA, RIA and SA, from Augusta, Rock Island, and Springfield.

[Neal Myers]

I'm not yet ready to concede that it's been refinished; your photos are not really good enough to tell.

If you have a 10x magnifier (like a jewelers loupe), look for burnishing within the inspectors initials. These were struck after finishing, &, if the finish is original, you should see some bare metal where the die scraped the parkerizing off of the metal. Also, the grip screw bushings were staked after finishing, & they will be bright metal if the finish is original (look inside the mag well).

[cmr314]

I'll try to take some better pictures tomorrow evening of the markings. I see no markings on either the LH/RH sides of the frame where you mentioned. When I examined the inspectors initials (using the magnifier from my swiss army knife), can see some of the burnishing you mentioned in the "J" and "A", a slight bit in the "F". As for the grip screw bushings, there appear to be some shiny spots on some of the stake marks (hard to get a good light in there).

Also, there are no scars on the pistol (slide or frame), that I see on 1911's that have seen use. All slide surfaces are straight, and all edges sharp, on both frame and slide.

Thanks for all the help so far, I really do appreciate it.

[Arisaka99]

Weren't all RemRands in this SN range Dulite? The frame looks parked which would make it a refinish yes?

[cmr314]

Here's some better pictures of the pistol.(the royal court photographer I'm not)

[oldcanuck]

Now that we've seen some better pictures, I don't think it is an Arsenal rebuild. I think it's just an assemblance of WWII parts from various A1s. If a Colt slide, and a RRand frame were mated together at an Arsenal, the finish would match as they would have been refinished together.

[uzz75]

Here's some better pictures of the pistol.(the royal court photographer I'm not)

I have the same opposite,
Remington Rand slide with colt (GHD) frame.
Same finish.