Daguerre
Member
Lately I've been thinking about what many of us do with perfectly good, reliable, new pistols... we're so eager to jump on the "customized bandwagon" and think our guns "need" to be reliability-tuned, improved, tweaked, features switched out, etc. This may be largely a 1911-lovers phenomenon. And I'm certainly one of them. We think that by spending more money on them, they will be that much more reliable, accurate, and just better.
More than once I've done work on a gun and later decided that the gun was just as it should have been in the beginning, that I should have left well enough alone. But I was thrilled by the process of determining what to customize, how to tweak it, etc. In the end I wound up with something that perhaps was not as reliable as the gun was in the first place. You know the drill... new trigger, new sear, new hammer, lighter hammer spring, lighter FP spring, lighter recoil spring, shock buffs to compensate for lighter springs, etc.
It's all fun to do that (and costly!), but I can't help but wonder if this customizing, tweaking, enhancing, modifying passion of ours is something like government work (please forgive me, government workers....)
"If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is."
Of course certain modifications are truly beneficial and have good results, but more often than not, lately, I'm thinking we're better off leaving guns just as the factory made them. Sometimes our fine tuning and tweaking just messes things up.... we fix 'em till they're broke!
Now when I buy new guns, I resist all urges to change things and then only do so when I am totally convinced it is necessary. I'm slowly learning.
More than once I've done work on a gun and later decided that the gun was just as it should have been in the beginning, that I should have left well enough alone. But I was thrilled by the process of determining what to customize, how to tweak it, etc. In the end I wound up with something that perhaps was not as reliable as the gun was in the first place. You know the drill... new trigger, new sear, new hammer, lighter hammer spring, lighter FP spring, lighter recoil spring, shock buffs to compensate for lighter springs, etc.
It's all fun to do that (and costly!), but I can't help but wonder if this customizing, tweaking, enhancing, modifying passion of ours is something like government work (please forgive me, government workers....)
"If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is."
Of course certain modifications are truly beneficial and have good results, but more often than not, lately, I'm thinking we're better off leaving guns just as the factory made them. Sometimes our fine tuning and tweaking just messes things up.... we fix 'em till they're broke!
Now when I buy new guns, I resist all urges to change things and then only do so when I am totally convinced it is necessary. I'm slowly learning.