With a S.N. over the 4000 mark, I believe by that time we were using the Hogue grips shown on this Elite as standard fair. There were not many with those grips sold as we stopped production on the Elite models around that time, if memory serves me correctly. The issue with building a nice Elite was mostly the handwork involved in sanding the side of the slides by hand and how good the engraving was on the slide. It had to be deep and crisp enough so that when it was sanded down, the engravings on both sides still looked crisp to the eye. We did those on a block of granite using progressively finer emery cloth sandpaper with oil on them. Each slide took approximately 10 - 12 minutes to do each side to get the desired look. Along with making the slide unique, we also handpicked all parts which had a nice machined surface finish to the part, such as the trigger, magazine release, ejector and extractor. The frames were also hand picked. We used a bore scope to look inside the mainspring area of the frame and picked the smoothest bore for the Elite series pistols. We also looked the frame over, especially the front nose of the frame, and picked the ones with the nicest lines cut on the frame. This gave them the distinction of having the smoothest of all Rohrbaugh pistols trigger pulls and cosmetic look. Those were truly a product of love.
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