Hello again, I’m David Reed with Reed & Ward, the makers of CCW Guardian, the premier smartphone app for CCW permit holders. This is a field strip and reassembly video of a typical 1911 semiautomatic pistol. This applies to pistols made, like for instance, by Colt, Springfield Armory, Les Baer, Wilson Combat, Ed Brown, Kimber and a Smith & Wesson Six Hour etc.
So this is a typical, this is an Ed Brown Executive Carry. So let’s go ahead and take care of safety first. Let’s clear lock and show safe. I’ve locked the slide to the rear. Visually and physically inspected the chamber. There is no magazines or ammunition anywhere in the area. There is no one in that direction or back towards the camera, so we have a safe training area. Okay this video applies to those 1911s that have a bushing system, like a typical Colt series 70 or Colt series 80. Even the series 90 defenders would be covered by this and then, of course, the clones from Smith, Sig, Kimber, Springfield Armory, etc. etc. If you have a bushingless system that is a bold barrel recoil spring plug right here, but no bushing and it’s a slightly different procedure. We’ll cover that in a future video. So this is for your typical 1911s. Everything from your Colt Commanders and government models and officers ACPs defenders and also the equivalents in other manufactures. This is an Ed Brown which is a basically a series 70 style firing system in that it doesn’t have an internal manual fire or automatic firing pin block that actually is off the trigger like a series 80 or a short system that like Kimber uses that actuates off of the grip safety. So this is a basic John Browning designed 1911 right here. As close as you’re going to get, but obviously a little bit nicer than what John Brown would’ve imagined. Alright, let’s go ahead and field strip this weapon.
The first thing we’re going to add to this, we’ve already cleared the weapon. I’m going to add a bushing wrench right here. This is a tool and I’m only going to really use it once, but what you’re going to see, of course this is an Ed Brown and this is a Wilson Combat. They’re natural enemies, so we’ll have to make sure they don’t fight or anything. So what we’re going to do is, leaving the thumb safety on, rotate the weapon up on to it’s end right here and you’re going to take a look right here is the bushing and you can see the recoil spring plug right there. So what I am going to do is, using the correct end of the bushing wrench is I’m going to depress. Make sure I do this so you can see it. I’m going to depress that recoil spring plug, and I’m going to rotate the bushing from 6 over here to 9 o’clock. I’m going to stop right here, partially, so you can see what I’m doing. You see, what I’m doing is I’m twisting that bushing around and it’s going to go all the way around to 9 o’clock. That’s going to free up the recoil spring and the recoil spring plug right here.
Now this is under a great deal of pressure. So I’m going to capture it with my thumb as I move the wrench around I’m going to capture it with my thumb and release it slowly. Always wear eye protection anytime you’re field stripping or cleaning a weapon. Even when I’m cleaning, I don’t solvent to get into my eyes. So, I always wear eye protection. Also never point a recoil spring that’s under pressure towards, say your television or computer, whatever you’re watching this video on, or towards another person and most importantly never point it at yourself. Okay so let’s continue to move this off and I’m going to capture that with my thumb right there. And off it comes. You see that’s under a great deal of pressure. If I had released that, it would rocketed off. So this right here is the first piece. We’re going to set that aside now.
Now that the recoil spring plug is off, you’ll notice that the bushing moves just under finger pressure so we don’t need the bushing wrench anymore. I’m going to rotate all the way around to 9 o’clock and I’m going to leave the recoil spring sitting right there. A lot of people grab it and pull it out, but I think that stretches the spring unnecessarily. So, let’s leave it in there.
Now I’m going to take the thumb safety off and I’m going to work right here with the slide stop. The slide stop has a pin, right here, that goes all the way through and out the far side of the weapon right here. So we got to press that out. I’m going to draw your attention to two indentations right here in the bottom of the slide. Now the big one, right up here, is when you lock the slide to the rear that goes all the way back here and the slide stop engages this notch right here. This smaller half moon notch is a disassembly notch and when it gets to this point it enables us to push that slide stop out from the backside. So, I’m going to start working the slide backwards until this half-moon indentation is right there. Let me twist this to where you can see it. There you go. You see it’s right on top of the slide stop right there and what I’m going to do, is I’m going to push from the backside. Make sure it’s lined up perfectly. Then I’m going to push the pin from the backside and it comes right out. Easy peasy. Okay now what I want to do is just take the slide all the way off the weapon. Set it aside. I’ve got my frame assembly here. Let’s set that aside.
Now, if I were cleaning the weapon, I would remove the grips because there’s a lot of stuff that gets up under the grips. This has a mag well. You know there’s a hex wrench or Allen wrench right here that takes this piece off in order to pull the mainspring off. That’s more of a detailed disassembly. For cleaning, I definitely would take the grips off, but for right now we’re just going through the major procedure.
