My first 1911 build

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dakota.potts

New member
After receiving a scholarship and student membership to the American Pistolsmiths Guild, I was sent a lot of tools and small parts from various companies to build a 1911. I am in my final semester of gunsmithing school where I have the most freedom in my own education and support from the teachers to specialize. After receiving the help I did from these companies, and having one year to complete two handguns for full membership into the Guild, I decided it was time to start with my first full custom 1911.

I had a lot of small parts already, but none of the major components, so I called up Caspian. Not only are they fantastic to gunsmith students (giving a full FFL/retail discount on new products), I also found out they were running a 50% off sale on all slides that were currently cut and in inventory. I didn't get exactly the features I wanted (different sight cuts for one), but I saved a ton of money. All told, I got the frame, slide, grip safety, damascus plunger tube, slide stop, and a couple other small parts for less than $450 shipped!

I still need a barrel, safety, recoil spring assembly, barrel and bushing and a couple other parts, but what I have will keep me busy until then. I am probably going to try to complete the rest of the gun with parts from Ed Brown and Wilson Combat.

The plan is for a tuned custom sporting handgun in a high gloss hot blue finish with exotic wood grips, target sights, and some nitre blued accents (inspired by some of the Wilson Combat Supergrade models I've seen). I am going for a a classic and elegant yet slightly modernized look - no pic rail, cheese grater serrations, squared off slide, etc.

I will update as progress is made, but I am told it is slow with these guns.

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Good luck with your endeavors in building your custom pistols for the Guild.

After many years of building custom 1911 pistols plus doing some other gun smith work on all types of guns I retired the first of this year and closed my shop.

I built my business on being honest with my clients, built quality guns with the best top shelf parts available and never bad mouthed another man's work to sell my own.

Best Regards
Bob Hunter
 
If you ever plan to go into building guns for a living, doing well at the major competitions, if not winning them outright, seems to go a long way in getting customers. :)
So don't neglect your shooting skills in favor of your gunsmithing ones.
Lots of youtube demonstration videos seems to help, too :)
 
Bob, thank you for the earnest advice and congratulations on your retirement. I hope I can continue to do service to the craft passed down from creators such as yourself.

g.willikers, in fact one of my New Years' Goals I'm still working on is to shoot more competitions. The first weekend of March I'm taking the CZ 452 from my other thread to an NRA light rifle shoot, and my two handgun projects will be following me to a couple competitions when they're finished. Have to find my niche in those types of shooting events yet, but showing up to some more can't hurt.
 
Placed an order through Brownell's today for all the other mechanical parts I need. Ed Brown semi-fitted match barrel and Bushing, and a spattering of Ed Brown/Wilson Combat parts for the rest. No grips or sights ordered yet, but enough to build the rest of the gun.

Should be able to start working on it next week. Been reading a lot of Kunhausen in preparation.
 
This is so cool, be sure to post pics of the finished product. I tell my wife that my "dream retirement job" is to be a part time gunsmith. That's a number of years off, so for now I'll settle with fitting triggers and thumb safeties to my own pistols.
 
Got the rest of my major mechanical parts in the mail today. No sights or grips yet, but that will wait until further in the build due to budgetary constraints.

Most of the parts fit better than expected. The trigger shoe will definitely need to be fitted but thankfully is aluminum so that should go pretty quickly. The slide and frame will definitely need fitting. The bushing fits snugly and goes most of the way in so it should just need some light, high-grit sanding. Many of the other parts are true drop ins, which I was happy about.

Can't wait to actually start working on it. No excuses now, with all the major parts in hand.

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