I just shipped this one. It came back from Ion Bond the other day. 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 indeed 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.
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! I know this is not the first time you have gone to these lengths to keep that theme and each time I am amazed. So few people whould bother when the gun will be finished to hide the fact....total commitment!
