50,000 (now 88K) rounds and counting: Springfield Operator

General Firearms Handguns - 1911
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(UPDATE Oct 2014,round count now 98K plus) (Update 12-29-14, not at 103 K)

                              [u]   Update 12-2016, now at 118K-ish. 4th barrel, second slide[/u]

Here’s an Operator belonging to my good friend Rob Donaldson. I spent the last few days with him and Jeff Chudwin, me filling the role of assistant to the assistant instructor and class armorer. Rob and Jeff were putting on a CQB class for Chicago-area police officers.

I did some minor work on this gun for Rob a few years back—it was to be his workhorse gun. I have written about Rob before (on LTW): he is a true shooter, a real hard charger. His is a protégé of Jeff and also of Henk Iverson and in addition to being a police officer, is doing training for Strike Tactical Solutions, a company that Henk originally got rolling.

So now this Operator is at 50K rounds. Here’s what it looks like:

This Kart barrel is the third for this pistol. Rob felt the first was worn at about 10,000 and had someone else replace it. I did not see the first one at 10K and I’m guessing it may have still been OK. Barrel number two simply was not fitted right nor throated or chambered right. Rob struggled with it for a thousand rounds and then brought the gun back to me and I put in this Kart Easy Fit. It has held up extremely well to the 30,000 rounds he’s put through it. Rob tells me that maybe 1% of those were jacketed, so maybe 29,700 were lead semi-wadcutters with a 5-point-something load of 231. With his very packed training schedule, he is shooting more these days than ever before, and it was a lot before. He reloads to keeps costs down.

The frontstrap checkering has taken a bit of a beating……

Overall right side. One version of my Shield Driver sight, made from a Yost Professional, before I started making them from scratch to my mid-eighties design. All other bits are stock Springfield except hammer and sear, plus the slide stop is not stock but neither of us remembers changing it. I believe the S&A magwell was stock on this but not sure.

Even the original MIM ejector is still there. I must say this Springfield has held up exceptionally well. The frame rail cracked above the slide stop window—common and no big deal…… that’s all there is for cracks.

The breech face—not as worn and dimpled as I would expect with this round count, regardless of the loads used.

Like I’ve said, Rob runs the guns and gear hard. Not an abuser by any means, in fact he’s a rare bird in that he really dotes on his guns in terms of maintenance and lube, but—he doesn’t baby stuff. He uses his equipment to the max. I’ve had to TIG on several stops on his Wilson ten-rounders—see how this one is about to get slammed off? And the base pad saw this and took a hike!

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Nice post.

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That is a beautiful, beautiful pistol. It’s like a great bourbon, that just gets better with age.

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10,000 rounds is a pretty short life for a barrel. I would’ve expected more especially in .45. I’ve been getting between 50-60K with Schuemann barrels as long as I don’t run continuous “Bill Drills” and heat up those barrels until theyre brown. One of my .40 guns is a Dawson build and it’s over 61,000 on the original STI barrel. It keyholes with some bullets and is a bit slow but with good bullets (Zero) it’ll shoot well enough. It ought to fail any time now…

Worn out, blue/black guns are PRETTY!!!

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Good post, Ned :slight_smile:

This barrel looks like new, probably because he shoots lead bullets.

On a side note, how important really are the “middle” sections (on the side of the mag well) of the frame rails? It seems to me most/all the slide alignment is done fore and aft, that’s why glocks and other polymer pistols onlly have rail sections there. The question is because I have an old pistol with a long fisure at the base of the left rail, from the slide stop window to the end of the mag well, and I’m thinking of just cutting this section.

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Colt does this from factory…:wink:

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Yeah, that middle section is pretty much not participating in guiding the slide, but you could say that it helps keep crud out. Indeed Colt has been doing that for years, removing the bridge just over the slide stop window, starting on the 10mm’s. The Guncrafter .50GI has them removed completely from the front to the back of the mag well… no problem.

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I’m not talking about the bridge, but removing the entire left rail section from the slide stop window to the rear end of the mag well.

Ned, do you have a picture of the Guncrafter .50GI rails?

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Sorry, I don’t. Might be one on the GI site, guncrafterindustries.com.

You can see in some spots where this was an OD green Operator. In the interest of getting it done and not making a Swiss watch project out of this, after checkering etc. I just cleaned it nice and dry, and put some Brownells Baking Laquer over the existing paint and the bare steel on the front strap and MSH. Seems to have held up OK given the amount of use.

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I suspect to stop people from calling and complaining the frame rail cracked.

What causes this crack? Frame Flex under recoil?

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Thanks Ned, I’ve found the guncrafter .50 GI picure, no rails on the sides of the magwell :slight_smile:

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thanks for the post.
encouraging & impressive durability.
Interesting margin on front strap radius by grip. Mine checkers around radius under grips slightly different than that one.

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Mr. Christiansen thank you for posting this up, it is always great to see “real world” use.

If you don’t mind I would like to ask a couple of questions; 1) How have the extractors fared during these 50k rounds? i.e. replacement intervals etc. 2) Is the factory ejector pinned?

Thanks again for posting this up, truly awesome.

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This.

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I’ll ask The Robenator about extractors. I could tell at a glance that the one in it was not the one that came with it-- shoulda mentioned that.

The ejector-- MIM’d-- is one of those when Springfield was gluing them in. I never really liked that but have not heard many complaints… and Rob’s was fall-out loose. He said he just works around it when the gun is disassembled. Although my situation was kinda in field expedient mode, I was able to clean the holes and ejector with mineral spirits and alcohol and red LocTite it back in-- for whatever good it will do.

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Great post Ned!

IIRC, the STI 2011 frame also has no rails along the sides of the mag well.

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Thanks for the response, very interesting to see the ejector situation. My long standing gripe with SA is the “glued” ejectors. I realize this is just a personal thing that ultimately is probably not a big deal in the grand scheme, but it irritates for some reason.

Good to see that these hold up over the long haul though.

Thanks again.

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My fear has always been that when one becomes loose, it will move enough to break off. I realize that there isn’t much room for the ejector to move about due to the size of the slot in the slide but the glued ejector never gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

It may not be rational but gunsmiths gotta sleep at night too!

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Wanting to make sure anything that leaves your shop is 100% so you can sleep at night knowing it might be used to save someones life…weird.:jester:

All kidding aside, I just don’t get it. I love SA pistols but don’t understand how they can NOT pin all of them. Some they do and some they don’t, I have a highly worked over mil-spec that was pinned from they factory but my TRP was a no-go.

Back on topic though, I am very interested to see what the extractor life has been on this particular pistol.

Mr. Berryhill, thanks for your input also, its great to see some of the best smiths out there participating here on this forum.

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Dave, I agree. I was never comfy with ejectors installed that way… “glue” where there shoulda been “steel”. I’ve pinned several of these “just because” as I’m sure you have.

On the other hand this is the only one I really have some post-mileage knowledge of and other than the not-insignificant inconvenience of the damned thing being in danger of falling out and getting lost when you have the slide off, it does seem to have held up.

I have an inquiry in to Rob as to extractor life on this. I’m guessing that when I worked on this I’d have fitted him up an extra extractor. I know for sure that the one in it is not one I fitted to this gun, so, this must be at least the second, and maybe third.