A bud of mine got original Government 1911 drawings through a Freedom of Information request. He claimed if you searched long enough, there were dimensions that were wrong. I don't know what they were, but older technical data packages had errors, such that the inside was larger than the outside type of errors. The 1911 was designed in an era where manufacturing technology was a lot more primitive than today. Parts were made to a tolerance, but it took hand fitting to make them fit. Older firearms were made of parts that were not drop in interchangeable. Parts were handed to an skilled assembler who filed and fitted parts to create a complete firearm. The assembler had to be trained to know just where to file, bend, torque, to produce a functioning firearm.
In fact, if you read Clawson's Book on the 1911, Colt did not have a drawing package. Colt had a master model 1911, which worked. If the production line was not producing functioning pistols, the as built parts would be compared against the parts on the master model.
I believe this is a master model 1911 provided to Springfield Armory so the Government Arsenal could make 1911's, by coping the parts.
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Springfield Armory production engineers would have sat around a table with micrometers and other measuring devices trying to reverse engineer these Colt parts and figure out how to set up a production line to crank out 1911's.
Today, a design engineer provides a Computer Assisted Design model on an electronic storage device, and if the manufacturing instructions are there, the CNC machines crank out the parts. (Probably not that simple, but getting there)
The point of the matter is, I am not confident that the old WW2 era data packages can produce a "GI" spec 1911 that would function. I do not know what level of parts standardization is going on between modern 1911 producers. I would be curious to know.
