We were on hand at the NRA convention Saturday afternoon for Cabot Guns‘ unveiling of their Big Bang Pistol Set, a matched pair of 1911s made from the 4.5 billion year old Gibeon meteorite. All parts of the guns — other than the barrels — are made of the meteorite material. If you’re interested, the value of the guns has been estimated at $4.5 million. We understand there’s been no shortage of interest from prospective purchasers. Here’s Cabot’s press release . . .

Cabot Guns, the all-American gun company and industry-leading purveyor of luxury handguns, has unveiled this past weekend at the 2016 NRA Annual Meetings and Convention in Louisville, Kentucky a highly anticipated pistol set constructed from meteorite.

For four-and-a-half billion years, the Gibeon meteorite flew through the depths of space. When pre-historic man discovered its remains in sub-Saharan Africa, they used the metal to make some of mankind’s first weapons. Thousands of years later, Cabot Guns has repeated the feat, transforming a 35kg (77-lb) chunk of Gibeon into a mirror-image pair of left and right-handed working pistols named The Big Bang Pistol Set.

“Craftsman and meteorite collectors have long-prized the Gibeon meteorite for the beauty of its Widmanstatten crystalline pattern,” Cabot Founder and President Rob Bianchin says. “Luxury goods companies have used it to make watch faces, jewelry and other artistic objects. This is the first time anyone’s ever made a functioning mechanical device out of the material.”

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Working with meteorite is no small feat – from a metallurgy standpoint, the material lacks perfect uniformity, not to mention the hundreds of tiny extra-terrestrial inclusions blasted into the Gibeon meteorite’s interior during its journey to Earth.

Cabot Guns used X-ray photography, 3-D modeling, CAD-CAM design, aerospace construction techniques, electron-beam technology, and endless hours of careful craftsmanship to create two matching (left and right handed) out-of-this-world specimens based on John Moses Browning’s legendary 1911-style pistol design.

Each component was laboriously planned, tested and painstakingly cut to incorporate both the exterior bark (regmaglypts) and interior of the meteorite as design elements.

The aesthetic finish of the pistols is Cabots’ homage to the various states that can be drawn from this rarest of material. The Widmanstatten pattern was developed by the very slow cooling of the planetesimal core at a rate of a few degrees per million years. “Drawing out the Widmanstatten from the material through acid etching is an art itself,” say Cabot COO and lead engineer, Michael Hebor.  “It has a will of it’s own.”

The result is an aesthetic tour-de-force — from the prized Widmanstetten pattern adorning both major and minor surfaces to the high-polish grips and judicious use of the meteor’s “bark” on the trigger face and grips. And yes, the guns work.

“We test-fired both guns at our Indiana facility,” Bianchin reveals. “It was even more nerve-racking than the first time we cut through the meteor. But they shot.  Everything worked exactly as it should.”

What is price for perfection? “We’re listing them at $4,500,000,” Bianchin says, “which is the current record for the most expensive firearms ever sold. Worth every penny.”

In addition to introducing the meteorite pistols, Cabot Guns presented a Sandrin knife constructed from the space age material tungsten carbide adorned with meteorite handles . “The Sandrin knife is the perfect compliment to the guns,” states Bianchin.  “Crafted to tolerances measured in parallelism of 0.0002 inches, the knife is a work of art unto itself — and by far and away the most precise knife ever made by man.  We’re calling it The Big Bang Knife.”  Cabot Guns will be making Sandrin tungsten carbide knives available to the public starting in June.

“In the last five years, Cabot Guns has made a meteoric rise to the top of the luxury firearms industry. It’s only appropriate that we now make pistols made from a world famous meteor,” says Bianchin tongue in cheek.

Kings, Pharaohs and conquerors have historically carried — for both ceremonial and practical purposes — weapons of unmatched construction and aesthetic appeal, constructed of rare and exotic materials. Perhaps now a modern sovereign may carry at their sides and in their hands a weapon with no earthly equal.

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56 COMMENTS

    • Review them?

      Or cradle one in your hand for awhile and just geek out on the drop-dead gorgeous crystal structure?