All right, let’s take a look at the slide now. Now we can just pull the spring out. You notice I’m not stretching the spring or causing it any problems and I’m going to twist it just a little bit and I’m going to pop the recoil spring guide rod, or guide right off and right there’s the recoil spring. Now in order to get the barrel assembly out of the slide, we have to take the bushing and rotate it from 9 o’clock over here to 4 o’clock. And there is a notch, I don’t know if you can see it yet. I will show it to you in a minute. So once you rotate it over here to 4 o’clock, just press forward on the barrel and right there, you see the bushing start to pop out. Just grab it pull it right off. What I want you notice about the bushing is there is this lug right here on the bushing. See it? There you go. So when it’s in the 4 o’clock, that lug is no longer in a groove, it can come out. When it’s over here at 9 o’clock, you see it can’t come off because that lug fits inside a groove. It’s machined inside the slide. I’ll set that right there. Now the barrel is free to go.
There’s my clock. What time is it? Probably midnight or something. A lot of rings. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep going. So now the barrel comes right out the front and you’ve got the weapon disassembled into its major components, right there. Of course it wouldn’t be 1 o’clock. All right, good! Thank you clock for letting us know what time it is. It thinks it’s 12 o’clock. There’s your 1911 field strip.
Reassembly is just a little bit more fun. Let’s take the slide and let’s start with that. What we’re going to do is going to take the barrel and again it goes into the front unlike a lot of your more modern weapons where it goes in from the back. Once it goes all the way in, click it and lift this link up like so.
Now I’m going to take the bushing and I’m going to go in at 4 o’clock. And I’m going to twist it all the way around just using finger pressure all the way around to 9 o’clock. You see how I did that. Okay set that down temporarily.
Now let’s take a look at the recoil spring. You’ll notice at the top, you’ll see as I rotate it, you can see there’s a piece that extends out. Right there, you see that as you rotate it. On the other end you’ll notice it’s flat. Okay it’s a little double link right here. This is the piece that goes against the recoil spring. Guide, all the way, cinch down tight, and the one with the little hook end goes forward.
We’re going to reinstall the spring. Slide it from the rear out the front. Now on the recoil spring guide make sure you see the little half-moon indentation. Let me move my finger to where you can see it. There you go. Kind of like two little feet. That has to go against the barrel so it will move back and forth freely and push it all the way up against the link. Push the link up like so. What has to happen when this goes on to the frame the slide stock goes through the frame through the link and out the other side. With this upside down. It’s a little hard to do on camera here. I’m going to push the slide on until it clicks like so. Now I can rotate the weapon around into a firing grip and what I’m going to do is I’m going to look through this hole right here and as I pull back and forth on the slide gently I want to see that link pin going back and forth so that I can get this part of the link pin all the way through the frame. All right. Let me take a look. Right there it is. You can probably see, let me get it to where you can see. Twist it, you can see that link pin in there. So what I’m going to do now, I’m going to insert the slide stop, but I’m not going to take it all the way through I’m just going to make sure I capture that link.
Now, right here on the plunger tube, you’ll notice a little pin is under spring pressure. The plunger tube is a spring container that has two pins. One holds the thumb safety on, the other puts pressure against the slide stop. So once again, I’m going to pull back until that half-moon indentation is right above the hole where my slide stops going to go in and I’m going to press it, it’s kind of hard to do, so that you can see it and I can see the same thing. There we go. Snap all the way on and guess what I don’t put a big scratch or an idiot mark on the side of my 1911. It’s all the way through. You can see it’s only through, right there. All right, so now just let the slide go forward. Again, place the thumb safety on. Set the weapon down.
We’re going to put this recoil spring plug on and we’re going to push down. Now, a lot of people will jump right up and they’ll graph their bushing wrench again to do this. It’s really not necessary. You can do this with finger pressure, but again eye protection and use caution. Press down, keeping even pressure and rotate that bushing until it’s right over top of it. You see, it’s actually holding it on so push down just one more time, click, right there it goes and it’s back into place.
So our weapon is now disassembled and reassembled. We’re going to function check it, make sure everything works correctly. Make sure the grip safety still operates good. Thumb safety operates good. Thumb safety off. Weapon should fire. It does. Trigger reset. There you go and that is the basics of how to disassemble for field strip purposes for cleaning and reassemble a series 70 type or series 80 type 1911.
If you’ve got any questions, comments, suggestions for future videos, you can always come right here to Reed and Ward’s CCWGuardian@CCWGuardian.com you can leave us a message. We’ve got a discussion board. You can ask questions. We’ll be sure to get back to you as quickly as we can and if you have any ideas for a future video you’d like to see, then leave us a note. Again, I’m David Reed with Reed and Ward and that’s a wrap.
