LTW silent aution benefit... custom 1911

**Ned Christiansen** · 10-11-08, 13:54

Note: This thread came over to the new 1911-specific forum as my "headline"....... but it contained some out-of-date info regarding a silent auction for LTW (louderthanwords.us). I edited it today, 10-22-10, to bring it up to date and better reflect what goes on in my shop. So, the first three posts after the initial one are relevant to the original post from 2008.
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This Colt Commander was first done by me in 2004. It came back for a new rear sight and a refinish-- Tungsten DLC over chrome by Metaloy.

The owner is a suit-and-tie kind of cop. I've written about him before. The way he dresses for work doesn't mean he's not an action guy-- he definitely is. He's high-end in every way, including his gun-handling skills.

Lots and lots of Conamyds.... some big ones, and some small ones!

The magwell. This is made by me from a block of 4130 steel, TIG'd on very securely. It has a minimal outer profile and adds no height or width to the pistol, but gives a pretty big target for the incoming mag. Mainspring housing also made by me, from 7075 aluminum.

Magwell from top/side.

The sights. Front and rear are made by me, to the customer's basic concept-- he likes a big sight and wide-open sight picture. So the front has an insert of polished stainless to always give a big white dot; it has a recessed tritium lamp in it. Sight is swaged and silver-brazed onto the slide

The rear is a Shield Driver, modified again to his specs, basically opened up to accommodate the big front. Recessed tritium lamp again......... this was one of the reasons this gun came back for a makeover. The previous rear sight, made to his specs, turned out to be just too sharp. This is a well-dressed cop and the rear sight was costing him blazer linings. The new rear does everything the old one did, and better, and is non-snaggy in the extreme.

The backstrap....... MSH has a slot milled in for a lanyard. Often enough whith this guy, the suit comes off and the BDU's and armor go on.

And the loud part.......

I would like it noted that so as to not appear to be the shameless shill for Asym Ammo that I am, I included some other brands in the pics!

**VA_Dinger** · 10-12-08, 09:29

Ned, thanks for the heads up.

I'm sure many M4C members would be glad to help out and get a shot at winning that stunning work-of-art custom 1911.

**Ned Christiansen** · 10-12-08, 10:02

Thanks. I was worried I might have been pushing things by posting this.

Bigger news, within a few weeks I think, americnasnipers.org will be opening the raffle for this year's collaborative effort. Tickets will be $10 each.... last year our project gun for as.org netted them $36,020.... our parallel charity raffle for Cops For Kids (pediatric cancer research funding) brought in $28,000-some.

**Ned Christiansen** · 10-13-08, 12:18

This silent auction is still up and running until this evening (Monday Oct 13)....

Good chance to get a collaboration work of some great smiths that otherwise a guy'd have to wait a long time for.......

**Ned Christiansen** · 10-22-10, 08:04

..... And here's one I did for the same guy a couple years ago. As you can tell, he really likes the Conamyds.

It is finished in Ion Bond's Tungsten DLC. Sending hours and hours of work out to be refinished is always "pins and needles" time for me but wow, did they do this right. One never knows how much one's carefully-written instructions will be ignored..... but IB just blew me away with their attention to detail. Everything I asked to be left polished-- not blasted-- was. Rails. The entire barrel. The Hammer face. Feedramp...... hammer hooks, sear, all that stuff. Great job, Ion Bond.

Not to mention what a beautiful finish it is. Deep black when polished, almost like an old Colt blue, and when blasted, a very dark charcoal, just short of black. Dry it off with solvent and it goes much lighter, but with a little oil, much darker.

They say it doesn't give the corrosion resistance that something like chrome would. I have not really tested it. But this gun is all stainless anyway, so......

It is a duty gun for a high-ranking police officer. He's quite a 1911 enthusiast-- this is not the only custom 1911 he owns and not the only one I've built him. He appreciates good leather too and if I know "C", he already has or has on order several pieces of Bulman leather for it. "C" put away his uniform some years ago and now puts on a suit and tie for work, but he is not a "suit and tie guy". For him, this is not a kick-back-and-relax position, where a guy can get by just acting important. He's a doer, and he's a shooter. He trains hard and often with the pistol and carbine, with some of the best, and at times as their assistant. He is a big influence on his department's approach to training and policy, keeping things up to date. He puts in long, hard days constructing rock-solid cases against lots and lots of the people who need putting away the most. When it's time to make the arrests, he's not choreographing things over the radio from the Starbuck's six blocks away. He's there, doing, sweating in his armor with the rest of the guys, well "within range". No idea how many times he's seen the elephant but he was seriously trampled by it more than once and more than once he has trampled it right back. He is a good customer and I'm proud to also have him as a great friend.

This gun had to have a Dawson rail. To maintain the stainless theme, I made the rail from scratch since the stainless ones available have been, in my experience, chrome-plated carbon steel. As has become my SOP for mounting these, I used bigger screws with a finer thread than the ones normally used.

"C" prefers the Big Dot front sight. We've tried a couple different approaches, on one gun I basically recreated this sight but the big white dot was gold. This time we just went with the standard Ashely part. The rear is made by me from 420 stainless, in a non-standard "Shield Driver" configuration. Big flat on slide plus serrated upright abutment on the front of the sight = a good slide racking tool.

The trigger was drilled by me-- it's an EGW with a solid OT stop, no screw to come loose. I tried to get these made a couple years ago and was glad when EGW came out with them. They only come in "real long", so I recut the trigger face and serrated it.

Lots of Wilson parts-- the grip safety, barrel (keeping it stainless remember), thumb safeties, slide stop, sear, extractors (two of them), and the mag catch. The mainspring housing is from Legacy Custom. The magwell was made by me, 420 stainless again, then it is TIG'd on and blended. Grips are Simonich Gunners that have been thinned out.

You can still shoot a group with that big front sight, I'm tellin' ya. Now the rear is not that wide-open "V", it's a slightly wider than normal "U" notch, but I've found even with the true Express sights, accuracy does not suffer as much as one might think. This gun anyway will go well under two inches at 28 yards using "C"'s duty load, WW 230 SXT's, a good duty load if ever there was one.

**Dave Berryhill** · 10-22-10, 09:31

That's a very cool Buck Rodgers blaster Ned! I like the front sight that you made on your original pistol better than the XS. The XS only comes with a round profile on the top of the sight and it while it's fast to pick up that big dot, I have a hard time aligning the rounded top of the front sight with the top of the rear sight when doing precision shooting. I tried to get XS to make one that was a square post with a big dot but they weren't interested.