Alchemy Custom Weaponry is dedicated to building the best hand fit 1911’s available at a price that is within reach of most gun enthusiasts. You can select from the following options for your ACW build.
Most of our pistols come standard with a traditional Hot Salt Blue finish, with matte rounds and flat plate-satin polished flats. Using a flat plate on the frame and/or slide allows for uniform polish marks and keeps the corners nice and straight without rounding or waves. However, we also offer full bead blast blue standard on our Quantico Series and as a no cost option on the Prime Series. Bluing is strikingly beautiful, but it does show wear and we recommend keeping a nice layer of oil on your pistol to preserve it for generations. A blued pistol that is regularly shot and holstered will begin to show what we call “honest wear,” and we think there is nothing more beautiful than a well-used ACW. It is not uncommon to see wear on the sides of a blued grip safety or a frame underneath the thumb safety, these parts do need to make contact in order to be tight. Also, the pins and small parts are different hardness that the frame, slide and grips safety so they sometimes have a different hue under certain lighting conditions. This is all part of the classic look of a blued pistol. We recommend you shoot the piss out of your ACW and be proud of each mark it earns at the range. If you want it to look perfect again, we can always reblue it when it’s time for a tune up, but no one fears a man with a gun that looks unshot……
Blued with Polished Flats
Bead Blast Blue
Chromium Nitride (also called CrN or “Silver DLC”) is a modern PVD coating that deposits a uniform layer of Chromium and Nitrogen to the surface of your pistol. It creates a grey/silver finish on ACW pistols and offers significant advantages, enhancing both performance and durability. This advanced coating provides exceptional hardness, typically around 80-85 HRC (Rockwell C scale), which greatly improves wear resistance, ensuring the slide and barrel withstand prolonged use without degradation. Its low friction coefficient reduces galling and ensures smoother cycling, enhancing reliability even in adverse conditions. Additionally, chromium nitride offers superior corrosion resistance, protecting you ACW from rust and environmental damage, which is ideal for carry or tactical use. Chromium Nitride is offered in a Matte or “bead blast” finish or with polished flats where applicable.
Our DLC is a thin layer of carbon atoms that are first vaporized by a Plasma reactor and then adhere to the surface of the metal inside of a vacuum chamber. The result is a very hard, black coating over the entire pistol that is nearly as hard as a diamond. While you do need to keep a layer of oil on DLC in order to provide corrosion resistance, the coating itself is extremely durable. Due to the method DLC is applied to our Carbon Steel pistols, it has a tendency to turn out slightly cloudy on polished flats so we only offer DLC over full matte (bead blast surfaces). In 99% of lighting conditions, you can’t tell the visual difference between Bead Blast Blue and DLC…. so if you wanna see what it looks like…. look at the Quantico. It looks the same.
The NEW Vintage Classic is a very durable and timeless finish for ACW. Initially introduced on the 2024 Classic Government Restomod, this finish will make you gun look and feel like a well worn pistol without having that “battle worn” stigma. This process actually changes and hardens the surface layer of steel before artificially aging it, which creates a very hardy patina and smoothness to the touch. This is a very random process, so we cannot control exactly how it will look so no two pistols look the same. Also, we will not redo this finish as it can over harden some parts by apply it repeatedly. If you get the Vintage Classic finish on your ACW, you will have a beautiful pistol that will look very much the same after thousands upon thousands of rounds.
PLEASE NOTE: Hard Chrome has been discontinued as an optional finish on production guns as of 6-17-25. While this finish is badass, we experienced extreme delays and multiple re-works that were out of our control. We have replaced it with Chromium Nitride (CrN) which is a modern PVD finish that is more consistent and more durable while still retaining that old school look. If you ordered a pistol from us with a Hard Chrome finish prior to 6-16-25 we will still finish it in traditional Hard Chrome however you can expect longer lead times than originally estimated. You can also opt to change your finish to the new Chromium Nitride.
Welcome to ACW, where we make 1911s the old-school way. Someone in the Government has decided you need to be over 21 to even LOOK at our pistols. Also, some crazy Europeans deem it necessary to tell you our website uses cookies (not the chocolate chip Variety). Well, are you over 21, do you agree to have our cookies (we don’t share them with anyone), and are you READY to feast your eyes on the greatness of John Moses Browning?
