Sbardella Arms in progress shop photos...

Slapshot said:

I'm in for the ride. I am surprised that you do the checkering so early on in the build. I would assume you have to take great care not to damage it along the way.

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bladeandbarrel said:

I find it so interesting you checker the frames before you finish them. I have never seen another manufacturer do this in this sequence and I have been to several shops that machined 1911 frames.

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Stormy said:

I was surprised as well about the early checkering, but did not want to reveal the totality of my ignorance

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This is the way that works best for our process, but not necessarily the best for every company. We are producing these in very low quantities (practically one at a time) so I can take care not to damage the checkering on a different machine last. If you were setting up a production process to machine frames in high quantity it would probably be more efficient to crank out the raw frames on a horizontal machining center and do the checkering last in another machine. It really depends on your available equipment and the quantity you are producing.

Here I am dressing the wheel on the surface grinder, preparing to finish grind the sides. For those "in the know", yes that is a radius dressing attachment. I am not dressing a radius, just dusting off the wheel for a flat grind.



Grinding the part:

Now that I've got some frames machined, it's time to start on the next batch of guns. I'm building two 38 supers, one of which we are building for "stock" so it will be up for sale when finished! Its a 5" Custom Carry with target rear sight, no front cocking serrations. Here are the slide, frame and barrel for that build:



Kart leaves extra material on the barrel hood (length and width) and I first want to trim the hood length a bit closer before hand fitting. Here I'm measuring the breach to locking lug distance with an inside micrometer:



And now cutting the hood length close in the manual lathe:



Now back at the bench I've got my lower lug centering jig in the frame and its time to fit the hood width by hand with a file.



After a bit of filing on each side, the hood slips into place. I want a nice tight fit here but no binding.



Now even though I machined some length off the hood, its still a bit too long to lock up. Time to put some marker on the end and see where its rubbing:



After a bit of filing and stoning the barrel locks up nice and smoothly with good contact on the end of the hood.



Now its back to the manual lathe to work on the bushing fit. These Kart bushings have extra material on the OD and ID and need to be hand fit. Here I have the bushing in a fixture to polish the OD to fit the slide.

Now that the barrel is polished, the bushing will slip onto it but it will not tilt. It has to be able to tilt a certain amount so that the barrel can link up, so its time to polish the ID of the bushing.



Roll your sleeves up and watch your fingers when your polishing on the lathe!



You need to check your progress periodically by assembling the slide, barrel and bushing and testing the lockup. If you don't have enough barrel tilt, you will have a "sprung barrel" condition which is a really bad thing for accuracy. After a bit of work I am happy with the lockup.



I already fit the slide to frame on this build. I wasn't really sure how to take pictures of this process, maybe I will try on the next build and give an explanation. Next we need to fit the lower barrel lugs, and for this we use a lug cutter.



You can see the chips on the little carbide cutter from this opperation.



And here is the Kart barrel after the lug cutting operation.



I determined that a number 4 barrel link was the correct length.



I didn't take any pictures of filing in the radius and pressing the pin in. As you can see, fitting a barrel this way is A LOT of work!

jetrinka said:

Very cool stuff! Love the behind the scenes look at everything!

@Neil Sbardella if you don’t mind me asking what is your background with the 1911? How did you get your start? Is your story posted anywhere? Thanks!

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Sure I can give you the short version of how I got to this point in my life, and building 1911's. My story is nothing too exiting or interesting, but for those that are curious here goes:

I was always interested in mechanical things when I was growing up, often taking things apart to see how they worked. This lead me to go to school for engineering, and I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Vermont in 2011. In school I was more interested in 3D CAD modeling and hands on mechanics than the many advanced math courses that are required curriculum. During my senior year at college I was able to spend a little time in the school machine shop. This is where my interest in metal work/machining was born. After college I went to work as a process engineer. I didn't like that the work was mostly paper pushing, and I wanted to do something more hands on. In 2014 I started Fair Haven Machine inc. in the corner of my fathers sheet metal shop. I had purchased a few small machines and did general machine work for local companies, basically whatever came in the door. I eventually moved to a larger shop in the next town over. At that time I did most of my work on a Bridgeport milling machine and small manual lathe, although I did have a CNC "Tree" mill that wasn't very useful because it didn't have a tool changer or enclosure. I don't have that machine anymore, but I have great memories of running some steel production jobs on it with a 3" face mill and it would literally throw hot razor sharp chips all over the floor, it really made a huge mess!

I eventually was able to purchase a used Vertical Machining Center with an enclosure, flood coolant and an automatic tool changer. Now with a machine like that you can do some serious work, if you are able to do the CNC programming. I was able to learn CNC programming, and became very good at it. I bought a used CNC turning center, and it was so useful that I bought another brand new one wich had live tooling on the turret. I was able to hire a few employees and eventually we got into Aerospace machining work. We made all kinds of parts for all the big companies; SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin, NASA etc. I loved the work, but all the red tape in producing Aerospace parts is a nightmare. There are literally piles of paperwork involved with each job that you do, and the requirements involved in AS9100 Certification are just crazy. I wanted to come up with a product that we could produce with our equipment, using the tolerances and techniques that I developed for Aerospace machining.

