[Tony in Hawaii]

Would it be worth it to take a cheap Armscor .45 (Phillipine manufactured 1911 clone) to a smith?

[Petruchio]

That's what I did.

This started as a Rock Island GI style .45. I had a smith add Fiber Optic sights, Ambi Safety, Bevertail, Bobtail, and Custom Grips.

I think of it like a mid 60's Chevy Nova . . . Cheap to buy, but fun to trick out! [grin]

[clee1]

Your gonna spend the same $$$ either way.

Buy better, spend less at the custom shop.

[Radio_Silence]

Tony - I wouldn't. Given the price of top tier smith work I would start with a higher quality base gun for two reasons...

1) You will probably end up paying more in total on the Armscor as more work might need to be performed to bring it up to spec

2) The Armscor (even after all smith work complete) will not have the value on the market that a similar Colt or SA will bring.

In short, if you're going to put $1500+ in mods you might as well start out with a top tier base gun.

For what it's worth I usually pick the smith and then contact them to see which frames/slides they prefer to work with and buy that.

I've found that for a ground up build you cant go wrong with Les Baer slides/frames.

[Neil E. Wright]

When my gun guy was alive and running the store ... we ordered a number of Armscorp 1911's .... I fired one out of the box .... first round split a 2x4 from 10 feet using point shooting (one hand, draw and fire without actually aiming) .... never had a problem reported with any one we sold. As for me, I like my Colt 1911 Series 70/Gold Cup National Match. It is actually 3 guns in 1 .... :)