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Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Just Lubricating the Two Handguns Missed in the Last Round

I mentioned the importance of regular lubrication of guns, even if not being fired, a while back.  Two handguns that I missed on that round were my wife's Colt Government Model .380:
and my safe queen Series 80 Colt M1911A1:
I had forgotten what nice guns these are.  The .380 was Colt's first step back into the compact self-defense pistol market.  Unlike its little brother the Colt Mustang, it strips almost identically to the .45.  Differences: The barrel comes out the back of the slide, and the series 80 firing pin block is a slightly clumsy S-shaped lever that must be pulled or pushed up when you are done reassembling slide to frame or it won't slide.  Compared to the latest subcompact wonder-nines, it's a bit large, but a bit thinner than most of them.  It has a .5" longer barrel, and 7 rounds in the magazine.  An 18% longer barrel does not sound like much, but it really improves accuracy.  And it reassembled much easier than the #%$#@$% Colt Mustang's barrel/recoil spring/slide abomination.  I know, I know, if you shoot an attacker with .380, there is danger you will upset him.  But he will probably go look for an ER first.

I have not disassembled/reassembled a .45 in some time, so some details eluded me for a while.  But I will say that this feels like a Man's Gun, in a way that my more accurate and higher capacity Browning does.  Of course any expression that starts out "a Man's" reminds me that Rock Hudson (until AIDS wasted him away to death) was considered by many a "Man's Man."  And it turned out that he was, just not the way everyone thought of that.



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