I have been around firearms all my life, grew up shooting and hunting here in the Green Mountain state so I was naturally interested in guns. I've always been a hand gun guy, owning and carrying many different kinds of pistols over the years, but one design stood out as my clear favorite: the 1911. It was the way the gun fit my hand, the angle of the grip, the wonderful trigger, the pleasant "click" as you disengage the thumb safety. I owned several 1911's over the years and worked on them myself completing trigger jobs, changing safeties etc. So naturally, I looked at the different parts of the gun from a machining stand point, and I started to produce slides and frames from forgings. I was not interested in competing in the "production" 1911 market. I wanted to build 1911's with all forged and bar stock parts, no cast or MIM. I was unhappy with the slide to frame and barrel fitting on "production" 1911's and I knew I could do better. That's why we machine our frame rails oversize for final hand fitting to the slide and we fit Kart barrels.

I am now out of the Aerospace machining business, and I am focusing all of my efforts into producing the quality 1911's that I have always wanted for myself.

pistolwretch said:

Very cool!
Your in-house broaching on your frames is REALLY cool.
What are you using for slides?
Machining a slide from a bar.........pretty darn tooling intensive.

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I do a similar broaching op on the slides to cut the breach face. The slide is a very complex part with tight tolerances required. It all starts with a forged blank. Luckily I have a pallet of them sitting right here:





It takes about 60 tools to machine a slide. Unfortunately most of my VMC's only hold 30 tools, so I have to use multiple machines. Here are some of the tools used:



And my other 4th axis machine is set up for working on frames right now, so I have all of the slide tools pulled out of the machine.



There are A LOT of custom tools required for these parts, so if you are setting up a process for machining slides and frames I suggest that you make friends with a tool grinding shop owner!

Nineteen-ElevenObsession said:

Awesome thread. I really appreciate the ability and willingness to make the slides and frames in house.

A few questions…

1. What tolerances do you aim for in your slide to frame fit?
2. Do you foresee offering any other front strap/msh patterns in the future?
3. Do you foresee offering finishes other than blue in the future?
These look like some top notch guns. Looking forward to more pics of the process. 😁

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Slide to frame fitting is a critical part of the process. I have always believed that the final fitting should be done by hand, and I have spent a lot of time and effort developing the machining tolerances of the slide and frame in order to make the hand fitting process as simple and consistent as possible. If you study the drawings of the slide and frame you will see that there are four pairs of critical dimensions that have to work together (4 dimensions on the slide that correspond to 4 dimensions on the frame). Each of these 8 dimensions has its own tolerance, so I don't have a one number answer for slide to frame tolerance. But as an example, I am holding the frame rail width and thickness to +.0000" -.0005". When you pick up one of our slides and try and put in on one of our frames, it will not slide on and we are aiming for a .0005" "interference fit". It is so close that you may be able to tap the slide all the way on with a plastic hammer, but I DO NOT recommend that because you risk galling he parts together. With this level of precision, you often do not need to use a file on the rails. All that is required is light stoning on the top and sides of the frame rails to get the perfect fit. I don't use a lapping compound, just stones and I work the parts in with oil to check for tight spots.

As for the front strap I would like to offer different patterns and serration LPI, but it does take a lot of my time to program and fixture for such things so for the moment I can only offer our standard 30 LPI. The MSH's I purchase so I can get essentially whatever the customer wants for there build.

I would really like to offer hard chrome and DLC finishing options. My experience in the aerospace industry tells me that I need to develop a good relationship with an outside finishing supplier I can trust with our parts. I do the hot salt bluing myself, so I can control all aspects of the process. Interesting side note; I recently met the guys at Atlas Gunworks (another firearms company here in Vermont). FYI they are some great people. Their CEO Adam and his head machinist Dan came down and checked out my shop, and they invited me to tour there shop as well which I of course took them up on! They have a beautiful DLC finishing line, so maybe I will pull some strings and see if they will take on some of my pistols as well for DLC.

Now that this 38 Super Custom Carry has passed test fire #1, its time for the blending work. First, the frame to MSH is blended and chamfered. This is done with the firing components still in place and the hammer cocked. This keeps down pressure on the MSH so that everything stays flush when the gun is assembled.



Then the firing components are removed and the slide, frame, MSH, and safeties are reassembled.



As you can see the ejector, extractor and slide rails protrude out a bit. I like to start by roughing these down with a flat file:



Now I begin work on the grip safety to frame blending. I have done a lot of careful tweaking of the frame CAD model to match up with the beavertail grip safety, so I usually don't have to file these areas and I can go straight to using power tools. Here it is before starting:



Using a 1/2" drum sander on a Dremel, I start blending. I step down in grits several times to get all the sanding marks out:






After the Dremel work, a plastic rod wrapped in sandpaper is good for smoothing out any scratches or dimples. Then the whole thing is scrubbed with good ol' thumb pressure down to 600 grit (this is a standard finish gun, not one of our high polish ones).





Nowback to the slide/frame/grip safety blending. Notice I have removed the tape holding the grip safety down and I am holding the GS in the up position for blending the top.