Springfield Armory 1911 (1914)

[invaliduser]

What do you guys think? Original parts? What would you say it's condition is? I think it's excellent but you may have other opinions and I'd like to hear them.
I looked for all the markings I could find with a quick field strip.

I couldn't get a good picture of the bore. It's not bright and shiny anymore but it's still got good rifling.
The grips are wood panels
Also at the mag's base plate there is an L on the top side of the lip facing forward

Thanks!

Information

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[Bob K]

Wow, that's nice!

[WarPig1976]

Yes.! Very nice. Very crisp stamps, maybe too nice.? Somebody in the know will be along...

[invaliduser]

Well after some poking around I don't have the rare Springfield mag with the folded bottom and have a Littleton mag.

Yes the stamping looks great, a little light in some spots and the eagle but it's there and makes itself known. I liked how it looked and ended up buying it.
I don't know how to rate finishes but if I were going by imperfections and wear I'd say this is 85%

[Promo]

I believe it's reblued, the Eagle on my SA M1911s are much stronger. Otherwise of course very nice.

[browningautorifle]

I don't know...I've done a bunch of them and if that's been re-blued then it was done by hand and polished with paper and file. No one does that. The stampings are sharp and clean and the machine lines all run correctly...yes, the stampings are a bit light in spots but that happens with dies. If polished everything would look streaked. I'd love to have it in hand so I can get my head over it. One thing is the complete lack of wear on parts. That's a long time to exist without wear and tear...

The crusty barrel could simply be the couple mags that were put through it didn't get cleaned and would eventually draw moisture and rust. Too, if it's scrubbed, it might clean up...Where's Johnny Pepper? There's others too...I'd like to hear from them.

[invaliduser]

The eagle is probably the weakest. Everything else is pretty strong. The bottom half of the eagle is a bit out of focus on that so it looks a bit worse but it's not very strong there anyways. I used a 105mm micro nikkor lens to get so close to the markings.

I have not tried to clean the barrel yet. Should I try it with some CLP?

It's not the tightest fitting slide, has some rattle to it. Looser than my couple thousand round SW1911 but not bad.

Anything else I can take a picture of to help with this?

[Promo]

All original M1911 SA manufactured pistols I have seen and including the ones in the Karl Karash collection have a much deeper struck eagle. Aswell does the pistol here looks like a brushed (or filed, at least not polished perfectly once again) finish below the blueing, while all SA M1911 I've seen have a rather smooth and not that reflecting finish. Also note the filing/brushing markings on the smaller parts, all in one direct.

Therefore I believe that this pistol was very carefully brushed and reblued, by someone who knows what he's doing. Do not get me wrong, I really love the pistol and if the price was right I'd probably buy it. But for me only for the price of a reblued one, not for the price of an original M1911. Again, that's just my personal opinion.

[invaliduser]

It's not really that shiny, it's the huge light I have right above it when I took the pictures. Picture of the light with the gun held up to it for scale!









Well even though it may be reblued, I'm glad whoever did it did it nice and right. I googled some pictures of reblued things and some of them looked horrendous and they ruined the piece.
Got an example of what a nice eagle looks like? I've found many like this one, can't search too well. Darn new Springfield Armory.
Best picture I can currently get of mine




What is something like this worth nowadays? A lot of the info I found for a value of a SA M1911 are many years old now and probably isn't right after that much time.