1911/1911A1 Magazines

[Johnny Peppers]

The Colt contract magazines did not show up until 1943.

[lenb]

Johnny,
In addition to the full-blued, unmarked Colt magazines, would a converted commercial Colt magazine (with the sandblasted and parkerized baseplate) have been issued with the '42 WB Colts?

Len

[Johnny Peppers]

Since the commercial magazines were just transferred over to the military contract there is no documentation of when it was done or how many. Most I have seen that I thought might be original to the pistol show up slightly later in production.
By the way, the magazines were not part blue and part phosphate. Think about that as to how it could be accomplished. A close examination of the magazines reveals that the sides of the magazines were first sandblasted to remove the bright commercial finish, then sanded to smooth them up from the sandblasting, and last the base plate was lightly sandblasted to remove the mirror polish. After this the magazines were fully blued, and the sandblasted base looks like it has a phosphate finish.

[lenb]

Thanks for the finish clarification, Johnny. It does make sense that they wouldn't be able to just parkerize the base without having some kind of effect on the blued sides of the magazine, since they have to dip it to parkerize it, and the phosphate solution would have come up on the sides as well. The ones I have look so dull and nearly grainy on the base that at a glance they always looked parkerized to me. I'm really surprised at the amount of labor steps they put into getting the base to be non-reflective.

Len

[Johnny Peppers]

The phosphate finish itself is actually very smooth, but the military required the pistols to be sandblasted before phosphate, and this creates the rough finish.

On the late Colt 1911A1's the Parko-Lubrite was so smooth that Ordnance let Colt discontinue the final polish of the feed ramp. The outside was sandblasted, but the top of the receiver was not, leaving the outside slightly rough, where the inside was very smooth. Also, the slides of most of the late Colts were not sandblasted, and they too are very smooth. This led some to believe the receiver was Parkerize and the slide Parko-Lubrite, but both are Parko-Lubrite.

This is a late Colt with the sandblasted receiver and non-sandblasted slide. Same finish, just one sandblasted and the other wasn't.