The beginning of the Fusion project

My Fusion kit arrived yesterday.  I'm so excited about this project, and the anticipation leading up to this moment has been heavy.  Now, however, I have everything I need to get to work, and I'm feeling a little bit daunted.  Anyway, here are the details and the photos.

It's a bobtail commander kit in .40S&W with a ramped barrel.  To my knowledge, it isn't possible to buy a production version of this exact pistol.  Hell, it's hard to even find a commander length 9mm, let alone one that's bobtailed.  I've gone (so far) with all Fusion parts, mostly because they've given me such a good deal.  It appears that a lot of it actually comes from STI, which is a great Texas company, and most appear to be pretty good quality.

This should give you a sense of what it will look like when it's complete.  The finish, however, will be ionbond, so the whole thing will be black.

Some of the parts I know are made by Fusion in house, like this bushing and spring cap, for example.  The quality on these parts is among the best I've ever seen.  The good news is that Fusion is producing more and more of its own components, and hopefully the quality will be on-par with their other offerings.  The bad news is they still out-source certain components that I consider to be a little crappy.  Take the thumb safety that I ordered with this kit, for example.  Sure, I didn't pay much for it, but it turned out to be a MIM part, and along with the usual ugly MIM injection marks, the shaft wouldn't fit in the frame.  I tried a little filing and sanding (of the part, not the frame), and it turns out the shaft has some bulges.  Oh well.  I ordered a new thumb safety from cylinder & slide, and should have it in a few days.  

So on to next steps.  The picture above is an example of some of the file and sandpaper work that needs to be done.  This is why I'm a bit daunted.  It should be fine, but removing metal from my new frame is going to take careful planning and a lot of preparation.  So speaking of planning and preparation, I think my first step is to measure all the parts with my micrometer, and compare them to the specs in the Kuhnhausen book.  Next I'm going to try to figure out what - if any - of the other parts need to be replaced.  For example, if I know I'd rather have a different grip safety, then I want to order it now so it won't delay the project later.  The actual first step of the building process will be to either fit the trigger to the frame, or blending the undercut trigger guard above.  I suppose it depends on how much time I have when I finally sit down to start moving the chains on this project.  

Here's a rough outline of what needs to be done:

Blend undercut trigger guard.

Fit trigger to frame.

Fit hammer, sear, disconnecter.

Trigger job.

Fit and blend grip safety.

Fit firing pin stop.

Fit extractor.

Fit thumb safety.

Fit slide stop.

Do a general de-burring and pre-finish clean up.

Refinish.

Decide on grips.

Install sights.

Test fire.

Adjust ejector.

Lock-tite the grip bushings, trigger overtravel screw, and rear sight set screw.  

And that should be about it.