      (That’s what I’d do…)

      • 5000rd rapid fire torture test, after the obligatory “frozen in a 5gal bucket” and “ran over by a jeep in a mud puddle” trials. If they pass, could be a decent nightstand pistol set. Dual wield and all.

    • Couple of quick points. 1) while the Gibeon meteorite is fairly durable as far as meteorites go, it will rust easily. 2) the crystal pattern formed during a solid state cooling process at the cooling rate of about one degree per million years. 3) this type of iron is as close as you’ll ever get to touching the core of the earth. And 4) while this iron is old, we have much older stuff including CAIs and interstellar grains.

      Me? I’ll wait for the Mars Meteorite version.

  3. Cabot sucks SO hard. What makes them think they can make working 4.5 million dollar pistols when they cant make working 4000 dollar pistols? They are the ricers of the gun world. Strokes.

    • Just imagine the look on the owner’s face after the most expensive kaboom ever.

  4. There is only one precious metal and it comes bored and chambered in your favorite caliber. Gold takes a worthless edge and makes a crappy shovel.
    I don’t know who’d buy a 4.5M set of paperweights, but thank you Cabot, there may be 2 more working guns out there for someone else.

    Methinks that I shall never see,
    A show-gun as lovely as a meteorite.
    A meteorite whose hungry stone is pressed
    Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
    A meteorite that looks at GOD all day,
    And escapes not a fraction of gravity to pray;
    A meteorite that will not in Summer bride
    A GI stripped frame, nor ported slide.
    Upon whose bosom no pattern lain
    Who has not intimately been tooled with pain.
    Show-guns are owned by fools despite,
    But only GOD can make a meteorite.

  6. If I had lottery winnings, I’d absolutely buy them. And two of everything else ever made.

  7. Two things: 1. I got a great chuckle when they said they made a functioning mechanical device based on the reviews of their gun on this site. 2. I love when people say something is 4.5 billion years old. I like to ask, “Were you there? Because if you weren’t there, how do you know?” Many will say dating methods prove it. But if you look at the dating methods honestly you will discover that they are all flawed. The best we can do is less than 10k years. Which, coincidentally, the Bible confirms as the age or the earth and universe. I recommend Ken Ham’s “In the Beginning” CD series and everything else he has promulgated on the subject for those who honestly want to know the truth no matter if it runs contrary to what they previously believed.

    • I will not challenge you or mock you in any way for your answer, I’m just trying to be sure of what you are saying.
      Are you claiming that the Earth has rotated around the Sun less than 10,000 times? Again, just trying to clear that up.

        • “I love when people say something is 4.5 billion years old. I like to ask, “Were you there? Because if you weren’t there, how do you know?””

          Ralph was there…

          (Running like *Hell*)

        • Ralph was there

          I don’t go back that far. But I do remember discussing this very issue with Socrates.

          That Socki — what a card! And boy am I glad I didn’t drink the wine.

    • The Bible doesn’t date the age of the earth, it dates the age of Jewish mythology. Because that’s what it is.

      Now, lest anyone get up in arms, I’m not saying the Bible is a load of crap (even though I’m a nonbeliever myself). Not so. Like all ancient mythologies, it’s the product of a particular time and culture that may also contain timeless spiritual truth. The biggest difference between the Bible (that is, ancient Jewish myth) and the things we usually think of when somebody says “mythology” (Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Norse, etc.) is that about a billion people currently believe that it does contain timeless spiritual truth — for them, it’s a religion.

      I’m just saying that it’s not verifiable or reliable on questions of geological time. You can be a good Christian or Jew while not believing that the Old Testament’s accounting of time is absolutely correct. It was written by people who had no concept of geological time and couldn’t look out into space like we can. Even if God had told them or shown them everything we know by observation to be fact, they probably couldn’t have made sense of it for themselves, let alone describe it for others. So the people who first told these stories placed them in a time-frame that was relevant to them.

      If their sense of time was screwy or their facts got scrambled or they couldn’t comprehend the true vastness of space and geological time, that’s not proof that God doesn’t exist — all it shows is that the Bible (any religious tract or mythology, really) is an attempt by flawed, limited humans to convey the limitless divine.

