Ed Brown Custom Firearms

[Arkansas Paul]

I just looked through a Ed Brown catalouge and man, those things look good. Has anyone out there had experience with their rifles? I've seen a few pics of some 1911s on here, but never any rifles. My question is, are they worth the hefty price tag? I know that there are many people out there who can afford such rifles, but what would you be gaining? Is there a performance difference? I mean, you could by 4 Browning X-Bolts, or 3 Weatherby MKVs for the price of 1 Ed Brown. Now I've always been of the opinion that if you can afford it, go for it. But would you rather have one Ed Brown than 4 X-Bolts. This is just my observation and I'm sure others have different opinions. What do you think?

 

[windjammer]

Not me......The price you pay is for a name. No way they are worth the price IMO.....

 

[chuckusaret]

There is one shooter in my area that has a 1911 style Ed Brown pistol, looks great, shoots great but $3,000, no way.

 

[browningguy]

Their pistols are great, but when I spend that much money on a rifle I expect some fine walnut and a little engraving. To be honest I don't believe any of the high end plastic stocked rifles are worth the prices they get, but apparantly a lot of people do.

 

[Dravur]

Ed Brown makes plastic rifles?

So.... engraving and walnut are worth it... but precision machining isn't....OK

 

[mljdeckard]

The law of diminishing returns kicks in here. Once you have reached a certain level of quality, any improvements is going to cost a lot more than the return it will give. Are they fantastic? Well, yeah. Worth it? It depends on how much you need the upper 5% of improvements that will cost you 50% of the price. (Not to me.)

I'm reminded of Pulp Fiction: "WOW!! That is a great milkshake. It might be the best milkshake I've ever tasted. But it ain't worth $5."

 

[navajo]

ed brown

Don't know about his rifles but his 1911 parts are the best.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

Get this. Someone mentioned the plastic stocks. You can get an exhibition grade walnut stock for a paltry $2100 upgrade. I have nothing against people who own these expensive firearms, I was just taken aback by a $4000 - $5000 tag on a rifle. I just think like a country boy. Personally I would rather have several very nice rifles than one custom rifle. I realize not everyone shares this opinion and that's okay. I was just wondering if you guys and gals agreed.

 

[browningguy]

So.... engraving and walnut are worth it... but precision machining isn't....OK

Absolutely! Other opinions may differ, but mine is certainly at least as valid as yours and your attempt to belittle my opinion would be insulting if I cared.

Knowing just a little bit about machining, Brown's machines are not any better than anyone elses, and his tooling isn't any better. The cost you are paying is for the inefficiencies of building essentially one-off rifles and having a good "name" in the business, it really has little or nothing to do with the machining. Basically any manufacturer can machine to the same tolerances the custom guys do, they just don't want to spend the time and money to do it in a production mode because most people will not pay the extra 20% cost for it. So you have to have something more than close tolerance machining to have a bolt action rifle worth more than $2k or so in my book.

The gunsmith that assembled my custom Mauser used very good tooling and machines, the rifle looks and shoots great, and was worth every bit of the roughly $1100 I have in it. Of course I used a WWII era VZ-24 Mauser action, a cheap B&C stock (which has held up extremely well over the years), a cheap Douglas XX barrel (which shoots just about everything under 1"), and a KG gunkote finish (which wears like iron). However the quality of the finish and the action trueing he did is first class.

I could go on about the custom Mauser I had built in .458 Winchester, but you get the point. But as I said, I have no problem with people that do want to spend the money on one, they are fine rifles and you won't have any problems with them. But to me all these type guns (including mine) are just tools, it takes something more to make them special.