Post by 1911 I have owned a few of these over the years, and each and every one has been different. Here is the newest one that I have.
Now, I cannot comment on the box, as it wasnt, but I would guess that it would have come in the light beige coloured box that most RMI models did.
The first thing about this model that I found strange was the finish. It is nickeled, but with a brushed finish on the flat parts, and a shiny smooth finish on the rounded parts. For example, the sides of the slide are brushed, but the top is polished, as with the frame, the two sides are brushed but the underside is polished. The last nickel variant that I had was polished all over. One of the other things that I noticed is the barrel. I shall go into more detail about this a little later on, but at first glance it was blocked low in the barrel at the front end, which is a good thing, whereas the last one I had was blocked at the front, and it is nice and solid on the ejection port end (the last one that I had had a cross cut in the top of it, which then caused the barrel to snap as the metal corroded).
I find that you can tell that the grip is shorter than it should be just by looking at this gun. It is not by much, but enough that it just kind of looks slightly wrong. You can also see that the magazine is shorter than it should be. Obviously this would be much more apparent against another 1911 such as the Wa Shan model or a real one.
The next thing that I found out is that the magazine will not accept any rounds, the feed lips are too far apart, so they just spring out. Again this is strange as the last two that I owned would load cartridges. The other thing that is very different at first glance is the hammer. As you can see it is the flat sided type of the series 70, not the flat rounded version that it should have, not that I mind this too much as both my last ones broke on the hammer across the scoring, leaving a sharp moon shaped spur that was too sharp to cock manually. It also has a spelling mistake on the engraving on the slide, as it says Caliver instead of Calibre, but this again is not the end of the world. It doesn't have the word Japan just under the ejection port that my others had either.
Now it is time to strip the gun down to see what makes it tick. Here is where it get really strange. Both my previous RMI models stripped as per the real deal, parts were as you would expect, but this one is different...
The strangest thing that I found is the barrel. You can see the other parts that are there, but the barrel is weird. The guide rod is attached to the barrel, therefor doing away with the floating barrel mechanism, and the spring just slots over the end of it. The barrel still has the locating lugs on the top of it, but they would not do anything, as without floating it will not lock up into place. It also has the locating groves on the slide, again as with my previous models, but again these are pointless as it will not have the barrel to locate into them. It seems to me to be a really strange thing to do to this model, as my others functioned exactly like the real thing, thus greatly improving its appeal, not that I don't like this model, it is just that this strange feature nearly ruins it. It is more like a cheap bbm blank firer in its function that a proper gun, and that is the whole point of these models?
Other than that, it all works as you would expect, slide moves back and forward and the hammer falls when the trigger is pulled, safeties prevent that etc. There is no firing mech in place as this is a dummy model, but it does have what looks from the rear to be a firing pin cast into the metal.
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Wed 13 Aug 2008 - 20:11
