How many custom 1911's

**C4IGrant** · 10-26-06, 18:01

Can a full custom shop (like Ed Brown, WC, NH, etc) produce in a month?? 10? 20? 50? 100? What do you guys think?

We know that production guns (Kimber, Springfield, etc) turn out tons of them as they do very little fitting/tuning to their 1911's. But, what about custom shop?

C4

**Aubrey** · 10-26-06, 20:21

Ed Brown no longer does custom pistols as far as I know.

**Robb Jensen** · 10-26-06, 20:30

Originally Posted by C4IGrant

Can a full custom shop (like Ed Brown, WC, NH, etc) produce in a month?? 10? 20? 50? 100? What do you guys think?

We know that production guns (Kimber, Springfield, etc) turn out tons of them as they do very little fitting/tuning to their 1911's. But, what about custom shop?

C4

I think we wait 2-3 months for Les Baer, 10 months for RRA pistols. Nighthawk seems to take 2-3 months. The very best 1911 I've seen come through the shop is a Yost-Bonitz.

**trio** · 10-26-06, 21:40

i ordered my yobo in may, and the last time i spoke to them (about 2 weeks ago) they had not begun it yet....

**rob_s** · 10-27-06, 08:15

None of the companies listed turn out custom guns. They will, for a fee, make adjustments to their standard high-end production guns, but they do not produce custom guns.

**K.L. Davis** · 10-27-06, 08:38

When I was somewhat "serious" about building 1911s, I would have to call them fully custom, I had no catalouged designs... running about 2 a month was comfortable -- if I quit my day job, that would double.

**C4IGrant** · 10-27-06, 10:04

Sorry folks, my brain was thinking about full custom weapons when I was typing.

The question is, how many 1911's do you think come out of say WC, Brown, NH, etc a month?

C4

**C4IGrant** · 10-27-06, 10:20

Originally Posted by K.L. Davis

When I was somewhat "serious" about building 1911s, I would have to call them fully custom, I had no catalouged designs... running about 2 a month was comfortable -- if I quit my day job, that would double.

That sounds about right to me. Where I am going with this is that, the big name boys produce HUGE numbers of 1911's a month (100 or more) and some of them only have about 4-6 smiths on duty. Here is the kicker, a 1911 with a lot of attention to detail spent on it (polishing, tuning, etc) takes somewhere around 50-80hrs hours to produce (if not more)!

So we (this includes me) are spending $2k-$3K on a production gun that has almost NO hand work.

I am also willing to bet, that the guns don't have more than $800-$900 worth of parts in them.

I now find that I can have and produce a custom gun with much higher grade parts, better coating that is hand polished (read no machine), tuned, blended, etc for $2,500!

When I first got into 1911's I believed that the big name 1911 makers were semi-custom to full custom and that is why they were $2,500-$3,000 (or more). After a lot of research and questions asked, I now realize that I didn't get anything more than a production weapon with SOME upgraded parts, SOME fitting/blending and nothing more.

Edited to add: What I mean by full custom is that someone is going over the weapon by hand (no machine polishing, etc) not just adding some parts to their normal "production" gun.

C4

**rob_s** · 10-27-06, 10:38

A gun can be production and still be hand made/fit. Rock River Arms standard models are a perfect example of this. I believe that Wilson, Nighthawk, and Ed Brown (to name a few) are the exact same way. As far as I know at least a couple of these shops also have one guy working on any given pistol from start to finish, rather than an assembly line with a guy that just sits there and installs sights all day.

It's not like any of these shops has a big machine that they feed steel into at one end and have a pistol spit out the other ready for grips.