I first came across Scott Vickery when he was working out of his garage in the village of Greta in the Hunter Valley when I had him do some work on my

S&W 586 revolver that needed a barrel re-placement. At that time Scott was pistol smithing as a part time activity based on his machining experience and his own competitive pistol shooting activities.

10 years later, he is still shooting very competitively at state and national level in the Service and Action Pistol matches while his gunsmithing business has turned in to a full time operation.

While SV Custom does rifle work at all levels, most of the action lies with the manu-facture of competition handguns.

Since moving to its new location at Boola-roo in the northern Lake Macquarie region of NSW, the business has grown with the ac-quisition of specialised NC machinery that is well suited to turning out high performance pistols and revolvers.

I have had two custom guns built by SV Custom so far – a .38 Super built on a clapped out Colt 1911 Series 80 pistol and more re-cently, a 10” barrelled .357 Magnum built on a stainless Ruger Blackhawk frame. The lat-

ter revolver is an experimental model intended for use for Big Bore Handgun metallic Silhouette. Long barrelled re-volvers for this match are either very expensive or no longer manufactured by either Ruger or S&W so this experi-mental 10” .357 was put together to test its performance in that demanding dis-cipline. In addition, the gray areas of the International IHMSSU rules that

Jack Crawford

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1. SV Custom Colt 1911 .38 Super built on a Series 80 Colt frame,Caspian slide and KKM Precision match barrel.

2. STI-based .38 Super with ventilated slide and fitted with Aristocrat4-position rear sights.

3. This S&W Model 14 Service Pistol has had a slab barrel fitted anddecorated with some personalised scroll work at the owner’s request. Ithas a had fully tuned and timed double action job on the trigger system.

4. Caspian based .38 Super designed for Service and Action matches.Slotted slide is an optional feature of SV Custom autoloaders.

5. Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum with an SV Custom 10”barrel,tuned action and MBK target sights.SV Custom Guns

appear to endorse the development of this type of revolver will be put to the test with this outfit.

Both the SV Custom handguns in my collection shoot very well. The .38 Super will shoot sub-50mm groups at 25m with appropriate loads, and the Ruger will group in that area at 50m with 200gn Silhouette loads.

SV custom has built autoloaders for some of Australia’s top Service and Action shooters, as well as building revolvers specifically for Service and 25m matches. At the time of putting this story together, SV Custom had three projects ready to ship. The photos are attached. These include a DA only .38 Special S&W Model 14, a Caspian based .38 Super and an STI-based double-stack auto in the same calibre.

Each of these pistols leaves the shop with an accuracy guarantee of X-Ring accuracy with appropriate loads. A great deal of care is required with the autoloaders to deliver this level of performance to minimise the clearances between the main moving parts while maintaining reliability.

SV Custom also has pantograph equipment that can further cus-tomise individual handguns with personal embellishment, as can be seen on the S&W.

This level of performance does not come cheaply, and you will need to get in the queue if you want an SV Custom handgun built to your specifications. For more information, contact Scott Vickery at Top Shot Engineering at Ph: 02 49587220, Email: gunsmith@topshotengineering.com.au or go to the Web site at www.topshotengineering.com.au.

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5-shot group with 125gnhandloads from the SVCustom Colt at 25m.

Detail of the SV Custom STI slide shows the precision work that has gone into putting it together.

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