Threading the Condor Frame

I’ve finished the tooling and have done a few frames now. They are beautiful! Will get a few pics up when I get home.

Threading the LDC into the frame has its distinct advantages. For those of you with 12″ barrels, you don’t really have much to worry about; the barrel sticks out only a couple inches past the forward bushing. If you have a 17″-18″ barrel, it stops right near the front of the condor/TSS frame. Anything longer, of course, sticks out past the frame. Here is the rub:

Pretty much everyone out there making LDCs have a hard time mounting the ldc to the frame; some of the problem is that the frames come in all sorts of sizes, varying in internal diameter by several thousands, and also because the inside (and outside) of frame isn’t exactly round. So they make a best guess as to diameter and hope it fits, or else you have to send them your frame so they can custom make an ldc to fit. Other problems are also: the end of the frame isn’t square to the bore (I’ve found them to be waaaaaaaaaay off in some instances) or the end of the frame may have been damaged or nicked.

So, when they make LDCs, they just make a slip fit collar and use the little grub screw to hold the LDC in place. Some of you have had prior issues with the screw hole “migrating” due to repeated use. Others have had ldcs shoot off or damaged. The reason is, this collar-grubscrew thing is nowhere near adequate. It DOES NOT hold the ldc in good alignment with the barrel; it would flap around like a sheet in a gale storm if not for one thing: people making ldcs realize the weakness of the collar design and about 1/3 or so of the way up, they put a second close fitting collar INSIDE the ldc. This second collar goes around the barrel and grips it, and actually aligns the ldc and keeps it from flapping around. This is a good thing, because if it weren’t there, the ldc would be held only by the rear collar/grub screw. But it is far, far from desirable.

What you have is tension on the barrel… your ldc is held in alignment by the barrel itself. The barrel is no longer a ‘free floating’ design. If you have one of these ldcs, DON’T rest the ldc against something when you shoot, especially near the forward end. It WILL change the point of impact.

This is one of the reasons I bothered to develop the tooling to thread the front of the condor frame. When I thread the frame, the first step is to TRUE the inside of the frame so it is absolutely, positively ROUND so the threads will also be exactly round. I also true the END of the frame, so it is EXACTLY perpendicular to the bore. And believe me, I was surprised at how far off one of my frames was. It wasn’t even a straight cut; it was sort of like a pie crust, wavering back and forth, up and down, in and out.

The quality of the threading is pure Class III; when screwing the threaded ldc into the threaded condor frame, there is a silky smooth, slight resistance that tells me there is no play, a perfect fit. When the threaded ldc locks up against the frame, it stops SUDDENLY, immediately; there is no draaaag and then slow tightening. This tells me the two surfaces (forward edge of the frame and trailing edge of the ldc-extrusion) are EXACTLY parallel to each other, ALL of it comes into contact around the entire circumference at the same time and ensures perfect alignment of the ldc-extrusion). If you have ever played with custom or mil spec hardware, where everything is single point threaded, you know what I mean.

Because the ldc-extrusion is held in place and in alignment by the threads and by the above forward edge-trailing edge contact, there is no need for the second collar inside the ldc. The barrel can again be free floated, the way it is supposed to be. Accuracy improves. The gun itself is more robust, the extrusion is no longer a fragile piece bracing itself against the barrel; it is now solidly bonded to the frame itself. There are no adverse effects; the gun can still be disassembled as normal, by sliding the components forward and out without taking off the ldc; it stays on as a permanent piece of the gun.

aloha,
walt