Living the 1970's 1911 dream

[Greg Derr]

Armand Swenson was the 1970's gunsmith who either innovated or popularized many of the custom features for 1911 is that decade, some have lasted to the present. This gun was part of "The Decades Project" One gun build for each decade of 1911 production, built in the popular style of that decade. Swenson was THE iconic builder of the 70's. A lot goes into his style. The SW revolver sight, forged square trigger guard. Slide texturing and more. I started with a 1970's carbon Colt( All the guns in the project are Colt. 45) Tooling had to be custom made for the rear sight cuts. The trigger guard had to be heated and stretched to square then hand checkered. The top of the slide treatment was the hardest detail to duplicate. Wayne Novak did most of them when he worked with Swenson but was a little reluctant to give all the detail of the process so over a year I found the right tools and process experimenting on a number of test slides. I studied about 20 Swenson guns in hand and with photos to choose the features for this project. One thing I found was that no two were really alike. They also were not perfect, it was more about function than style for him. I do see the elegance in his work though, everything works together. The finish is a soft matte hard chrome, fitted with period Colt "fruitwood" grips. I had a bit of help in the research from some great smiths- Wayne Novak, Ted Yost, Jason Burton, Pete Single , Mike Curtis and John Harrison who all provided insight into Swenson's work. One more left in this series the 1930's. You can find others in the series on my FB page (Derr Precision) of here in past postings. Enjoy!

 

[MJ1]

Nice work.

 

[mac1911]

Nice , clean, "plain" look . I like

 

[snax]

That trigger guard by itself would look sweet on any 1911
Slide top looks like leather or something.

 

[Matt_SERE]

for continuing to share with us.

 

[whalerman69]

Another beauty...

 

[greencobra]

musta missed this first time around. sweet pistol. and armand swenson! there's a name i haven't heard in 20-30 years, a blast from the past. had the pleasure of shooting one of his guns many, many years ago.

who doesn't like a 1911? raise your hands now and take your medicine!