quote:

It is my opinion, for a "factory" 1911, the Dan Wesson 1911 can't be beat. The price that you pay for the build quality you get.
If you want something nicer than a Dan Wesson 1911, you'll need to go "Full Custom" such as Wilson Combat, Nighthawk, Les Baer, Ed Brown.

quote:

Originally posted by cee_Kamp:
What I would like to see is a 9mm Dan Wesson 1911 made from carbon steel, and then shipped to Doug Turnbull in western New York for his outstanding color case hardening.
I would buy one of those brand new in a blink of the eye!

quote:

Originally posted by cee_Kamp:
I didn't want to "pollute" one of the existing Dan Wesson 1911/DWX threads in this SIG Pistols section, so I decided to start a new thread.
This Wiki link has assorted information, ownership data and history about the Dan Wesson Firearms Company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wesson_Firearms
The Dan Wesson Company has had many ownership changes over time. Some were good for the Company, some were not.

Sometime after the Dan Wesson Corporate assets were purchased and moved to Norwich, New York, my friend worked there. He assembled new DW 1911 pistols.
The boss was always bitching at my friend because of the inordinate amount of time it took my friend to assemble a working DW 1911. He's a perfectionist.
My friend noted that the 1911 frames produced at that time, had critical frame pin/hole locations mispositioned at times. (hammer pin, sear pin, slide stop pin)
Most of the critical dimensions on a 1911 frame are pulled from those three hole locations. They are quite critical for positional accuracy.
At that time, production quantity was more important than quality. If you turn up the feed speeds too high on CNC machinery, and "push" drills and reamers too hard, then sometimes the hole position wanders.
This was just one of the issues my friend had to deal with when assembling the new DW 1911 pistols back then.
One day the boss told him, just put the damn thing together. If it doesn't work, the customer can always send it back in for warranty repairs.

None of us like buying a brand new expensive firearm, and then finding out it has something seriously wrong with it, and then needs to be returned to the "Mothership" for repairs that should have been resolved when it was manufactured/assembled. My friend quit that job at Dan Wesson because he was a perfectionist, and refused to build guns that shipped out and that should not have ever left the factory.

Sometime after that, Dan Wesson was sold to the CZ Group. There was a dramatic shift in the Corporate mentality. Build Quality became the "new" Dan Wesson obsession.

The CZ purchase was a very good thing for the Dan Wesson Firearms Company.
It is my opinion, for a "factory" 1911, the Dan Wesson 1911 can't be beat. The price that you pay for the build quality you get.
If you want something nicer than a Dan Wesson 1911, you'll need to go "Full Custom" such as Wilson Combat, Nighthawk, Les Baer, Ed Brown.
Let us hope that the new DWX lineup continues that Dan Wesson quality/perceived value for price tradition, but with the DWX it is hard to find something to actually compare it to.

The quality reputation Dan Wesson has today, is quite different from the early Norwich, NY days.

I would bet big money that Dan Wesson had significant engineering technical support from the CZ Group when they designed the new DWX series of pistols.
The DWX is something entirely new, and is a radical design move combining the best of a 1911 and the best from the CZ lineup.

I wish them the best of luck with the new endeavor!

I've had many Colt & Kimber .45 ACP pistols over the years. Carbon steel, stainless steel, Gold Cups, over a half dozen Kimber's of various flavors.
Likely more than you could count on three or four hands worth of fingers.
I did a lot of USPSA competition in days gone by.
Every single one of those guns needed something done to it so it was suitable for USPSA Limited, Limited 10, or Single Stack competition.
Many of the Kimber 1911 guns before modifying, would not run one magazine of factory ball ammo without a misfeed/malfunction of some type.

In 2018, I did finally buy a 2017 production Dan Wesson 1911, a Pointman 9. It's the only 1911 I have ever purchased that needed nothing done to it after purchasing.
I did change out the factory wood grips and replaced with G-10. The G-10 doesn't absorb gun lubricating oil.
My Pointman 9 is the tightest fit 1911 I have ever handled. Sometimes when you let the slide down to battery slowly by hand, it will hang up about a 1/16" from a fully closed slide.
It has zero up/down and left/right play in the slide to frame fit, and with the slide fully closed, no play in the barrel lockup.
Your first thought when handling a 1911 fit so tightly is that it will be a Jam-O-Matic, especially being chambered in 9mm, but it has never malfunctioned for me.
I personally hand selected my Pointman 9 out of a group of around nine identical Pointman 9 pistols.
Feed that Dan Wesson Pointman 9 some ammo, any 9mm ammo, and all that is remaining is hot fired brass.

Our local gun store is the closest retail gun store location to the Dan Wesson factory.
The Dan Wesson stock they have there at times is rather impressive.
When I bought my Pointman 9, they had two of them in the glass display case. I compared the two and picked out the one I preferred.
The sales clerk told me, I have six or seven of these out back that haven't been finger fucked by customers. I will bring them all out and you pick out the one that pleases you.
So I did.
I have always thought it could be a good idea to live close enough to a gun factory so if you ever had a problem, you could drive there in a few minutes and drop it off.
So far, I haven't had to do that.

Dan Wesson only manufactures a few thousand 1911 pistols in a year. They don't have a big fancy mega-factory like Sig Sauer, Smith and Wesson, or Ruger.
It's a fairly non descript run down old industrial building on the north end of Norwich, NY.
They lease part of the building shaped like the capital letter "L" shown below. (white roof shaped like an L)
They do have 30 acres of land at their location, so plenty of room for factory expansion. Or a Dan Wesson Experience building addition.
The tax map info lookup app on my phone says that the owner of the building/property is Borden Norwich Properties 57-59 and the mailing address is Los Angeles, California someplace on Wilshire Blvd.
It must be some legal slight-of-hand to protect physical assets in case of a firearms death/injury lawsuit.

Dan Wesson by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

I was in the LGS some time ago purchasing something that had been shipped in and needed an FFL transfer.
Somebody came in and started browsing. I happened to glance over at the guy and he was positively filthy. Black from head to toe. Coal miner came to mind. But there is no coal mining here.
He mentioned he worked at the Dan Wesson plant. I had to ask what he did there and he said he did final polish on pistols. That explained his appearance.
We got talking and he went out to his truck, unloaded his carry gun and brought it into the store. It was a very nice Dan Wesson Razorback in 10mm, he said he had assembled it himself during many lunches.
He seemed like a very nice ambitious young guy, and trying to move up the corporate ladder, from polishing into final assembly.

So Chenango County, in upstate New York, is a strongly conservative "red" county in a vast sea of entrenched blue liberal counties, in a deeply blue state.
I am proud that a small group of hard working "gun" people in a red conservative county make Dan Wesson 1911 and DWX pistols here in a shitty anti-gun liberal state.
Choke on that Emperor Hochul.