David Sams = Never again...
I just had a very poor experience with David Sams.
I had a new Springfield Custom Carry that I wanted to change up just for personal preference, and I didn't think the extractor was tuned properly.
I sent it to Mr Sams because I heard great things about his work and had seen some pics of a few MEUSOC clones he built.
I called him and told him what I had and that I wanted the same hammer pictured on the MEUSOC on his site and I wanted an Ed Brown thumb safety. I explained to him that I really liked his MEUSOC builds and that I basically wanted the same thing but with a single side safety. I had a Harrison trigger that I'd send in with the gun.
Promptly he told me Springfield Custom guns are junk, built with junk parts by people who don't know squat about 1911s for $10/hr. Oookay... Maybe he has an ax to grind with Springfield. Shoulda pulled the pin on the transaction right then, but poor judgement prevailed.
When I was trying to explain to him what I wanted, he kept saying "ok, yeah, mm hmm, yeah, yeah, ok, alright" at the same time I was talking, obviously he wasn't listening to me. Ok. The guy is probably busy, he's a one-man outfit and doesn't have time to chat. I'll leave a list of what I want in the box with the gun. Shoulda hung up on him and found a different 'smith, but poor judgement prevailed.
I send the gun in and wait. Called to tell him not to checker the frontstrap, and to please be sure to call me before he shipped it back because I was living/working in three different locations all summer. "Ok, no problem" he says.
Fast forward a couple weeks, I was paying bills, so I called him to pay him, didn't ask about the gun, just payed for it (an obscene amount of money for the work, he wanted a few bucks shy of $1K for basically a hammer, a thumb safety and an extractor, but he came down to $740..) reminded him again to please call me before he shipped it. "Okay, no problem. Call before I ship."
So I get home the other day and my neighbor shows up with a box. "This came for you the other day." WTF is it? A 1911 from Dave Sams. I told him to call but, oh well, I'm glad to get my gun back and I'm glad my neighbor ain't a thief.
Open the box, I have a parkerized 1911 wearing a stainless steel thumb safety and a stainless steel hammer. The thumb safety feels like shit. It's soft and mushy when engaged and very difficult to re-engage, does not 'snick' up into safe, just mushes up with no click. The spare extractor he fit is not fit to the rear of the slide, it's been buffed off with a Dremel and looks like a little dome sticking out the back of the slide.
I call him and told him I didn't like anything he did and that I was more than a little sick about stainless stuff on my parked gun. He told me parts were hard to get and that was all he could find, and that stainless was more durable than carbon because carbon would rust away. Ok. Where's my old parts? I'll cut my loss and return the gun to stock. He threw 'em away...