My Ed Brown Story - Part 1
In 2007 I flew to Indianapolis to meet up with a friend who lived not far away in Illinois. From there, we drove south to Orlando, FL to attend the annual SHOT show. My friend was looking for a job, and I was looking for potential buyers for several patents I’d been granted, as well as looking for engravable items I might purchase.
SHOT stands for shooting, hunting, and outdoor trade. It’s the four day show where buyers, representatives, and manufacturers of outdoor equipment from every state and all over the world get together to conduct business.
Ed Brown Products from Perry, Missouri has a display every year at SHOT, and Ed Brown and I had an Alaskan friend in common. I decided I’d swing by their booth and say ‘Hi’ for our friend.
At this point I will say Ed Brown is a very private person, and while I could go on at length about how things began and continued on, in deference to his privacy, I won’t. I will say I think Ed Brown Products makes and sells the finest high end 1911s on the market today, and I’ve been fortunate to be their engraver.
We did lay out a plan for me to design and cut some small areas of scroll on a few 1911 slides. He would send me a sample slide, I’d design a pattern, and if he approved it, I’d engrave it for him to examine. Over a month or so, this took place, and I later engraved a number of slides for them.
This working relationship also resulted in my engraving the limited-edition of 1911 pistols created in Jeff Cooper’s honor. On each of the Jeff Cooper edition pistol slides I engraved and inlaid the letters DVC in 24K gold. DVC stood for Diligentia, Vis, and Celeritas, which is Latin for Accuracy, Power, and Speed.
By this time, each year at SHOT I’d spend several hours with Ed and his son Travis discussing their business and my engraving. In 2010, I found all the 1911 manufacturers getting ready for the 100thanniversary of John Browning’s designing the 1911pistol. Ed and Travis had decided they wanted to surpass all other 1911 manufacturers in their offering. I liked their idea.
The schedule settled on was for them to build ten pistols and ship them to me in July. The pistol was their top-of-the-line blued Custom Classic with the special inscription ‘Centennial Edition 1911 – 2011’ and faux ivory grips. I was to engrave serial number 01 immediately for catalog pictures, and then I’d have the rest of the year to complete the other nine units. There were some who complained the grips weren’t REAL ivory, but I think Ed and Travis were wise to use the high-quality faux ivory they did. It would have been difficult to find a vendor who would consistently produce fine elephant ivory grips in a timely fashion. Later, after the Obama administration’s ivory ban, proof of ivory origin hassles could also have been a huge factor for everyone from Ed Brown Products to those who eventually purchased the pistols .
As planned, the pistols arrived that July. I’d already done the pattern once for them, so nothing else was required other than I make some slight adjustments to accommodate the new lettering. Easily done. Off to the engraving bench I went. The pattern included engraving the slide and frame, as well as the slide stop, grip safety, thumb safety, magazine release, grip screws, magazine, and even the barrel bushing. Let me say here that engraving the magazine of a 1911s is an interesting task. The magazine material is definitely harder than the balance of a 1911, and I had to do some creative engineering to design and method to back the thin steel to keep vibration and graver breakage to a minimum. I’m pretty sure I’ve engraved more 1911 magazines than anyone in history!
In about a week I engraved the first pistol and shipped it off. That I didn’t hear back from them was not a particular surprise. The pattern was known, my execution of it was known, and its delivery was known.
My working relationship with Ed Brown Products was and is truly the best. They sent me slides and pistols, I engraved them and shipped them off, sent an email invoice, and shortly a check would arrive in the mail. I’ve been asked several times if I often talked with Ed or Travis on the phone throughout the year. The short and long answer was the same, “No.” I might have exchanged anywhere from a couple to as many as six emails with Travis in a year’s time about special requests. Other than those, no. As Travis said one time “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it!” I did spend hours with them at SHOT, and outside that, both of us were too busy for casual conversation.
Early November 2010 they placed some beautifully crafted pictures on their website to introduce the Centennial Edition. From that time things went a bit crazy. I had engraved a number of revolvers for Smith & Wesson that summer, so had been quite busy. I had, however, engraved four of the remaining nine Centennials, and was working on serial number 06.
I received an email from Travis asking how I was getting along with the remaining pistols. I told him I could ship four more if he wanted. He said I’d better ship them, as sales were mounting quickly! From that point on, my life was seriously changed. For the next five and a half years I engraved 11-7s (eleven hours a day, seven days a week). I believe there are some European Master engravers who might work that schedule, but I know of no one in the United States who would.
I’ll describe my schedule. Mind you, it’s not normal, but I’ll explain. As an engraver, the eleven hours of daily engraving would be spent sitting. Any physician can tell you that extended sitting can cause a thrombosis, an extremely dangerous condition. I was simply forced to create shorter work periods. So….., I began to work around the clock, exercising three hours a day, sleeping seven and a half, and working the eleven hours. That leaves three and a half hours daily for eating, emailing, necessary phone conversations, saying hello to my wife Rebecca, and taking care of a dog and cat. I exercised three times a day, had four sleep periods, and three work periods. The shorter work periods kept me safe from thrombosis, and it also kept eye strain to a minimum. The schedule worked.
If it sounds like a horrible lifestyle, remember a couple of things. First, I love to engrave. Thus working 11-7s was not as bad as it might sound. I would a thousand times rather work for eleven hours a day at something I love than two hours a day at something I hate. Secondly, I knew this pace wouldn’t last forever. I wasn’t sure exactly how long it would last, but I intended to contribute my skill and speed to whatever time it did. As it turned out, five and a half years went by before things slowed down. What a wonderful time it was!
Ed Brown Products took orders for the Centennial Edition for the remainder of 2010 and then for the entire year of 2011. Each pistol I engraved was given the same attention to detail as any other. My love of engraving allowed me to do this with out tiring of repetition. Possibly a quirk of my personality!
