[mfree]

Good lord. I forget I'm not talking to those used to dealing with mechanical properties.

Anyways, all the slide does on a hi-point is hold the striker, connect the breech face with the recoil spring, keep the sights in line with the barrel, and operate the disconnector. That's *it*.

The worst stress it'll see is when the bullet fires, then you've got the force from the bullet pressing on the breech face and putting the slide in tension against the recoil spring. You could do that with *wood* if you wanted too, it'd just fatigue faster.

Wear points would be the rails, the disconnector bar, and the "barrel bushing" where it rides on the fixed barrel. If they have sufficient bearing surface and enough lube, well, they *won't wear quickly*.

The 32,000psi 0.2% yield strength doesn't have a darned thing to do with the cartridge. It only means that it takes 32,000 pounds of force to deform a one square inch section of Zamak 0.2% dimensionally. That's actually a useless number since that's not even a force found in a hi-point, not to anywhere near that degree anyways. It's ultimate tensile strength, which is 41,000psi, and I'll bet you there's at least .75 sq.in section in the minimum dimension around the ejection port.

You could probably attach hooks to either end of a hi-point slide and use it to hang a car off the ground, so long as you don't jerk it around too much (instantaneous forces).

With a fixed barrel the hi-point wouldn't even lose much accuracy with wear... the barrel will always be pointed the same in regards to your hand, just the point of aim could change from slide or bushing wear, and with the layout it's pretty sure that even with big tolerances the sights are going to end up in nearly the same place after every shot.

it's just... *sigh* it doesn't take very much to make a workable weapon, believe it or not, and hi-point proves it. It's a minimalist handgun.