TargetTalk

Does anyone know of a good smith in the youngstown/Boardman Ohio area.
looking to get a ultradot mounted on my 1911 style pistol.

kswebb1 wrote:Does anyone know of a good smith in the youngstown/Boardman Ohio area.
looking to get a ultradot mounted on my 1911 style pistol.

Scott Mulkerin is in Medina... Not too far from you.. He's an APG member, so you'll be in good hands. My suggestion is, that you should really consider a frame mount that uses a base plate to support the mount and provide adequate thread contact.. the dust cover alone, makes a poor mounting base..
Jerry

If the mount attaches to the base plate, to what does the base plate attach? Is it welded onto the dust cover?

Orpanaut wrote:If the mount attaches to the base plate, to what does the base plate attach? Is it welded onto the dust cover?

The base plate is bolted to the frame. A thin ribbon of silver solder is sandwiched/clamped between the plate and frame. The unit is heated until the silver flows and bonds. The plate is then trued in a surface grinder, drilled and tapped. David Sams has been doing this for decades.. I am ashamed it took me so long to see the light..You can now tune the gun for the specific load and feel that compliments the shooter.. Opposed to just tuning the gun to function with the extra weight of optics on the slide..
Jerry

Ah, I see! Thank you for the explanation. That does look like a solid base.

My very first wad gun was built by the late Harold Johnson, retired USMC armorer, using a Weigand frame mount. I got the pistol second hand several years after it was built. Although it was an excellent wad gun in most respects, I did keep having problems in sustained fire when cases would get trapped between the mount and the slide. I tried changing loads, springs and ejectors to get it to work reliably. Nothing seemed to help. (I would have taken it back to Mr. Johnson but he passed away not long after I bought the gun.) Finally, in frustration, I drilled out the screws and butchered the dust cover to get the mount off and had a gunsmith put a Clark scope mount on the slide. After that it worked but it was so ugly that I've left it in the safe ever since.

That experience made me shy away from frame mounts. Reading some of the posts here, however, had made me reconsider my aversion.