Disclaimer: I'm not a 1911 aficionado, nor am I a gunslinger or competitor (anymore).

I've seen a ton of Dan Wesson love on this forum, and I'm sure it's warranted, but my experience with them hasn't been great. I put this out there to see if I'm the only one who holds this opinion, or if there are others that have experience similar to mine. This isn't to post hate on DW, but rather to see if I'm the only outlier. I fully expect to be torn apart by GD, but I not only expect something less, but wanted to check for sample sizes in the place of the forum with the largest viewership.

I bought a CBOB in 2014 or so having zero experience with a 1911, but wanting one because all of the hype, the history, and because frankly I loved the way the CBOB looks. I think it's an objectively looking pistol.



(not mine)

After I picked it up, I noticed that it wasn't comfortable, but I figured that that might just be because it was a 1911 and I didn't know how to shoot them. I normally carried a Sig 226 and with the price of .45, didnt' shoot the pistol much. After a while, I picked up more .45 and took the DW to the range. However, it got to the point that the pistol was actually causing me to bleed.

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I soon figured out that the problem was the fitment of the thumb safety.

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I took it to a gunsmith and the answer was readily given. The thumb safety wasn't properly blended. With some work of the dremel, the thumb safety was properly blended and the discomfort while shooting stopped. However, because I had only been focused on the pain while shooting, I didn't even get to the accuracy.

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The accuracy on this pistol was, and is, pathetic. I tried adjusting the rear sights and found that they moved freely in the rear dovetail. I took it back to the same gunsmith, and with some very gentle pounding with a mallet, he was able to enlarge the rear sights to fit better within the rear dovetail. They're now stable.

The issue is that even after this, the pistol isn't consistent in its hits. Regardless of the shooter (there have been several), or whether the pistol is in a rest, it doesn't land rounds consistently. I haven't taken it back yet and based on the research I've done, it's probably a not easy fix. I'm willing to sink more money into it because of the sentimental value the gun has, I'm still not pleased with the nearly ten year old purchase.

I contacted Dan Wesson about this pistol (and the factory mags that I haven't discussed, but don't work), and I was told that any work would require payment. I figured that if I was going to have to pay anything, I'd rather give it to someone else rather than those who built the pistol, but that's just me.

Several years ago, I bought a Les Baer and it honestly blows this gun out of the water. Everything is well fit and the gun shoots perfectly for me. That led me to believe that it wasn't just me, the shooter.

When I was in a mood to buy a 1911, it was going to be a Les Baer.  Or a Dan Wesson 10mm.

I'd probably look for a LB today if I was interested.

I've always wondered why people pay over 1K for a 1911.

I have a Ruger SR 1911 that shoots like a dream.

Cost 700ish bucks.

I mean I will eventually drop the cash on a STI double stack 1911, outside of that, 1911s around the 1k mark are the best balance of quality and affordability

I've got a Taurus that's a blast to shoot and pretty accurate. I've also got a PSA that I put together that's pretty accurate too and also write gun to shoot. Paid $400 for the Taurus and put maybe $500 into the PSA.

 Ed Vandenburg at  Vanden Berg Customs in Houston TX 832-781-8338 is the answer you seek. After sending it to him your DW 1911 will be one of if not the best shooting pistols that you own.  

It will be way better than anything Dan Wesson can do to it and at a lower price.

Sounds like you ready for a Nighthawk Custom

Girl hands.

Sell the thing and cut your losses. Every now and again you get a lemon. Doesn’t matter which manufacturer.

Did you use a real ransom rest and take the time to developed reloads to see what's what, or just used a "rest" and shot commercial ball ammo?

I've put my PM7 of 2008 or so vintage against Wilson's etc and found nothing lacking.

Sorry OP, have you contacted Keith at DW? They should of fixed all that for you if you did.

Mine runs like a sewing machine and is a laser.

@amped got to pew with it.

Love it.

I have an early talon (serial number low 200’s) that shoots great.

@finslayer83 agree, the few DW you have let me shoot have been fantastic.

Only thing I can add is you probably should have bought a P220 variant since you’ve carried a 226.  The 220 is accurate as anything else out there and not to mention super reliable. I’d sell the DW in a heart beat and I would get a 220 legion….

I’ve probably handled a couple hundred Dan Wesson 1911s. I’ve shot a handful. I only have one, and I regret not buying more when they were cheaper.

Nobody is perfect, but Dan Wessons are, in my opinion, the best quality 1911s out there before you get to the Wilson/Nighthawk level, and even those guys make mistakes. Sorry you got a bad one.

