Quote:
P.S. Scott - Care to elaborate? Very nice pistol.
Brian,
The pistol started out as a stock carbon steel Baer Stinger with night sights. I might be the only 1911 shooter who cannot shoot night sights worth a darn and pays to have them removed from a pistol. Due to my eyes, I also have unusual sight requirements in that I like a very narrow rear notch paired with a front sight allowing very little light visible around the front sight. The desired sight picture is very close to a Bo-Mar Bullseye sight picture. Believe it or not, I shoot that sight picture faster than any other and with considerably more accuracy. To do this in today's world, John gets a Yo-Bo PG rear sight that has no rear notch cut and cuts a custom notch that works well with the narrowest front sight blank he has. The end result is a modern sight that allows me to shoot as well as I can. This is the third pistol that John has worked his magic to create my desired sight picture. For me, it is one of the things that makes these guns bespoke. Like all of mine, it is sighted for 230-grain standard velocity ammo.
I also like my guns to slingshot, and some Baer Commander-length guns do not do this out of the box. This Stinger is one of them. Anyway this one went to John for new sights, a serious dehorn, a short trigger, and some machining to make it slingshot by increasing the slide travel. I also asked John to look it over to make sure it will always go bang and gave him
carte blanche to replace parts as needed. Like most of my projects, it grew once I got to John's shop.
He had a pair of burl maple blanks sitting in his box of blanks I thought would make great grips. That led to cleaning up the front strap and its checkering. The butt was rounded as well to make the gun even easier to carry. We decided to refinish the pistol with Ion Bond over polished flats and matte rounds. The pictures allow the grips to speak for themselves. The fit of the grips to the frame is amazing; I cannot feel the transistion from metal to wood. If anyone has a pistol at John's shop for some work, I highly recommend letting him fit grips to it. The end result makes the gun feel even better in the hand. I swear the grips make the gun more controllable. Perceived recoil with the finished gun is comparable to some five-inch guns I own.
This one is a real shooter. Since I got it back, it has made a few range trips where it has proven to be totally reliable and scary accurate. I even tried it on the fifty-yard line and was able to hit a large Maxwell House coffee can more often than I missed.
My wife likes this one and wants a 9x19 just like it. She has already asked me to order her the Caspian frame. That might be the highest compliment I can pay since my wife's Harrison gun is a gorgeous blued ivory stocked Series '70.
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