A little judicious polishing never hurt anything, but I'm not a fan of cutting springs. I know lots of people do it and it works for them, but a 1911 spring kit from Wolff is less than $10, and those springs are both high-quality and designed to work together. The latter point is important: the 1911 is easily worked on, which makes it easily screwed up by over-enthusiastic "improvements".
I'll second the suggestion of getting Kuhnhausen's book; it is worth 5x what you pay for it. When you understand the genius of JMB's design, you will understand why (for example) apparently mundane and unrelated things like extractor tension and magazine feed lip geometry work together.
I'll second the suggestion of getting Kuhnhausen's book; it is worth 5x what you pay for it. When you understand the genius of JMB's design, you will understand why (for example) apparently mundane and unrelated things like extractor tension and magazine feed lip geometry work together.
