The quest to build a high end open gun for less . . .

[Whoops!]

Hi, you all may have seen my other thread . . . spoiler alert . . . they aren't real gold grips. That being said, don't hate me, I've finally completed my most recent open gun to my satisfaction.

It started as the blue Limcat upper you see below. It had previously been Accu-railed and some people made fun of me for buying a previously Accu-railed slide . . . little did they know I was getting modern Limcat engineering on the cheap, I believe this was in 2012 when his guns took all top 3 at Nationals. Wait, did Grauffel shoot the 2012 one? Maybe it was 2011? I can't remember, anyway, it was advertised to have 1500 rounds on it and the breech face looked great. I dropped 1400 for that ugly little thing, it was the most expensive part of the gun, but I wasn't paying for cosmetics.

Then, the blue, 1400 dollar upper sat in my range bag for about a year and a half until I moved to LA. There, I decided I finally had the funds to finish it. 2011 frames aren't cheap in California and they're hard to find because of socialist . . . I mean state laws. I ended up with a long dust cover frame for 900 bucks... yeah, that was for the frame alone . . . love California. I then picked up some parts . . .

Extreme Engineering trigger group: $150

Limcat Magwell: $70

Dawson Extended Mag Release: $40

Brazo's Slipstream Mount: $70

Aluminum C-more I already had: $I already had it

Wilson Combat ambi safeties and pin kit: $75

Ed Brown Grip Safety: $40

Price thus far for a Cali built open gun with Limcat engineering and almost no rounds on it: $2745

Bead blasted upper: $70

Then, it went to Doug Brown for it to be put together . . . I'm hesitant to give his price away because I think he made a mistake and didn't charge me enough. Lets just say, I feel it was very fair to fit all the lower components and accu-rail the slide to the frame. Let me just make up a total thus far of $3400 and call it square. At this point, the gun was fully operational. It looked like the black gripped gun below.

Initially upon taking it to the range, it failed to eject and feed. Polishing the underside of the slide and putting a radius on the edge fixed the failures to feed. Tuning the ejector fixed the failures to eject.

It worked... well enough to shoot the Florida Open and not malfunction once. The cosmetics just didn't quite sit with me though. So eventually...

I stippled the grip with a desoldering iron. I didn't have a soldering iron and I knew the desoldering iron would work, I just didn't quite know how the pattern would look. It turned out ok in my eyes.

I took the gun entirely apart. Gave the frame and the barrel to an EDM shop and told them what I wanted, less weight on the frame and a bigger hole in the end of the comp in order to join together the last two ports and release the vacuum from the shot quicker: $135

I painted the grip, the mount, the slide racker, and the C-more with various types of paints and coats. Some of it was trial and error. I wanted to try a clear Plasti Dip on top of the paint for resistance to scratching on table starts... that didn't work out. The only clear coat I liked was Killer Cans Clear . . . at 40 bucks a bottle. I ended up only clear coating the C-more and the grip. For the mount and racker, I finally settled on just a thick coat of paint+primer as the best solution. : $70 bucks

I polished the sides of the slide and comp and repolished the magwell and further polished all of the controls and barrel as well as thinned down the slide racker: $6 bucks and a loooot of time.

I can not tell you how many hours of labor have gone into this gun. Limcat, Doug Jones, myself, and others have put hundreds, if not thousands of hours into it.

It runs extremely smooth and, in my opinion anyway, looks very good. It is utterly reliable with 38 supercomp, 38 super, and 9mm. I love Aftec and the other tricks I have picked up along the way. The gold and polished pics are the final product. I hope you enjoy. It's a stunner in real life with the metallic gold and all of the mirror polished parts.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Whoops!

[bmiller]

I have to say when I saw the picture of the gold grip I thought it was bordering on hideous. When seeing the pistol together, it is a work of art! I think it looks very cool! Congrats!

[kneelingatlas]

Very nice, fine work!

[Whoops!]

Thanks. Bmiller, that's kind of the same thought I had when I first met my wife. Nah, I kid, I'm not married.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Whoops!

[Whoops!]

So, I found out that it doesn't matter if you heat cure it, clear coat it, mix it, or pay a lot for it, spray paint is still weak. It wasn't working out so I used brake cleaner (which, fyi, does a great job of cleaning the C-more without stripping the coating off the lens) to clean it all off. Then I dyed the grips black in boiling water and polished everything that was painted, except for the top of the C-more. Here are the new pics. New screws are coming for the mount, which explains why some are missing.

I really like the effect the polishing had on the bottom of the aluminum C-more.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Whoops!