[ILLusion]

It helps if you identify the brand of ALL the parts you're using. You've indicated the outer barrel is Shooters Design. I would assume the compensator is as well, as most compensator/barrel sets use proprietary fittings.

What brand is the slide?

When doing fitment, you should do one section at a time. If you slap everything together in one go, it's almost guaranteed to have problems the moment you start firing. Unfortunately, not everybody follows standards, seeing as how Tokyo Marui's blueprint schematics for the production of their parts is a trade secret. Dimensions and tolerances are not openly available to aftermarket manufacturers, and thus, many products are based on parts that have a set of tolerances already set. When you introduce a third party's set of manufacturing tolerances, you get what is called "tolerance stacking", which can result in two wildly incompatible parts.

Mix different brands, and you will end up compounding this problem, particularly if one brand creates a change to one dimension in order to fix a problem while another brand does not do the same change.


Ultimately, it is almost always possible to get brand A to work with brand B, but the amount of work required will differ, depending on the specific brands in question.

If you want the least amount of work, it is almost always recommended to keep with the same brand.

Even I do not hide the fact that my own brand of products will fit with all other brands.


The first thing you should do when fitting a slide is to run the slide on the frame, with NOTHING installed in the slide. Just the bare slide. Run it along the lower frame and check movement on the rails. That would be the first place to look for problems between the slide and the frame. Generally, this is not where fitment problems are. On occasion, a bit of fitment may be required between the slide and frame, but generally, fitment problems are between the slide and chamber/barrel.