I recently purchased a Sistema .45 ACP, Model 1927, from Gander Mountain.

It was priced at $249.

It was about as free of bluing as is possible, but seemed to be mechanically sound.

It looked like a fun project to me.

Here it is in its original state.

And here.

As you can see, the bluing is completely gone.

But it had a certain "charm".

My buddy Tman took one look at it and said, "Nice trot line weight."

But we had been looking for a project to try out the Lauer DuraCoat Painting system.

This looked like the one.

We took it to the range and I ran 50 rounds of Wolf 230 gr. ball through it with nary a problem.

The only small issue was a good case of "1911 Hammer Bite".

I tend to hold a 1911 "high" and this may have led to that problem.

The only thing that seemed to be wrong was that the magazine was very difficult to insert and remove.

I had heard that the failure of the magazines to drop free was common with these pistols, so wasn't too worried about that.

I took it apart to see what we had.

The magazine was still sticking and not dropping free.

It took a lot of effort to pull it out of the frame.

But I had a suspicion, especially after seeing a bright spot on the magazine.