This 1911 was built by Colt Custom Shop pistolsmith Richard Stoddard as his personal carry pistol. For me, it’s like finding a painting that Picasso painted for his own living room. After Stoddard’s passing in 2018, the pistol was acquired from his estate with documentation showing that he had purchased the base gun from his longtime employer. After high school, Stoddard served in Southeast Asia before attending the prestigious Colorado School of Trades. He joined Colt in 1974 and spent the next 38 years becoming one of the company’s most accomplished master pistolsmiths, specializing in custom orders, prototypes, and exhibition pistols. He learned his craft from Colt’s old-school pistolsmiths, many of whom had been building and perfecting 1911s since the 1950s and ’60s. Stoddard carried that tradition of meticulous hand craftsmanship throughout his career, retiring in 2012. Now, back to his shitty base gun. Rich threw everything he knew how to do at it: hand checkering fore and aft, a Barsto match grade NM barrel, an Ed Brown hammer and thumb safety, a Smith & Alexander grip safety, a lowered and flared ejection port, meticulous reliability tuning, a deluxe trigger job, and a beautifully hand-filed magazine well. My man @custom_handguns found this gun in the wild, as only he can. Rainman doesn’t 80 series, so he sold it to me. When I bought it, she wore a rather utilitarian (read pedestrian) parkerized finish. Well, @1911_purview will 80 series, but he won’t park. I sent it to my friend, industry legend Terry Wolford, and he hard chromed the lower and properly blued the upper. The results are, in my opinion, stunning. To honor Mr. Stoddard further, I naturally found a beautiful set of Spegel grips to complete his creation. Consider what this pistol represents: a master pistolsmith who spent 38 years building some of Colt’s finest custom firearms, built this 1911 to protect his own life. That tells you just about everything you need to know. Well, that’s it. Another remarkable pistol built by another remarkable pistolsmith, whose legacy is worth preserving. These pistols have stories.
