Custom 1911s; who has one and who made it?

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I got to choose pretty much every aspect of my Fusion, from frame and slide to sights to grips to trigger pull weight. I guess in theory what I did was say "I want one similar to the HUnter model but with these 10 changes."

I think we had 10-15 emails back and forth about specifics, and a few phone calls thrown in there. They were great to deal with. I think it took a little under 3 months from order time to arriving at my door, but I'd have to go check to see when I ordered it to be sure.

I'd consider it a custom, but it may just be a difference in terminology.
 
Anybody ever find a custom 1911 like one from Novak or Yost on the auction sites?
 
Clark

I only have one true custom, a Colt .38 super that was sent to Clark and hard chromed along with just about everything else you can think of. I got it used so cant say about price. Shoots like a dream!

J.B.
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there is a similar thread going on at Sigforum and Bruce Gray happened to post somthing rather insightful. I thought i'd share it here:

There's that old saying, "If you gotta say you are, you ain't." Look at a Para Ordnance advertisement for proof.

A top-drawer pistolsmith-artist, if you will, can articulate the difference between production work and his high grade custom work. If he couldn't, I fear he should have to quit our trade and do something else.

However, for my part it's not my place to make that distinction for others, nor at the expense of anyone else's efforts.

Having said that, I'm bemused almost to the point of offense to imagine anyone would compare the work of a Stan Chen to a Wilson, or a Baer, or another production pistol, however well done by the qualitative standards imposed by the laws of inverse economies of scale that prevent any such company from achieving more than some larger fraction of what a luminous, emerging talent like Stan can do far better and more efficiently on an individual, indeed CUSTOM, level.

The production shops are great at what they do: build lots of very good guns for a price. I've done that too, and it's hard, admirable work for which the better practitioners are to be respected.

However, you don't have to be Ayn Rand to see that in no way can the copy of a copy of an original piece embody the custom work, the ethos, that went into it's making. Confusing their products with high grade custom work does justice to neither in my opinion.

That's my take on it, with my obvious bias fully disclosed.
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Springfield Loaded frame and slide. I replaced and refitted everything else. 3 years and 12,000 or so rds. later, it has been and is still 100% reliable. Since this photo, I have replaced the rear sight with a Champion adjustable and high-polished the entire gun except for the top of the slide.

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Wait times are long on the big-name guys. You really get diminishing returns past a certain price point but having a gun from one of the big-name guys is more about pride of ownership than performance.

Just to rub it in, though, my 1911 (a complete build from parts) from Ned Christiansen took six weeks from when I contacted him until the time it was in my hands. That was nearly a decade ago, though, and he didn't even have a waiting list, much less a five-year one.
 
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