      /end-novel

      • “…that’s not proof that God doesn’t exist — all it shows is that the Bible (any religious tract or mythology, really) is an attempt by flawed, limited humans to convey the limitless divine.”

        That’s really nicely put – kudos for some concise and elegant writing.

    • I am willing to bet you do not have a scientific background or much experience in science at all. That statement is not an insult, it is simply to bring you to realize your lack of authority to claim dating methods are incorrect.

      Faith is important, I do not deny that.

      But you are wrong, plain and simply. I can assure you, we KNOW the earth is over 10k years old. If you don’t belive me, actually learn the science behind it and tell me why, exactly and specifically why, the dating methods are useless. Sure they are not perfect, but science involves rough measurements.

    • They would use uranium lead dating. It would reliably date out to the billions of years range. Nothing new or unproven about it.

    • Given the past performance of Crapot’s Bling-O-Matic 1911 sculptures, I’d expect you’d win that one.

  9. Some rich(very rich) dude will buy these. People buy $1000000 paintings and just hang ’em on the wall. Being billions of years old is no big deal either. There are ordinary rocks that old(sorry Ken Hamm-I’m not a young earther-not all of us Christians left our brain at the side of the road)…the bible does NOT state the age of the earth(or the universe). SEE: Cambrian explosion of life…

    • In the main, you’re right about the age thing. A few nits: Meteorites tend to be somewhat older than earth rocks, meteorites that formed in space have been undisturbed for 4.56 billion years. (Those that were originally parts of the moon or another planet and blasted off by an impact event are very different.) Anything that was on earth that long ago has been completely remelted and reformed. The oldest known intact earth rock is 4.03 billion years old.. (It’s certainly not that difficult to find rocks over a billion years old, but past three billion years or so it gets tricky.) Still billions of years old, but not *quite* as old as the meteorite.

      A grain of zircon, eroded away from its original rock and found in a later sedimentary rock, has been dated to 4.4 billion years. Others nearby average out to 4.35 billion years. Still not quite up to the meteorite, and not nearly as impressive.

      (Zircons, by the way, are pretty solid things to date, because they reject lead as they crystallize, but suck in uranium. So lead found in the crystals (below the surface) can’t be contamination that makes it look older, much as the Ham-ites might want to make that claim, but rather must be decay product. The fact that there are two distinct uranium-to-lead decay series allows an additional check on the results.)

      • Is that a fellow geologist? Your response was much more in depth than mine haha. Thanks for that. Didn’t have the time to go that deep into the details 🙂

    • It’s actually incredibly rare to find rocks that old. 4.4 is about the oldest terrestrial rock we have found. The Gibeon Era meteorites crystallized earlier, at 4.5 billion years.

    • I would say that I didn’t leave my brain at the side of the road. I examined the evidence and it points to a young earth. I used to believe that other stuff until I honestly examined the evidence. Those genealogies are not only there to tell you about the Jewish ancestors but to give a timeline. Another great resource to look at if you dare is “Starlight and Time” by Russell Humphries who is a physicist and has worked for Sandia Labs. Again I would say that just because something doesn’t agree with what you’ve been led to believe doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And one other observation, many of the greatest scientists have been Christians such as Isaac Newton. So one doesn’t have to ignore science. One just has to examine the facts honestly. As a Christian it behooves us to believe God before man. And when we don’t understand something to ask Him to open our eyes and lead us to truth.

      In Christ,
      David

      • I have 2 responses for that. You may do with them as you see fit.

        1. Even if you discard the 4.56 Ga age, wouldn’t your observations of natural processes displace the idea of a young earth? There are structures still in existence today that are over 6000 years old, proven by written histories, and have withstood the test of time. How could the natural wonders of the earth, the Grand Canyon, Himalayas, etc., be formed in 10000 years or less?

        2. I fully believe in God and His wonders. What seems more in line with God and His universe? That he blinked the world into existence? Or that he made something so powerful, beautiful, and awe inspiring that humans have searched and struggled for millenia to explain it? The universe, and the Earth, are so wonderfully complex and yet so beautifully simple.

