I want to give a big thumbs up and tip of the hat to Ed Vanden Berg. There are guns smiths and then there are guns smiths who understand the finer points of a 1911. I had posted my pictures and description of my Ugly Duckling to a Swan SA Micro Loaded 3” a while back. It was a SA PX9805L in OD Green and now it is a polished slide with black and Maroon frame sides with grey and white VZ grips etc. It still had to have some work on a few things after getting the slide lock fixed. It was not feeding well. I knew 3” 1911s have their issues. I wanted this one to be my EDC especially for summer so I wanted it to be worked on my someone who understood 1911s. I knew of Ed Vanden Berg and his reputation. I contacted him with my problems and brought it by. He looked it over and we had a good talk about the little 3” models. I took him boxes of my normal carry ammo and we talked about I wanted it matched to these rounds. If it will also shoot some target stuff, all the better. Well, three weeks later I got an e-mail it was ready. A short note of what he had done and that he will go over what he did and why when I came to get it. I am not experienced with doing any tuning on a hand gun so I was very interested in learning. In his e-mail he had throated the chamber, polished the ramp, adjusted the ejector and made a modification on the mag release, modified my slide lock latch and de-burred the bolt face. Seemed my little one needed a lot of work but he said it works as it should now. Just what I wanted.
First, it takes me a little work to take my guns down and put them back together. But watching him is like watching a card magic trick. He wraps his hands around my gun and opens them up and all the parts are separated and laying on the counter. He picks them all up again, closes his hand and then all of a sudden it is a fully assembled gun. He did this three times and I still could not figure out when he put each part in. It was magic to me. But he gave me the low down on each thing he did, why he did it, how he did it and it was very informative. Adjust the ejector I understand. The throat was not really well shaped or formed and he corrected it. The ramp polish job I knew it needed, but I have mirrors that don’t shine that bright. He corrected the ramp edge and areas there too. He cleaned the bolt face. Then he modified the mag release so it would raise my mags up .040 inches, that is 40 thousands of an inch. He welded and machined a metal ledge onto my mag release to make that happen. Not sure how he did it but he did. He also put a detent on my slide lock lever as well. All of these little things added up to a better aligned round as it went into a better fitting chamber that would slide easier, no catches and eject better. I ran some rounds and not one hang up, bad ejection or mess up. My ugly duckling is now complete and it is a sweet swan.
But I wanted to give a big thanks to Ed for a great job and share it with everyone else to know too.
