Copy & pasted from "Modifying the 1911" by John Higginbotham...... What about recoil shock buffers. Well, I have experimented with these for years and was on hand when the Wilson version was invented – or at lest conceived. I can see the logic in this but over the years I have gradually gotten away from using them in my serious self defense guns. I do use them in my practice guns just to be on the safe side. The problem is, and it is different with each individual gun, that these things can get chewed up and spread out and cause the gun to become unreliable. This is a bad thing in a defense gun. I was having trouble with a Wilson Combat Master ( this was a $1500 pistol in 1985) running with ball ammo and McCormick magazines. Now the gun was good, the mags were good, the ammo was Winchester ball and the gun was clean when I started shooting it. Oiling the barrel hood made it run better but it still choked. I did not discover the problem until I got home. The shock-buff was smashed and a bit of it was pushing upwards on the underside of the barrel. Needles to say, that gun no longer carries a shock-buff. Yet they seem to work in some other guns. What is really needed is a sort of "sandwich" which has steel in front buffer in-between and steel in the back so that it won’t get chewed. However this can all interfere with the reward travel of the slide and the odds of the slide locking back on the last shot – especially on a Commander. Shock buffs may save your gun from battering if you shoot 1,000 rounds a week but it may also cause problems – buyer beware.
