The Desert Eagle Project

Last year at the 2018 SHOT show, I drifted by Magnum Research where I usually chat with a friend who has worked for them for a number of years.  I had engraved a prototype pair of BFR revolvers for them back in December of 2010 and he was the person who commissioned the guns.

When I arrived at their display booth, I didn’t see him and, since he’d been contemplating retirement for a couple of years, I wasn’t particularly surprised.  I asked one of the fellows manning the Desert Eagle display if Jim had retired.  He said my friend was still working for them but hadn’t come to the show.  My new acquaintance was Joby Goerges and we immediately began discussion a future engraving project.  I’d never engraved one of Magnum Research’s big Desert Eagles, so we decided it might be interesting.  After talking it over, we ended up planning to engrave a stainless steel Desert Eagle.

I flew on to Kansas for a week’s pheasant hunting and visited with friends and relatives there.  I, then, returned to Alaska and my engraving bench.  A few years earlier, I’d purchased an early model .44 Mag. Desert Eagle made in Israel as a potential engraving project for myself.  Of course, as usual, I’d never had time to do the engraving. I dug it out of the gun pile and, since it had a bead blasted finish, did some necessary polishing, also removing the rather deep lettering on the side of the slide.  

Once that was completed, I began laying out the pattern using my own scroll design.  One of the reasons I like what I now call Jim White Scroll is that I can reduce it to a small size for a diminutive Baby Browning .25 caliber auto or enlarge it to a lever action rifle and, to me at least, it looks good.  In this case, I enlarged it slightly in keeping with the very large Desert Eagle.  By doing so I created a pattern that covered the pistol yet would be at a price many would find reasonable.  I included in the engraved areas both muzzle area and the rear of the slide.  I usually don’t engrave these because of the difficulty of holding them in my engraving vise.  It’s often useful for both the production client and me if I have the time and the correct weapon to create a prototype. The client gets to see what his firearm might look like with engraving, and I get an accurate picture of the time required.  Hence the Desert Eagle prototype you see here.

I emailed some photos of my pistol to Joby and he said he’d get one polished up and headed my way as soon as he could manage.  In a few days, he emailed that he was sending two stainless steel Desert Eagles for me to work with.  When they arrived, they were nicely polished and ready for engraving.  One nice thing about working with a manufacturer is that they usually can send me a stripped firearm, including only the parts that will receive engraving.  Saves me much time not needing to disassemble and reassemble. 

For the first pistol I chose to engrave a pattern similar to my prototype, adjusting the engraved areas to accommodate the upper and lower rails.  For the second, I reduced the overall amount of scroll so I could do a bulino eagle’s head on the top of the slide.  The eagle would take much longer to engrave than scrollwork, so by reducing coverage in other areas, I could maintain the same price point. 

First Magnum Research Desert Eagle

Second Magnum Research Desert Eagle

Something I will note here for my engraving clients:  Once I begin engraving production projects for a manufacturing company, I give them my word I won’t engrave their firearms for anyone else.  This assures them I’m not offering the same patterns to my own clients.  It might seem a bit extreme, but it’s not difficult for me to do as long as they consider me their engraver and continue to regularly send me work.

I do appreciate Magnum Research commissioning me to engrave these two Desert Eagles.  The other great thing is I now have an engraved Desert Eagle of my own!