|
MUCH harder.
With an AR-15 it takes very little special skilled labor to assemble one. All you need is a few rifle specific tools, some generic tools, and it all just bolts together. If you buy a barreled upper you don't even need that much. It's designed to very exact tolerances so most parts can be thrown together and it's going to work right.
A 1911 is very much not the same beast. It was designed in a different era for more labor intensive production. To do it right you need special jigs for fitting things like hammer/sear engagement, staking plunger tools, and that's before you even get into cutting barrel lugs and fitting slides to frames (you can buy pre-fit frame/slide combos). You can't just toss the parts together and have it work. The safety may or may not engage. The trigger pull might be decent, nasty, or outright dangerous. You can peen upper barrel lugs and shear the lower ones. All because you didn't know what you were doing.
I'd *love* to be able to do that kind of thing to a 1911, but I have neither the tools nor the experience. Maybe one day I can dedicate myself to learning that craft, but I wouldn't dare try it... it would cost me much more in time and effort to do it right, all for an end result that could be handily beaten by buying a production gun.
And I have several ARs, all of which I assembled to one extent or another (there's a few complete uppers in the mix, but a few I barreled myself). And I'm not even close to competent enough to fit a 1911 barrel to a slide.
|