A little back story to this article, I generally shoot with a pretty big circle of friends so as with any group of shooters we sometimes shoot each others firearms and within my circle of friends who shoot the basic Glock 19 is the most prevalent pistol used. You see it is relatively common among a circle of shooting buddies to kind of go off the recommendations of their friends when it comes to certain upgrades like for instance within our group the Trijicon HD’s are very prevalent. Therein lies the issue for my particular situation because they all looked exactly the same. One evening we had 2 tables set out and about 13 of us shooting and we decided to do some rifle drills so of course we laid our pistols on the table however when we came back it was rather hard to identify which was which considering they were all Glock 19’s that have been moved several times so we could load our magazines between iterations. Imagine a line up of around 9 to 10 black Glock 19’s with the same unmarked sights. Needless to say it took them a few minutes to figure whose was whose.
After a good laugh and playing musical pistols for a minute I gave it a bit of thought and decided to contact Michael Bentwood the owner of United R&D to discuss his slide cuts. I was pretty thoroughly impressed after discussing my shooting style with him so I decided to give him free range of which cut to do. He asked me the basics of what I wanted and I answered all his questions and he decided a Express MK1 Pro cut was what would suit my personal needs the best. Now I sent my Glock 19 Gen 5 slide off to United R&D about 9 days before Christmas of last year (2017) and asked him to take a few pictures for this article of the process that he does but I did not want to see them until he was completely done with the cut. So about just under 5 days later he wrote me and stated to me he wanted to try some special touches to the slide cut. At this point after seeing his work for months on Instagram I had complete faith in him so I agreed and he proceeded with it. I woke up the next morning and saw that he had posted a picture of it and I was in complete awe. It was everything I had imagined and more. I was absolutely stoked to see it.
Then followed the next hurdle. The Cerakote was needed and I was not too sure what exactly to go with so I asked Instagram what they thought would look good on it. Many insisted that the Galactic Empire symbol from the Star Wars movie series in black and red distressed looked best. So because it had the most votes I went with it. Needless to say the next day he posted another picture and it was absolutely flawless as I expected. I simply could not wait to get it back to see it in person! Michael actually got it back in the mail to me the day after Christmas so it was in his possession for about 8 days (10 including shipping time). I have to say that is a stunning turnaround time and I asked him that he not put my slide cut before anyone else’s to gauge his time spent with it. Thanks to the Christmas rush on the USPS it took 3 days to get back to me and I was very excited to get it back as this is one of my favorite Glocks. I opened the package and noticed it was in a very nice company labeled custom cardboard box surround by 360 degrees of foam which is absolutely the best way to ship a custom slide and garnered tons of presentation points with me personally. I immediately popped it out of the foam and began to reassemble the slide and reinstall my sights. I was in such awe the entire time because he did a flawless job on both the slide cut and the Cerakote.
My mail carrier generally gets here about 4PM. By the time I had gotten it in my hands and assembled it was starting to get dark and I didn’t want to get started on the review of the slide cut that late in the evening. I started that night assessing the functionality of the slide cut through some basic weapons manipulations that suit my shooting style needs and yet again I was thoroughly impressed. The top ported section was not big enough for me to touch the barrel which I have previously done with a certain big name slide company my friend purchased (burned fingers are not fun). The reversed angled serrations made my slide perfectly because let’s be honest although Glock came out with lots of good user-friendly upgrades with the Gen 5 they still have not listened to the consumer and added front slide serrations. I simply must have to give him credit where it is due. The slide cut design is absolutely flawless for me. I can tap rack bang from the rear or front with the utmost confidence. The presentation upon opening was amazing, the cut design was awesome and highly functional, I didn’t have any tooling marks whatsoever, the Cerakote was absolutely amazing, and the best part is all of this was right around $200.
Just a little background on Michael Bentwood the owner of United R&D. He is located in New Hampshire and set up in his shop with a mill and full Cerakote booth. He is an ambitious business owner and his prices and quality destroys several of his rival companies. Michael is constantly on the hunt for more knowledge and even as a graduate of the University of New Hampshire (2010) he is humble enough to still advance his skills under the mentorship of Jarod the owner of Parker Mountain Machine. He recently (as of last month) started offering full custom complete slides for those that do not want to wait the short time to get their factory slides done and those are very competitively priced below some of the bigger named companies. All in all this was a very pleasing experience for me and could not have went better. He does some rather amazing work for some amazing prices.
In closing I am going to say with the rather semi-stagnant year of 2017 within the gun industry why not be bold? Customize your sidearm and make it both unique and functional for you. I understand some of the purists may not like it but that’s no reason to get the crowd mentality and not make yours to your personal liking. The time says now, the price says now, so give United R&D a solid look and be as impressed as I was I am absolutely certain you will not regret it.
Original Article can be found here
