I have some opinions on this, but I post here as a student of this and not as a teacher. I suggest putting 1,000 rounds minimum through the gun before I would consider it good to carry (this for a 1911 mainly). I broke in a baer TRS and fired 1175 rounds in two days. I did not clean the gun for these two days or prior to shooting it. I, personally would NOT worry about any failures of the gun (unless I thought the gun was no longer safe to fire) for the first 500-1000 rounds. The reason is two-fold for this large number of rounds. First, the parts needs to be broken in. But, second, if something is going to break then it will probably do so in the first 1,000 rounds of hard shooting. It would be bad to fire 200 rounds and then either A) holster the gun and begin to carry it OR B) send it off for the custom work you really want and THEN, after either of those things happen have it break on you because a 10 dollar part broke. I use all standard velocity hardball for a break in period. I make sure to load the mags at least 24 hours prior to shooting so the mags can take a little set. It sucks to have a gun that doesn't work and not know if it is the mags or the gun. I also use some wilson combat mags (or all wilson mags) when breaking in as they are the best mags available (I think) and good enough that they remove the potential mag problem from the equation. Once I had completed this break in period I would clean the gun really, really well. I mean like Q-tip well, then I would take a magnifying glass and check everything out and look for anything odd. If it was still good to go I would load it with ball and carry it for a few days so it could pick up whatever lint or dust my daily life is going to expose it to. Then I would take it to the range and fire my carry mags of ammo, then I would load my preferred JHP ammo and run some of that through and see if it worked. If I could afford it I would run not less than 200 rounds of this preferred carry ammo through the gun. If I had NO malfunctions of any kind then I would figure that gun is good to go for me to carry.
If I couldn't do this for financial reasons then I would carry a wheel gun (like a SW 4" .357, for me it would be an older "pre-arrangement gun) until I could do this. For me all this would have to be done using the holster I was going to carry it in and I would need to have actually carried it for a few days to make sure the test was realistic. Everytime something was changed (like a guide rod or a spring system or whatever) I would need to re-verify that the gun was still reliable.
However, I am a reliablity freak. I am having Dane build me a 3K$ gun for this very reason. I'm not buying it because it looks cool or is super accurate (although I'm sure those things will be evident). I am doing that because that is the best way I know to remove unknowns from the reliability equation. I will have way too much stuff to worry about if it all ever really goes down. Even with the gun at 100% I am going to have plenty to worry about, this advice is just how I minimize the unknowns as much as I can. Maybe I am over-reacting here, but this is what I need to do for me to feel good about carrying a 1911.
Last, I wouldn't do any changes to the sight's point of aim until all this was done. Good mags and ammo can make this process a whole lot easier. Anyway, that was long-winded. I think you got yourself a really nice pistol, congratulations, I hope it serves you well.
Jake
