Love them or hate them, the prolific 1911 has garnered (an often undeserved) reputation for poor reliability. For those who may be new to the platform or an experienced shooter brushing up on their platform knowledge, Modern Service Weapons has posted a detailed overview of 1911 failure methods.

Failure to Extract, commonly known as “The Double Feed”

Hilton Yam covers the full gamut of malfunctions including failure to eject, failure to extract in pictured detail. On top of the great photos, MSW offers the likely cause of each malfunction so the shooter can troubleshoot. For a visual person such as myself, this is a great primer to better understand the platform and build a base to ensure I can pull the most out of it.

“High Angle” malfunction, or the “Bolt over Base”