Acc-u-rail

I think they are just not necessary for USPSA. The accuracy demands are not as great, and only an open gun with its frame mounted sight really needs a super tight slide to frame fit. Even then, I'd bet there were less than 5 accurailed guns out of the 200 plus at the Mississippi State match a few weeks ago. (I should have looked, I shot 75% of them at the chrono!)

Many/most slides and frames are better today then they were in the past, metallurgy wise, and if fit well from the start they will last a really long time without the need for additional parts. Not talking trash, but I've personally seen accurails break more than once. Granted we are talking about over a 10 year period. One was on Cliff's old Para that he sold to Matt. I think his reasoning for railing is that Para frames aren't as durable as some others and will loosen up over many thousands of rounds if not railed. Anyway, I've seen broken rails cost a shooter a second or two and other times a stage. It wasn't hard to get them back up and running at all, but if it's it not necessary to have them why take the chance?

In my personal opinion, which is admittedly isn't worth much, I don't think I would do them on a new gun for any discipline. I'd rather have an oversize quality frame (SV/STI/Caspian, etc) and slide fit up tight and go with it. If I had an old gun and was really trying to ring every last bit of accuracy out of it or just wanted it tight again, I'd consider railing it and would go this route over peening/squeezing or welding up and recutting. The ability to tighten them up by just going to a slightly larger rail is sweet. That being said, if it was an iron sight USPSA gun, I'd probably leave the slide to frame fit alone and maybe fit a new barrel and just shoot.

My old SV that I competed with for 7 - 8 years or so has a small amount of vertical play in the slide/frame fit now, but it is far from wore out or in need of changing anything. It will still shoot about a fist sized group or better at 50 yards with just about any ammo I put through it. It would supposedly do 1.5" when new at that distance, but I honestly could never shoot it that well and never saw groups that small. It's hard to say how much, but I'd say groups have opened up a little bit over time, but is it due to slide/frame wear or the fact that it has 45 - 50K jacketed bullets down the tube? It doesn't really matter to me, as it is still plenty accurate enough for USPSA.

My $.02...