Handguns

As a category, custom M1911 pistols--and there are a lot of them out there these days--are a special type of gun, designed with a narrow set of features and qualities buyers expect to see. As a result, they almost look alike. Nearly all have a set of low-profile, quick-acquisition sights; a beavertail-type grip safety to prevent hammer bite; an enlarged and/or ambidextrous manual thumb safety; a tuned magazine release; and a beveled magazine well.

In reality it is fairly easy, with the long list of readily available "add-on" customizing accessories on the market, for even a hometown gunsmith to put together an $850 gun and claim to be offering a full-featured custom piece with the same qualities as one of the top-grade pistolsmiths who get $2,000 or more for their products.

So what makes a 1911 from a custom pistol builder worth the price? Is it just cosmetics? Is it just a fee for the cachet of a signature on the gun? Or is there something in the combination of mechanical refinement and aesthetic craftsmanship that places a master's work in a class by itself? I think there is.

One thing that sets the new Ed Brown Special Forces M1911 apart is Ed Brown himself. Brown, a longtime competitive shooter, machinist, tool and die maker/designer and gunsmith, has been working on 1911s seriously since the 1970s, when his fellow competitor shooters began bringing him their guns for trigger jobs. In 1988 he quit his full-time job at a die-casting company to become a custom gunmaker and parts manufacturer. All this experience has taught him a thing or two about pistols and the people who make them.

"There's no one single thing that sets one pistolsmith's gun apart from anybody else's gun," he says. "A lot of people are gadget-oriented. They want this gadget to go on the end or this gadget to go on the back. The good custom pistol makers aren't into gadgets; they're into the combination of the entire gun--with all the accessories added in."

His new Special Forces (Model SF-BB) pistol is a case in point. It's a plain-looking, all-black, no-frills full-size Government Model that reminds me of those old police pursuit sedans of the 1970s--just an ordinary car you wouldn't even notice in traffic but one that could blow anything else off the road if necessary.

The five-inch M1911 is all steel and weighs 38 ounces with the unloaded magazine inserted. It begins with Brown's forged frame and a slide made in-house on Brown's own equipment. All holes in the frame are located in one setup, which makes for a precise relationship and allows the parts fitters to control alignment throughout the process. (Cont.)