I had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time shooting several of the Republic Forge 1911s during the media day at SHOT Show 2016. Boy, those babies can shoot!
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Jon Hodoway shooting a Republic Forge 1911.
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Another shot of Jon shooting the Republic Forge 1911.
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On the floor of the show, I caught up with the men behind Republic Forge, Dale and Larry Pancake. I asked these two Texas oilmen how they ended up in the 1911 business? They were both very candid in reply, telling me that as big gun enthusiasts they had ordered some 1911s from other manufacturers but were less than impressed.
“It took us 18 months to get our pistols,” said Dale and Larry. “We just thought that we can do better.”
Once the decision was made to get into the gun-making business they knew that there would be some huge hurdles to face to build the gun the way they wanted to do it in Texas.
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The business end of one gun being run at Range Day.
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G-10 grips and two-tone finishes are only some of the options.
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First, they had to find the right raw materials for their forgings, then the right tools to make the parts and finally, the right people to build their version of the ultimate 1911 pistol. Well, as you can imagine this didn’t take weeks but years to accomplish. But as you can tell, it was worth the effort.
The have plenty of different combinations to choose from and they build on four variants of the 1911 platform.
- Government 5” & long slide
- Government with light rail
- Commander
- Officer
One of the key points that they were careful to make is that every gun, regardless of model finish or embellishment, has the same high-quality internal parts that are all steel. They will not sacrifice the reliability and function of their pistols by switching in inferior internals.
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Republic Forge allows you to build your very own custom 1911.
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A close-up of the grip, which you can customize to your liking.
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The finishes that are available are absolutely mind blowing, case hardened, Damascus, bluing, and every possible color of your coat. You also have mild to wild foregrip choices, such as mammoth or ivory. The baseline grips would be G 10 by VZ.
You can have your pistol in 9 mm, 40 Cal, 38 super and of course 45 ACP. Check out the Republic Forge website for more details.