Update: 18 February 2010 

Currently I am working on making the one piece long triggers and the magazines. 

The long one piece trigger is the most difficult part to manufacture besides the frame, slide, and barrel.  I feel that the original part was probably manufactured from a forging.  A forging die is way too expensive to have made for a short run of parts.  My one piece triggers will be made from billet steel. 

If you have ever looked at an original one piece trigger and understand machining this part is a work of machining art.  The complex shape and the thin bows make it quite difficult to make even with today’s modern machining methods.  The change in the trigger that was introduced in 1928 for the 1911A1 made the trigger much easier to manufacture.  The bow is made from a stamping and the finger piece is made from a stamping also.  This type of manufacturing would have reduced the part price by at least 75%. 

I am going to have 200 of these one piece triggers made.  There will be 100 of the triggers made available for sale as parts and the other 100 will be reserved for the pistols.  It looks like the triggers will have to sell for $95 each.  These triggers will have the finger piece highly polished and then heat blued.  

The magazines that were used in the original 1911 pistols were made from seamless tubing that was purchased from Germany according to my information.  I cannot make magazines like that.  However, I can make the magazines with the pinned on floor plate that shows the entire side of the floor plate below the magazine tube sides.  The magazines will also have the lanyard loop on the floor plate.  The manufacture of the floor plate is actually pretty complicated.  The floor plate has two bosses machined on the top that have 1/16” holes drilled through them for the pins that hold the floor plate on the tube.  The bosses also have to be machined on the ends so that they can go up inside of the tube.  These bosses keep the floor plate from sliding sideways on the tube.  The pins keep the floor plate on the tube and keep the floor plate from sliding fore or aft.  The pin holes in the tube must line up exactly with the pin holes in the floor plate bosses so the tube must be jig drilled to match the floor plate pin boss holes.  The other little fun thing is the 5 degree angle on the back of the floor plate to match the angle of the back of the magazine to the bottom of the floor plate.  Don’t forget that the sides of the floor plate must line up nicely with the sides of the tube.  I hope that we can hold this tolerance very closely so I don’t have to make the floor plate width slightly wide and then grind and buff them to match the tube.  This will add quite a bit to the price of the magazine if I have to do it.  The magazines also have to be carbona blued.  They are not going to be two tone magazines.  According to my reference books the original magazines were not two tone because they were not case hardened by dipping the tops into molten cyanide.  I assume that the original magazines were pretty soft and didn’t hold up well.  Our magazines will be made from modern heat treated steel.  The lips will be of the old ball style as they were.  The cut out in the back of the magazine at the top will be new style with the rounded corners instead of the sharp square corners as the dies that the tubes are made from have that feature and I can’t and don’t want to change that feature.  The reason that they changed from the square corners to the rounded corners was that the magazines cracked there.  The other feature that I may have to keep on the magazines is the 1/8” weep hole slot in the bottom of the front of the magazine.  The originals did not have this weep hole.  I am not sure when the weep hole was added as I have not come across that information.  The die that stamps out the tubes has the weep hole built in to it and I don’t know yet if that can be removed from the die without a major reworking of the die.  

 I don’t have a cost figure on the magazines yet but they will certainly cost more than a new 1911 magazine does.