        There is almost nothing that needs to be reconciled between science and faith. You can have both, which is something people on both sides forget all too often.

        Sincerely,

        A Catholic Geologist

        • Rockhound – In “Starlight and Time” Dr. Humphreys discusses gravitational time dilation. It is a great read and if you’re not a physicist it’s real short because the layman’s chapter takes less than an hour to read. It proposes that the Earth is close to the center of the universe and therefore time runs slower here than at the outer reaches of the universe by a large magnitude. His theory explains many other phenomena that physicists have a hard time explaining at all. As far as the Grand Canyon, I would recommend you look up books by creation scientists who explain how the canyon would have been formed, as again, just like non-believing scientists they weren’t there to witness it. As a geologist I would expect that you would be familiar with the Mt. St. Helens eruption and the formation of a canyon 1/40 the size of the GC in just a short while as well as other phenomena. There are books by creationist scientists on that as well. Here is a short paper to whet your appetite: Mt. St. Helens and Catastrophism by Steven A. Austin, Ph.D. It’s on the icr.org website. Godspeed!

        • Hmm…

          As a geologist I would expect that you would be familiar with the Mt. St. Helens eruption and the formation of a canyon 1/40 the size of the GC in just a short while as well as other phenomena.

          By volume–which is the important thing–the canyon you mention is not more than 1/100,000th the size of the Grand Canyon. It was cut into unconsolidated ash by a stream running down a large gradient, whereas the Grand Canyon is cut into harder sandstone and limestone, and even schist, by a river that has a very low gradient. Given the *much* smaller size of the new canyon, the much softer material, and the higher erosive power of water running down a steeper gradient, I’d say what you are seeing there is actually *consistent* with an old Grand Canyon.

      • NO OFFENSE David but Isaac Newton was NOT a Christian-he was a Deist.And he had to hide it at TRINITY College(or be branded a heretic). Like Einstein he believed in something more. And just in case this is your 1st visit I have defended JESUS quite often.And been heaped with ridicule from the heathen. How hard is it to believe GOD who dwells in eternity created the world 4.5billion years ago? And fine-tuned the universe just so he could create the world we live in… Real live humans have been around at least 60000years. Lots of the so-called human ancestors are nothing but extinct apes.No-I don’t believe in macro evolution-just micro. I guess I am a GAP theory man. Gen 1&2-One thing I do know-young earth proponents get no one saved…at the name of JESUS every knee will bow.

        • FormerWaterWalker, glad you are a Christian. I would urge you to investigate further. In order to believe that the Earth is billions of years old (which incidentally no Christians believed before Lyell and Darwin) we’d have to believe that we descended from apes and that death came before Adam. The Bible clearly states in it’s foundational chapters, Genesis 1-11, that God created the Earth and universe in six days. Six ordinary regular days. He created the animals after their kind and then man. And everything was very good. Then came the fall of man through original sin. I don’t know about you but I couldn’t imagine that He would call death and suffering very good. Additionally, I totally agree that every knee will bow to Jesus whether willingly because He is good or unwillingly because they refuse to receive Him as Lord and Savior. Yet how can people truly believe if the supposed foundation of their faith, the Word of God, is ridiculed and made out to be a lie? Genesis 1-11 is part of the Word of God and Jesus refers to it in the NT. If it’s not true, then why should anyone believe what Jesus said about anything else? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. The evolutionists and creationists have the same info but it is the starting point where they diverge and come to radically different views. Evolutionists start assuming there is no God because they don’t want to be accountable to Him. Creationists assume there is a God and take Him at His word. If I wanted a building to fall the easiest way would be to destroy the foundation. That is what Satan is and has been doing since creation. Did God really say… Please at least consider the possibility. For with God all things are possible. Is it really so hard to believe the omnipotent God did what He said He did? There are plenty of resources available.

          In Christ,
          David

          p.s. – I look forward to meeting you either here or in heaven.