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I had this beautiful DW A2 Commander that I bought brand new. Gun shot like a laser beam. Thing just did not miss the target. Which broke my heart when it stopped working correctly.

It ran flawlessly for the first 500 rounds or so, then began experiencing failure to feed issues. At least 3 or 4 rounds per 100 would leave the gun out of battery. This was with a variety of quality FMJ factory loads, a variety of mags including 7 and 8 rounders included with the gun, Wilsons, CMCs, all of them.

I sent the pistol back to DW not once, but twice, only to have them say it was fine after extractor adjustment and magazine tweaking (which sounds made up) . Didn’t cost me anything, but I got tired of burning valuable ammo through it just waiting for the malfunctions. It stopped being enjoyable.

Down the line it went.

The $625 Springfield Garrison that replaced it runs like a top. The safety doesn’t feel as nice as the DW, but the gun runs like it should.

That could be the best looking valkyrie.

I don't know if I'd take it to the Smith that worked on rear sight.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you made it sound like he peened the sight dovetail to make it fit tighter.  That sounds like the worst way to fix it, a new sight or lightly peening corner of slide dovetail down will tighten it up.   All my dw's have been good to go 5 or 6.  I have noticed a few sharp edges on vigil safety and beavertail, I dressed them smooth and had them re-nitrided.  What kind of accuracy are you seeing and what ammo?  Most dw are fit tight, at least slide to frame and rear barrel lock up.  I'd check bushing fit but if accuracy is real bad, I guess barrel could damaged/bad. Honestly, only issue I've heard about dw was early ss models were too tight and some galled.  

The beavertail/thumb safety intersection on a 1911 can be an issue with small boney hands.  Certain combinations can really are a Hotspot and drive into side of thumb knuckle.  2019 and some 2020 staccato had extremely poor blended thumbsafeties. Somewhere between late 2020 and my late 2021 p, staccato fixed it

A Turkish 1911 with ~$1K of work would be cheaper than a comparable DW

Turkey > New York

I got a SR1911 when they first came out.

It was a good pistol at a good price then, but it has a cast frame, it’s loaded with MIM, the trigger had some creep, and the slide had some grittiness to it.

Street price on them is about $1k now.

And it would still be a Turkish piece of shit made by people that hate America and that would love to see you killed.

1911s made in places like Turkey should be the only guns banned in America.

FIFY

I shot an older Specialist 9mm Gov't, nice gun, but no match for my Colt, TRP, Emissary, etc.  Overpriced for what they are, they're $1200-$1500 guns at best!

For what a Dan Wesson costs and they told you tough shit about accuracy?  Yeah that's all I need to hear, fuck that.

I have a DW Guardian. It’s really nice. I’m not a huge 1911 fan. The rear sight is pushed a good bit to the right but stays in place due to the set screw on top.

I have several .45 DW 1911's and the thumb safety blend isn't as consistent as I'd like. I have small hands so it's very noticeable. I had to blend one myself as it was protruding below the frame in the safety on position. It was an older stainless Valor.
The ambi safety models aren't as problematic which leads me to the conclusion the part is likely from a different manufacturer. My older models do appear to have thinner material on the safety.
All of mine are tack drivers fortunately.

FWIW, my input on my DW Guardian, no complaints. I find it more accurate than my Gov't Colt.  Also more enjoyable to shoot. Again, my opinion.  Sorry to hear OP had so many problems, should have been addresed with Mfg.

Telling a manufacturer a gun has been messed with by a gunsmith is going to invalidate the warranty with most companies.

I've never owned their 1911's, but I have half a dozen of their revolvers and they are like ugly Swiss watches.

I've never had a bit of trouble out of them.

Dan Wesson’s thumb safety is a knock-off of an Ed Brown / EGW and they don’t blend the back corner.  Combine that with high undercut Ed Brown knock-off beavertail they make, that hard corner will recoil right  into your thumb joint.

I’ve blended several just like OP had done.

I have read about problems with DW's from other forums but it doesn't' seem like a disproportionate amount compared to any other 1911 mfg's. I have owned two DW A2's, two A2 Commanders and two Vigil Commanders all in .45 acp and they have all been great using a variety of magazines. However, most didn't like the 8-rounders loaded to capacity, if I loaded them with only 7 they worked fine.
I had previously went down the 1911 rabbit hole way back when with Springfield Armory only to be disappointed with accuracy, but these DW's have made me a believer!

Dan Wesson was the largest disappointment of all of the guns I've purchased.

Thats a lot of words to say you don't know what you don't know.

