Got a Dan Wesson Specialist 9mm a couple months ago and have ran a couple thousand rounds through it. I love how accurate the gun is and how it makes me look like a better shooter than I am, but alas the tradeoff is not worth it.
It worked pretty well in sandy/dry environments (Wilson combat mags) and at indoor ranges without any failures after break in.
But once it got introduced to a little bit of mud it shit the bed completely. Failure to lockback, eject, go into battery, drop mags freely killed the gun for me.
It's not like I abused the gun or torture tested it but after a clean and fresh lube, once the mags hit mud and were wiped down as best as possible including a "nail nicking" of the follower, before reinserting into the gun, it eventually started experiencing failures especially on reloads.
That and the 11 lb Wilson Combat Chrome Silicon recoil spring worked 50% of the time when attempting to chamber a round from slide lock, requiring me to hand rack to ensure a round got stripped from the mag and into the chamber. If I use any heavier of a recoil spring the slide will be unreliable to lockback using training FMJs.
To keep this in perspective my Glock 19x experienced one failure to fire in these same conditions today but ran like a champ the rest of the day.
It may work for others but under relative hard use a quality 1911 was a failure.
It worked pretty well in sandy/dry environments (Wilson combat mags) and at indoor ranges without any failures after break in.
But once it got introduced to a little bit of mud it shit the bed completely. Failure to lockback, eject, go into battery, drop mags freely killed the gun for me.
It's not like I abused the gun or torture tested it but after a clean and fresh lube, once the mags hit mud and were wiped down as best as possible including a "nail nicking" of the follower, before reinserting into the gun, it eventually started experiencing failures especially on reloads.
That and the 11 lb Wilson Combat Chrome Silicon recoil spring worked 50% of the time when attempting to chamber a round from slide lock, requiring me to hand rack to ensure a round got stripped from the mag and into the chamber. If I use any heavier of a recoil spring the slide will be unreliable to lockback using training FMJs.
To keep this in perspective my Glock 19x experienced one failure to fire in these same conditions today but ran like a champ the rest of the day.
It may work for others but under relative hard use a quality 1911 was a failure.