[357]

Both Springfield and Kimber are well made 1911s, better than most. What I would suggest is make sure that you pick one with the hard to change features included. For example grip safeties and mag releases, are for the most part, drop in replacement parts. Ejection ports being lowered and flared, as seen on both of the above 1911s, is something that requires skilled machining. Likewise with dovetailed front/rear sights. If you have dovetailed sights you can easily swap out sights later on. Without dovertailed sights you have to have the old ones machined off and so on. That is something the Springfield above has only on the rear, not the front sight. I'm not nit-picking the Sprinfield, just using that as an example.

I'd love to see pictures of whatever you choose.