Imo before you build your own from the ground up, You should rebuild a turd into a diamond.
You will quickly see with just hand tools you can only do the most basic of jobs needed in building a 1911 from the ground up.
But starting with that turd you can do all the same things but most of the hard stuff is done already.
Plus you wont have fear of messing up that $1k frame and slide.
Ive rebuilt a gun from the pins and springs up and all that was from the original gun was the frame/slide and barrel and i replaced everything else and fit each part by hand and made sure i ordered over sized parts as drop in parts are just a waste of money imo.
My build went like this:
Dissasemble,order parts,wait,wait,parts come in, file,file, curse,file,reorder a better fitting part, wait, get part, file,file, move to next part,file,file,Curse and go back to first part and file it to make it work with the second part,file,file,move to next group of parts, spend a week looking for one that will fit,wait,wait,get it in, file once as i got lucky.
I could go on, But thats how it can go just fitting 3 parts.
And im not even taking into account all the sweat and fear of making the file slip and going too far. How the Master Smiths build guns from the ground up that look so amazing is beyond me. They may ask $3000 for it but if you ask me they should ask $6000 as i know what they went threw building that gun.
So what im saying is start slow, Get a cheap project gun and buy budget parts but good ones that are over sized and hand fit them. Then modify the gun how you like it and refinish it if you can as thats a whole new world also separate from building guns. Sending it out is usually better as refinishing is a long learning process just like building a 1911 is.