While waiting outside the office of Tom Kelly, director of the Smith & Wesson Performance Center, I occupied my time by watching the men working in the machine shop. No matter where my eyes shifted, all of these craftsmen seemed to have a definite purpose in this area that surrounds Kelly's office. Some were sitting down, meticulously filing the slide rails of an automatic. Others were working at various machines checking tolerances, spot grinding or running inspections of orders ready to go out the door.

Three representative guns from the S&W Performance Center; from left to right: the Model 945 Two-Tone in .45 ACP, the author's customized Model 25 .45 Colt and the Model 952 chambered for the 9mm Luger.

Like other shops of this ilk, custom departments are pretty much all the same. There is no sense of urgency, but on the other hand, all the orders are done on time to keep both management and the customer happy. Unlike one-man shops that look as if they never generate a profit, organizations like the S&W Performance Center have overhead, a building to keep and men to pay. Therefore, the work must be good, on time and make money to keep it a viable part of the company.

While I was waiting, Jim Ray, Kelly's right-hand man, came out to chat, take me for a quick tour and explain the things that were going on within the shop. If the people in the shop are not building limited runs of guns for major distributors, they are adding products to the line for shooters like you and me. One look at the standard S&W catalog shows that presently there are more than enough variations of quality handguns to suit everyone's taste. From not-so-standard revolvers to classy automatics, the list gets longer and longer.

On top of all this, the Performance Center has a long list of gunsmithing services and packages to upgrade your gun to present-day standards.

The author's Mountain Gun was refinished from its original blue to polished nickel. Other custom touches by the Performance Center included new grips and a red insert on the front sight.

Looking much like a large weight was off his shoulders, Tom Kelly appeared to chat about his charge. For openers, I asked him to give me the lowdown on the shop, when it was started and how the Performance Center is different from a custom shop.

"In 1989," Kelly started out, "the idea was twofold." The parent company wanted an outlet within Smith & Wesson to build custom guns for customers with that need. The second reason was to support the hot Smith & Wesson Shooting Team. But after a few years of doing one-of-a-kind custom guns, the principals decided there was no real growth potential in this kind of operation, nor was there on the Third Generation pistols that seem to be the bread and butter of the custom shop.

On our cover gun, the Model 945 Two-Tone in .45 ACP, custom features include the scalloped slide serrations and the long extractor.

Around 1990 Kelly arrived, and discussions began about whether the company was going to change the business to something more lucrative or drop the whole idea completely. About that time the Shooting Team seemed to disappear, the company was going through hard times and the idea surfaced that to make any money and keep the men working, limited runs were suggested. What this amounted to was to make a special gun with no less than 100 units to be sold to distributors to help make the operation pay for itself.

"At that point in time," Kelly went on, "one of the first men to jump to the front of the line was Lew Horton, who to this day is one of the Performance Center's biggest customers." This concept was very successful. Soon other distributors joined this network and to this day continue to request special runs of guns with various finishes, sights or odd barrel lengths.