We all would like to go back and change things we did at one time … the mullet, bell bottoms and disco.
Many things were done to handguns that seemed like good ideas at the time. I get called frequently to either remove some old modifications or replace them with new ones.
Millet Sights
For example, the Millett Dual Crimp front sight. It was a good idea at the time, but today, with dovetail sights, it’s easy to replace one sight style with another. Not so much with the Millett which is no longer available. Dovetail sights were used in the 1800s by rifle makers. Too bad it took so long for them to be used in pistols. Thanks, Wayne Novak, for making them popular.
The Millet used two very large holes drilled through a semi-auto pistol slide to secure two studs with a “ball crimping” tool. This made them secure when the factory’s small tenon-style sights would fail. The Millets were offered in a few bright colors for easy sight pick-up. Today, dovetail sights are offered in dozens of styles, including Tritium inserts.
To upgrade a slide from the Millet set up to a dovetail requires a bit of welding or silver soldering to fill the two holes. I choose to have them welded. Micro tig welding fills in the holes and adds enough material to recontour the slide to the original profile. For this I use Jim French of JMF Welding. Once welded, the slide can be machined for whichever size dovetail is desired or flat-topped. Jim uses the correct filler material to allow for bluing without any visible seams.
Turn back Time; increase Value
Imagine buying Apple stock at the IPO price. I recently was given a three-digit Colt .38 Super frame. That’s a 1929 first-year production specimen. Somewhere in its history, it was stippled. Stippling is an added texture to the grip area, done with a hammer and chisel. The resulting surface is kind of like permanent skateboard tape. We still do it in-house, but I would never do it on a high-value pistol like this. The frame had all the period-correct parts, especially the cross-checkered mainspring housing.
The first step was to remove the stippling with sandpaper. The stippling was mostly shallow, but some deeper spots would have to be welded by JMF. If that fails, as a last resort, I can cut off the front strap and weld in a replacement piece. That will take some time — and courage. The original bluing and polish were high polish and charcoal bluing, like many early Colts. Restorations like this require lots of hours, but in the end, the pistol will be original, albeit with a new finish. Done right the value to the collector will greatly increase.
Making it Yourself
Many times, in custom work, it’s a challenge to find just the right fit, not only mechanically but artistically. In most cases, there are plenty of aftermarket parts to be had, but sometimes I just need something a little different, more unique. In this case, it’s a front sight on a 1911 project. There are hundreds of choices from Novak, Wilson, EGW and so on.
For this project, I needed to make my own shape. I started with an SDM “sight blank,” which is oversized in all dimensions. I like the idea of filling the complete dovetail cut with the sight, but the blending to the slide method to make it invisible never really works out. The metal sight blues a little differently and shows up, or if you want to change the front sight, it still leaves the extra dovetail space showing.
For this sight, I wanted it to be carry-friendly. I used a radius cutter to chamfer the sight “wings” to match the slide cut very close to the slide profile but still allowing for a softer organic look. Once it was regulated for zero, I added angle cuts on the front and back, beveled the sharp edges and added 70 lines per inch serrations on the blade. A light bead blasting was the final preparation before bluing.
For more info: SDMFabricating.com, MillettSights.com, Colt.com, JMFMicroWeld.com