A gunsmith acquaintance swears by Caspian Arms, and likes those from Nighthawk as well. His is not a garage-shop operation either. He builds custom long arms and handguns for various folks with money, including those who write for national gun rags.
Personally, I have two Kimber .45s and a Colt Ace (.22). The Ace has a good day when it can feed a ten round magazine without jamming. The 5” Kimber, stainless, produced a few stovepipes during break in, nothing more serious, and then settled down.
I’ve got a Kimber CQB, three-inch barrel with the meltdown treatment. First day at the range it fired flawlessly with 180 and 165-grain Federal “Personal Defense” loads and 50 rounds of hardball. Took it home, cleaned it, and then started flicking the safety on and off, hammer back, while it was pointed in a safe direction of course. About 10-15 repetitions later, the slide safety simply snapped off under my thumb while flicking the lever down to the “off safe” position.
I’ve never had a gun that had fractured parts fall off of it, much less a $1,000 gun from a so-called factory custom shop—but that’s the only one of its type that I've owned. Anyway, Kimber sent out a replacement safety lever immediately when asked. But I’m going back to Ed Brown’s slide stops and external safety levers. Never thought a failure like that would happen to me, but what the . . .?
Also, save some money for a good trigger job after you break in the gun.