        • Great point worth repeating; given the ‘important’ and ‘meaningful’ themes and directions in Christianity, it’s kinda short-sighted and silly to dedicate your life to convincing people of the Earth’s age –nothing more than a Snapple fact, in the grand scheme of things (which is what faith is actually about; the grand scheme of things)

          Especially in the face of careful evidence. Plenty of God’s grace for which is there is no opposing evidence to focus on, uniting mankind under his guidance rather than pissing people off for using their God-given analytical faculties for the sake of feeling superior. An ancient Earth, or even full-on evolution for that matter, has nothing to do with salvation or redemption or the choices we should make in our life. It’s just political bickering over angels and pinheads, by pinheads.

  10. OK, this is pretty cool. I also find it slightly ironic because our planet is just as old as the meteorite and was formed from ‘space stuff’. Just as we are. Almost every element on earth was formed in the heart of a star, including the stuff that makes up much of our bodies, according to astrophysicists anyway. As Carl Sagan put it, “We are made of star stuff”. Presumably, so is every gun owned by us poor slobs who can’t afford a meteorite pistol.

    • True, every nucleus (other than hydrogen) on this earth was “baked” in a star. But there’s more to stuff than its chemical composition (if you doubt this, check out “graphite” and “diamond”, and the metal in a meteorite is qualitatively different than what just rolled out of the steel mill.

      That having been said, I hope the guy who pays 4.5 mill for these is happy with his pretty paperweights. Since I doubt seriously they’ll function properly.

      • For that price, they ought to throw in a box of 230gr MHP (Meteorite Hollow Points).

    • …Oh, and talking about iron-nickel meteorites and using the word “ironic” is a pretty good zinger of a pun.

  12. Calling out tenths for the knife hasn’t triggered a scathing DG missive yet? Perhaps he’s typing it now…

    Regardless, the pistols are gauche, gaudy, and garish. I think President (egads) Trump should wear them every day in a double-under-handed-armpit-cross-draw rig. And whip them out at least weekly for flourish points during a speech. Maybe he can even Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho with these during a State of the Union.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGUNPMPrxvA

  13. Isn’t this the same company who wanted six grand for a top-end (supposedly) 1911 that, when reviewed, TTaG had to send back TWICE to even get it to cycle?

  14. Seriously? No one is going to go off on the “Stripper Tramp Stamp” stars in the trigger? I guess I’ll do it then… oh, wait. I just did.

  15. I’m actually impressed they made more than the grips out of the “fancy material” this time.

    Anyone got the over/under on the slide shattering the first time the gun is fired?

    • Fired? What do you mean, “fired.”? That would imply the buyer actually wants to use the thing rather than just show it off.

  16. They can put a man on the moon, but they…
    Oh shit. They did it. Well done mankind.

  17. Da hell with the gun. Where is that beautiful blonde haired model that showed off Cabot guns in the past?

  19. Meteoric Iron/Nickel would be the worst possible stuff to use for a gun
    Only the most charitable defintion would call it steel. Even then it is a low grade and not a premium steel.
    Basically Iron with some nickel inclusion. This steel woould be very prone to rust.
    It does get a very nice pattern on it when etched with acid.
    Modern steel has a very specific amount of nickel in it uniformy distibuted. Stainless Steels also have chromium and gun steel has chromium and molybdenum added
    Primitive man used meteoric iron because it was the only naturally ocurring pure iron on the earths surface.
    After smelting was invented, meteoric iron was abandoned
    As for the Bible, we Jews believe that the stories in it are parables.
    It does not matter if anyone actually turned into a pillar of salt for instance.
    Jehovah wants you to study and learn from these parables.
    The more you read and ponder and discuss these stories, the deeper meanings are exposed.

  22. I cannot believe some of the posts. How can some of you morons actually believe the earth is 6,000 – 10,000 years old? Really? Maybe you should sell a gun or two and take a science class.

    • I run into this all the time in real life, not just on the internet. Go to any evangelical church, it will probably be the majority opinion there.

  23. The guns would be great truck guns, toss em under the seat.

    The sandworm tooth knife is pretty bad-ass as well and maybe more practical. But am I to understand the planes of the knife are within a tenth of parallelism? And why? Also tungsten carbide is actually pretty brittle although very hard (like wicked had) so it must make for a razor edge with no prying ability.

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