The Foundation
“I try to chase quality — in everything,” Les told me on the phone. “Whether it’s the classic cars I love from ’65 to ’70 or the guns we build today, it’s all about doing it the best we possibly can.
“Think about those old cars for a minute,” he continued. “Who would have thought in 1965 you’d be able to go into a dealer today and buy a car putting out 700 horsepower, would handle like a dream, be more reliable than anyone could imagine back then, and in proportion, cost the same? In those days, it had to be all-custom, one-off builds, nothing repeatable, really, every one was different. A custom 1911 in the late 1970s was like that; each one built one at a time from a base gun. We used to peen the rails, weld barrels and all that to get a final product. Today, we do the same thing but take advantage of modern methods, blended with hand work, to get the sort of repeatable quality I personally strive for in each gun. That repeatable quality was always a bit of a challenge in the old days!” laughed Les.
Les hung his gunsmithing part-time in about ’76. He was an accomplished machinist working for a big company but decided, about 1983, to give gunsmithing a try full-time. The shingle got hung and Les went to work.
Besides building PPC revolvers and custom 1911s, Les said he built lots of TC contenders and XP100s for the silhouette crowd.
“It was a big part of my growing business,” he explained. “It was hot in those days, and people kept breaking guns as they explored what was possible. We could get those XPs to shoot well under an inch at 100 yards, so we were kept busy building them. By then, I was starting to have employees and we also built custom sporting rifles using Remington 700 base guns.”
Then, around ’86, Les went to an IPSC match and started to compete. He realized he had stumbled onto something very special.
“Then I started doing comp guns from scratch,” he said. “I was still building them into the early ’90s, but then the comp market took a dive since everyone started to compete with 5″ guns in the different categories. But by then, I was on track starting to do what we do today, so I concentrated on building our own guns rather than building on customers’ guns.”
Les said he’d consider around 1994 as the start of the style and quality of the guns he offers today. During the past 28 years since, the Baer name has landed in the top tier of the custom 1911 market. Baer guns are known literally the world over for their reliability, accuracy, style and predictable consistency. There are special forces and certain police teams located the world over carrying Les Baer Custom guns.
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