Please note that this Valor is a “BLEM” version, so designated for a slight mistake with the ejector pin hole.

Despite this, it cycles smooth as glass and as easily as the recoil spring allows. Slide-to-frame fit on my Valor leaves absolutely no wiggle room that I can feel, up-and-down or side-to-side, whether in battery or with the slide locked back. I’d prefer to receive a pistol that already has the proper minimum clearances to function, and this is where Dan Wesson lives. This may not be the general perception, but if the slide needs to cycle a thousand times before the necessary minimum clearances are worn in, then I think it was too tight coming from the factory.

45 ACP through it - often with frustrating reliability issues and painfully stiff moving parts - just to get a reliable handgun. Maybe I’m alone in this, but I’m not the biggest fan of being forced to finish the fitting process on my $3,000+ pistol by shooting 500, 1,000, 1,500 or more $0.50 rounds of. Unlike many custom shops, it’s my opinion that Dan Wesson chooses more appropriate clearances. Rather than purposely making oversized parts and filing them down, though, I believe DW comes much closer to the mark in the first place, finding time savings there. Just to be clear, every single piece on the Valor is hand-fitted, polished, and blended. Considering the absolute top quality materials and parts that comprise a DW 1911, the lower MSRP ($1,701 for the stainless Valor) compared to most of the 1911 custom shops is likely due in large part to this savings on man-hours. When dimensions are spot-on, less hand fitting is required to achieve the precision demanded by the high-end 1911 market. Through the use of modern CNC equipment, tooling, and processes which DW began implementing in 2000, the company is able to maintain extremely precise tolerances. My apologies for the long intro, but I think this is precisely the niche that Dan Wesson has nailed. Now, somewhere between box-of-rocks loose and space station airlock tight must be a happy medium a gun that’s essentially like a full-on custom after it has fired a few thousand rounds, which is when many say they begin to hit their stride. Oh, and backlogs can be measured in years from the time you place your order.

You also pay with those lengthy break-in periods and pistols that can’t be disassembled without tools or even racked without mechanical assistance. Literally pay in dollars, as hand-fitting takes many hours of skilled labor and/or the newest, best CNC or EDM machines cost a fortune. The primary goal of this sort of fit is accuracy (and aesthetics), but you pay for it. Break-in periods of 500++ rounds before they’ll begin to run properly are often par for the course. A truly top-of-the-line 1911 will see almost every last part hand-fitted, often locking up tighter than a bank vault - no play whatsoever, parts fit gaps measured in ten thousandths of an inch, and sometimes slides that you can’t even get out of battery without pressing the muzzle down on a hard surface. A high quality 1911 is expected to be precisely fit. While our G.I.s allegedly used to select an ideal fighting forty-five by giving ’em a shake and choosing the one that rattled the most - loose fit suggesting reliability, especially when dirty - that isn’t really what most buyers are looking for these days.

Dan wesson valor