The Government-size 1911 is a paragon of reliability, durability, efficiency and looks. What it isn't so much is concealable. The five-inch barrel and concomitant slide is hard to wear, and many holsters poke the muzzle into your thigh or hip, leveraging the grip safety into your kidney. Meanwhile, the rear of the frame is poking at your coat, or hanging up on the cloth, draping it and "printing."

Enter the Commander size, which solved many of those problems. By shortening the barrel (and slide) by three-quarters of an inch, the leveraging and the kidney-torture are greatly diminished. However, for some even the Commander doesn't solve the problem of printing. Ed Brown has another solution: Cut it off. Not your jacket, the corner of the frame--as in Ed Brown's proprietary Bobtail frame.

The conversion is simple in concept but a bit of work to actualize. In order to trim the corner enough to matter, Ed had to relocate the mainspring housing retaining pin. That meant a change in the mainspring and its internals. But with the correct tooling and some modified parts, anything is possible. The result is a much more concealable pistol.

With the Special Forces Carry, Ed and the crew have combined all the attributes needed to produce a reliable, accurate and easy to carry pistol. First of all, he made it out of stainless steel. Yes, stainless will be more visible in some instances. But it will also be more resistant to rust, a particular virtue in warmer climates than mine.

The shorter barrel makes for easier concealed carry, although some might worry about a loss of accuracy. They obviously have not been paying attention to the performance levels that Ed insists on. If a pistol is not accurate, Ed doesn't send it out.

The Special Forces Carry features Ed's Chainlink texturing, which is applied to the frontstrap and the mainspring housing. The pattern is a series of truncated concave ovoids machined into the surface of the steel in a repeating pattern. It's not only cool-looking, it's a non-abrasive surface that provides a secure grip.

When I first went to Gunsite, I had paid attention to the things Jeff Cooper had been writing, so my pistol already had its sharp edges knocked off when I arrived. Others in my class had not paid attention, and so the evening after the first class I spent time with file, stone and abrasive cloth knocking the sharp edges off their handguns.

The pistols from Ed Brown do not have sharp edges, as he (and the rest of us who were paying attention) have long since learned to find and remove sharp edges. All the edges are de-horned without the pistol looking like it had been thrown against a belt sander.

As do all Ed Brown pistols, the Special Forces Carry features his proprietary grip safety and thumb safety. Back in the early days we all fussed over grip safeties. I, along with many other gunsmiths, experimented on them--even going so far as to weld some up to then be ground, filed, machined and otherwise fitted to a frame in the quest for comfort and better shooting.

When the Ed Brown design came out, we all stopped because here it was: The Ed Brown grip safety gets your hand higher behind the line of bore than any other. For some the extra height doesn't matter, but for a lot of us it does. I can shoot a 1911 with just about any grip safety on it, but given a choice I go with Ed Brown.

To aid those like me who find a high grip can be problematic in terms of always getting the grip safety off, Ed has added a "gas pedal" or palm pad to the grip safety. It ensures that your hand always engages the grip safety.