Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Rama: Notes on the Norinco 1911 By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
(First of two parts)
I HAVE received lots of e-mailed queries over the years. Some ask about shooting and some about guns. This one I got from Joe Venison (jvenison@gmail.com) last Sunday is about guns, the Norinco 1911 in particular.
“I’d like to know your thoughts about the ill-fitted barrels on those Norinco 1911s. I’m talking about the no gap between the barrel ramp and the frame ramp and the rear of the lower lug not touching the VIS on barrel link-down. How do you think those parameters can affect reliability and longevity in the long run?” he posed.
And when I mailed him back saying I’ve never received a complaint like his from anybody before, he replied that this was a common problem among Norincos that reached the US, where he is based, via Canada, and offered a few more details:
“As for the barrel link-down, the slide can move without problem. The barrel will not be stopped by the VIS but for the link. That could eventually make the link to stretch. If that happens, the timing of the barrel will be delayed. In that case, the upper lugs may be shaved making for an unsafe barrel.
“As for the other problem, the no gap issue, it seems to shoot ball ammo without a hiccup. But I guess it’s a matter of time or cartridge OAL (Overall All Length - KNR) for them to happen. With any other brand of barrel it’d be as easy as to file a little bit the barrel ramp—very carefully. But those Norinco barrels seem to be hard chromed so if they’re to be filed that hard chrome would start to chip off.
Before sending his query, Joe had apparently read a review I made years back on the “shootability” of the Chinese nineteen-eleven. But in that review, I didn’t check the internal specs of the pistol. I merely shot a specimen provided by Atty. Neil Nuńez side by side with an American Kimber, making observations along the way.
Thus, drawing blank from the notes I made for that earlier gun review, and not having a Norinco pistol of my own, I had to call in the artillery if only to understand Joe’s concerns and find out if his observations on the Norincos abroad could also be said of the Norincos here.
So off to hobbyist gunsmith Glenn Diaz I went last Monday and, after stating the nature of the problem, we disassembled and dissected Army Reserve Mst. Sgt. Ernie Aliviado’s Norinco 1911 in the workbench of Alvin John Osmeńa’s machine shop.
On the barrel ramp issue, Joe got it spot on. The gap between the frame ramp and the barrel ramp in Ernie’s Norinco, bought from Royal Interarms, didn’t reach 1/32 of an inch prescribed by our gun-deity Jerry Kuhnhausen.
We (Glenn, Alvin, Ernie, I and precision machinist George Lavandero) measured this by attaching the barrel on the frame and keeping it together by inserting the crosspin through the pin hole on the frame and through the barrel-link. We then pushed the barrel as far back as barrel-link and the crosspin tension would allow and observed how the barrel ramp almost aligned with the frame ramp.
On a well-fitted gun, the barrel would have traveled rearward but stopped within 1/32 inches from the edge of the frame ramp.
And on how the Norinco barrel, during link-down, is stopped by the crosspin and barrel-link tension and not by the leading edge of the frame’s barrel-recess or bed (Joe called it the VIS), we found what Joe said to be true also in Ernie’s pistol.
I disassembled my nineteen-eleven from Colt and determined that, at least in my gun, the barrel is stopped by both the crosspin and barrel link tension and the front end of frame’s barrel recess.
This was evidenced by the signs of metal-to-metal contact between the rear portion of my barrel lug and the front edge of my frame’s bed.
There were no such trace of contact between the lug and what Joe calls the VIS in Ernie’s gun.
