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What happened to the aluminum receiver durability topic?
JudgeColt
Member Posts: 1,790 ✭✭✭
There was a thread recently entitled "Aluminun Receivers? How good are they?" It was apparently posted by 11echo on 4-3-02. I posted on the topic as did several others and promised to return when I found the Skeeter Skelton article on the 10,000 durability test of a Smith & Wesson M59. When returning after finding the article and scanning the topices, I could not find it, so I did a search using "alloy" as the keyword, and the topic came up. I posted my information about the Skelton article and expected the topic to show up at the top of the current "Experts" forum. It did not, and I still cannot find it on that forum, yet a search still brings it up. What is the reason for this?While that question certainly bothers me, I still want to post my information on the Skelton article on the M59 because it shows just how durable this sometimes-maligned design is. The response I posted on the "lost" topic follows.As promised, I have searched for and found the "Shooting Times" article (January 1980, beginning on Page 32) containing the torture test of a Smith & Wesson M59. My memory is better than I would have thought!Skeeter Skelton put 10,000 rounds (9,000 115-grain FMJ and 1,000 115-grain JHP) through a Smith & Wesson M59. The left unlocking ramp broke off at about round 8800, but the gun still completed the full 10,000 round test. It was grouping about the same at the end as at the start, even with the broken unlocking ramp. The gun was extremely reliable, with only a few failures, the most common being the unintentional activation of the slide stop. After the shooters filed on the slide stop, that induced quite a few failures to lock open on the last shot. Actual failures to feed were only 10 in number, two of which were caused by faulty ammunition. Not too bad for a design some deride as unreliable. (I think that reputation may go back to early guns with the "humped" feed ramps designed for FMJ ammuntiion trying to feed JHP ammunition, and not doing it always well.)In reviewing the article again after 22 years, I am reminded that I still cannot believe no one could diagnose the reason for the unintentional slide stop activation. The shooters tried other slide stops and filed on one of them, but did not realize it is not the slide stop lever itself that causes that malfunction. This was (is) a common problem with early M39/M59 pistols, and the fix is easy. The slide stop has a plunger in the back end that bears against a stud sticking out of the frame. The plunger rides on a flat surface of this stud, apparently to give friction to prevent unintentional slide stop activation. If the stud is slightly turned clockwise, the flat surface becomes a ramp that tends to "urge" the slide stop to go up into the locking position. Combine that with the brushing of the slide stop by cartridges as they are feeding from the magaazine and the slide stop will have a tendency to become activated unintentionally. The fix is to turn the stud slightly counter-clockwise so the ramp "urges" the slide stop down instead of up. I have been able to fix every M39/M59 I have seen that exhibited unintentional slide stop activation by using this simple 10-second fix.The issue of alloy frame durability, even on this early design with its very high stress points, would seem to be well settled by Skeeter's test. (He did a similar test on a Colt Commander [alloy frame] as well, and it survived too as I recall.) A torture test of almost 9,000 rounds before failure does not indicate a fragile pistol to me. I am told that Beretta M9 pistols (alloy frame) used in military training have 30,000 or more rounds through them without frame failure. (Don't digress into a slide failure discussion!)I am still curious about the comparison test between a STEEL frame M39 and an alloy frame M59. In what magazine did that test appear? [This message has been edited by JudgeColt (edited 04-05-2002).]
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