CT
Brian
By Patrick Sweeney
Excerpts from the book 1911 The First 100 Years
By Patrick Sweeney
Excerpts from the book 1911 The First 100 Years
Tim and I have this friendly rivalry-complaint going on now for a number of years; Tim is extremely fond of, and is noted for, his Browning Hi-Power treatment of the 1911 slide. Me, I'm not such a fan of it, so when it came time for him to send me a gun to peruse, he made sure that the one he sent was a "BHP slide" gun.
The best way to describe a CT Brian
gun is "radical traditional".
He does a
very aggressive
de-horning to
the bottom of the
slide,
which results in an almost beveled edge. That and the
frenched
borders set off a flat, square, perfectly
buffed slide flat,
with
scalloped edges to the cocking serrations.On top, a detail of the top flat serrations that might
pass unnoticed at the first viewing: he does interrupted line patterns in the serrations. The resulting pattern forms three arrows, pointing toward the muzzle, to help direct your eye to the front sight.
A beveled barrel bushing, with a concentric-crowned barrel, allows
all
the accuracy the tube (and ammo) is capable of. A huge but
not
competition-sized magazine funnel and a flat mainspring housing
with
wide side-grooves complete the pistol.
The matter of
mainspring
housing patterns is a discussion of long standing between
customers and
gunsmiths. In the old days, we'd simply cut cross-grooves
with a
checkering file, using the existing checkering on the mainspring
housing and leave the outermost grooves double-wide pyramids.
Now, custom gunsmiths often make their own mainspring
housings
from scratch (easy enough, with CNC machining stations) and then
cut
the checkering pattern they want into them. So if you have
to
have something out of the ordinary, ask.
The grips are smooth, highly figured, and with an inlet CTB
medallion.
Tim does only full-house guns. However, within the
full-house
build you do have options. Don't like the Hi-Power flats?
Tim can be talked out of them. Want straight lines,
without
inset arrows? Again, Tim can be talked out of them.
But it
seems kind of pointless to go to a guy who does perfect polishing,
matte work, borders and grips, and not him do those things.