I had a Cbob for a couple years, same model as Op's.  It worked just fine for what it was but I never warmed up to the cheese grater front strap checkering, it just sucked.

Any new 1911 should be able to pass Hilton Yam’s basic reliability tests before it gets tweaked. Not many do.

https://www.1911addicts.com/threads/first-1000-rnds-by-hilton-yam-of-10-8.1135/

Lol, Beretta told my buddy the same thing on his Inox 92…

Aren’t DW’s basically CZ now?

I have a couple friends that say the same thing.  I can remember when a DW locked up tight from galling was a weekly thread on a couple of the forums.  A lot of other people must have had much better luck with them though.

The first gen Valor guns had issues with the slide stop peening/digging out the edge of the slide stop notch. The slides were that soft. I had one, sold it.

Status symbol. There's exceptions, but past a certain point, you're only paying more because most people can't.

That is one of the problems my friend had with his Valor.  Another friend had an Ed Brown and same issue with slide stop peening.  Ed Brown actually told him he shouldn't be shooting to slide stop, to count his rounds.    

I bought one of the VBOBs that did, and the factory caught fire about two weeks later. I have no idea what the hardness of the slide is, but it didn't appear soft to me doing the remedy. They were galling, which apparently isn't uncommon with stainless. My slide froze on the frame and had to be separated with a rubber mallet. With the factory out, I lightly stoned the slide, stopping every couple of strokes to check it with a small steel ruler.

It was also stovepiping, which turned out to be a badly out-of-tune extractor from the factory. A friend let me drop his WC extractor in and it cleared, so I did the adjustment as per the hold and shake test and the problem not only cleared, ten years later it's never come back.

When they got the factory back up and running I contacted DW, explained the problems I'd been having and what I'd done to correct them. I was concerned they might cancel my warranty. They sent me back a very nice reply, apologizing for both the problems and the zero customer service for three or four months, as well as a statement I was asked to keep saying I'd done exactly what would have been done if warranty work had been available, and continuing my full warranty no questions asked.

Again, a decade later I've never had another malfunction. It was a known problem (and galling is self-limiting, incidentally, both from my experience and from my reading) that took a limited amount of remediation to fix. Don't know what to say about the extractor...shouldn't have left the factory like that, but if you can't do a very basic tune on a 1911 it may not be your cup of tea.

One of the guns I wouldn't sell if I was down to my last nickel.

Just to answer some of the questions:

The gun was shot from a Ransom rest that my buddy owns. After I was told by the factory that a blending of the thumb safety would cost me money, I voided the warranty (I suppose) by going to the local gunsmith to have it done. The work he later did to fix the rear sight was by enlarging the rear sight itself, not going into the dovetail. Even with the set screw tightened all the way down, the rear sight would still move with moderate pressure before he adjusted it. Someone on a forum several years ago (may have been here or 1911forum, can’t remember) said that the accuracy issue could have something to do with the feet on the barrel and the lock-up. I never looked into it. As soon as I got the Baer, this gun hasn’t really left the safe.

I love my Dan Wesson Valor that I bought years ago. Never missed a beat and is crazy accurate. I even sold off a handful of my lower end 1911s after shooting it.

I don’t think he wants any more problem pistols.

OP, you're not alone.  In my case, it was the unconventional, blocky slide stop that would chew the base of my support hand thumb knuckle open every time I shot it.  Then there was the thumb safety that would partially engage with the hammer down that was a PIA.  There was also the "duty finish" that became marred after the gun laid on a rag with the "wrong" gun oil.  Oh, and did I mention it was the worst jam-o-matic I've owned to date, even after well over 1K rounds?  It was a happy day when I traded it in to the LGS for something else.

I got a low price on LB but I was impressed by a Single day with DW. But this was all quite a while ago so you all are more up to date than me

In my research I've read about the usual M1911 issues with DW, still very desirable too me when they were in $1200 price range, but now in the Biden economy that's made them all $1600+ it will likely never happen.

I agree with others that if you're going to be into 1911s of the production variety you're going to have to be ready for some possible tuning, not that they all need it, but just be prepared for it and don't be discouraged... just part of the experience.

My 9mm Valor is the most reliable, accurate handgun I have ever fired. 1000's of rounds shooting 'steel challenge", not a single issue.
I bought my first DW in the early 70's; a suit case revolver.

I own a few 1911s to include a Wilson and a Baer and my favorite probably is my DW valor
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There’s a few more not in the photos as well

I've got a brand new Valor I haven't even shot yet.

I once owned a DW 357 w/8" barrel, worst revolver ever. It was so unbalanced, almost impossible to shoot