My Taurus Customization

[Olympus]

I've had the stainless PT1911 since back when they first came out. The gun has simply been amazing. I've put about 5500 rounds through it so far and haven't had any problems. But I've really used and abused the gun and it looked a little worse for wear. So I decided to put a little money back into the gun and get it back to looking good and to make some changes that I like to see on my 1911s.

First thing I did was remove the HUGE billboards! I completely sanded off all of the lettering on the sides of the slide. This made a huge difference in the appearance of the gun. Then I got rid of the ambi-safety and swapped it for an Ed Brown wide single-safety. I pitched the stupid Taurus "lockable" hammer and replaced it with a skeletonized hammer. I replaced the front sight with a Hi-Viz fiber optic sight. And I replaced the rear sight with an adjustable target sight with white outline. I had to have the slide milled to accept the rear sight that I wanted, but it turned out great. Then I sent the whole thing to my gunsmith for a satin bead blast finish instead of the polished flats/satin rounds that the gun came with. The results are better than I could have hoped for.

[NAMVET72]

Pretty Nice.........

[MajO]

Great result on your rebuild. And, of course, the grips are perfect.

[Olympus]

Thanks fellas!

[Snipersnest]

Some nice looking wood on that baby!

[Olympus]

Thanks. I have a tendency to hold back the best pieces for myself.

[Olympus]

Whelp, I guess I need to do a yearly update on my Taurus project. I was not very happy with the new satin finish. It wasn't the look I was going for. Then the gun spent most of the time in the wood shop being a test dummy for new grips. It got covered in sawdust and unfortunately, some of the small parts started getting some surface rust. Needless to say, it was in bad shape and needed to be rescued.

So this time, I did the research to do the kind of bead blasting finish that I originally wanted. I wanted a shiny silver color that was buttery smooth instead of rough like it was before. Bought a small sandblaster and used 80 grit glass beads at 40PSI on the compressor. I bead blasted the whole gun and the results were better than I could have hoped for. This thing is like brand new again and exactly what I wanted the first time!

[Roverron]

beautiful gun!!

[Olympus]

Thanks. Doesn't look too bad for a $500 gun.

[Zilmo]

That's a very attractive piece.