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Good to stimulate discussion.
My real point is that for a lot of the "custom" guns what you are really paying for is the fact that many of these brands are selling hand-made guns with hand-fitted components. While expensive and impressive, this approach does not yield a superior gun as compared to modern state-of-the-art digital manufacturing techniques using statistical quality control and quality metals and components.
Personally I look askance at "hand fitted" guns. If the manufacturing technique is so imperfect as to require "hand fitting" of parts, I do not see this as a good thing. For two centuries the holy grail of gun manufacturing was to manufacture parts with sufficient quality and precision that hand fitting was not necessary. This has now been achieved and hand fitting of parts is regression not progress.
The humble Ruger SR1911, which does not have a match barrel even, is still a superb gun for the money and is mainly the product of good manufacturing processes.
Sure Les Baer and some of the others make fine firearms. But I have seen Baers that had slides so tight that the gun was not reliable until it had fired many hundreds of rounds. In fact I believe that is what they tell their buyers. That is not indicative of 21st century manufacturing techniques.
My two DW PM7-45s were tight as hell out of the box and still are thousands of rounds later. But they operated correctly from the first round and to this day I have never had a FTF, stovepipe, or anything like that. (This is mostly shooting reloads and Blazers and other mediocre ammunition.) To the extent that Baers do not meet this criteria, yes, it will shoot their lights out.
Off my soapbox now...
My real point is that for a lot of the "custom" guns what you are really paying for is the fact that many of these brands are selling hand-made guns with hand-fitted components. While expensive and impressive, this approach does not yield a superior gun as compared to modern state-of-the-art digital manufacturing techniques using statistical quality control and quality metals and components.
Personally I look askance at "hand fitted" guns. If the manufacturing technique is so imperfect as to require "hand fitting" of parts, I do not see this as a good thing. For two centuries the holy grail of gun manufacturing was to manufacture parts with sufficient quality and precision that hand fitting was not necessary. This has now been achieved and hand fitting of parts is regression not progress.
The humble Ruger SR1911, which does not have a match barrel even, is still a superb gun for the money and is mainly the product of good manufacturing processes.
Sure Les Baer and some of the others make fine firearms. But I have seen Baers that had slides so tight that the gun was not reliable until it had fired many hundreds of rounds. In fact I believe that is what they tell their buyers. That is not indicative of 21st century manufacturing techniques.
My two DW PM7-45s were tight as hell out of the box and still are thousands of rounds later. But they operated correctly from the first round and to this day I have never had a FTF, stovepipe, or anything like that. (This is mostly shooting reloads and Blazers and other mediocre ammunition.) To the extent that Baers do not meet this criteria, yes, it will shoot their lights out.
Off my soapbox now...
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