De-Horning a Gun?

The old saying was---"You want it to feel like a well used bar of soap."

After working at making surgical instruments for ten years, I now "break sharp edges and deburr" as a matter of course, whether it is a gun or other device I will handle, almost without thinking, it has become so much a part of me. Not including cutting edges of knives, of course.

That's what's so great about stainless guns. No finish to worry about, file, sand, polish and repeat as necessary.

I own a SIG P229 DAK SAS Custom Shop piece in SIG 357/40 S&W. Beautiful pistol, walnut grips, ... melted edges and corners. I can't reliably hit doowah diddly squat with the darn thing ... really dislike the DAK trigger but man oh man did I fall in love with what they call "melted corners" which is basically dehorning/deburring. Their melting process is fairly dramatic.

SAS stands-for "SIG Anti-Snag" and they are a beautiful thing.

So yes, stoning and honing, if done right, really adds to a pistol's ergonomics imho.

... this P229 DAK SAS. First SiG I've ever owned that I just cannot grow-into the trigger. Sure handles well though and it is a beautiful piece of art.

I'll upload a pic - hopefully you'll be able to see the SAS job on the edges and corners - it is extreme. Supposedly most top tier competive shoots these days are going to melted and honed corners.

Where the trigger guard merges with grip; the guard was sharp and pressed into my second finger. File, stone, and 1000 grit wet/dry sand paper. Yes, stainless is nice.

Ruger revolvers , the full sized ones at least , are known for their sharp edges as described by the OP. A while back I put a lot of elbow grease into a SP101 for that very reason.
Stainless steel is great to work with in that capacity.

Quality over quantity..

The feed port of my mossberg 500 kept splitting me open when I first got it. Little but if fine sandpaper took care of it

Ive had a couple different S&W wheelguns and they always had sharp edges usually found during reloads

Airborne falcon: I have a sig 220 carry SA with the melt treatment, and it sure is different, isn’t it! Nice and smooth.

My carry is stainless Colt Combat (steel frame) Commander, that I bought nearly new. From the box it was sort of like handling a porcupine; every single intersection of planes was sharp enough to draw blood.

I spend hours with a (gulp) belt sander (gasp!) gently rounding every exterior corner, and then filing and polishing. I was aspiring to Clarks Carry Melt treatment, and I'm very happy with the results.

I'm not a fan of the SIG treatment, but I had it done on a couple Les Baer 1911s when I ordered them and they did excellent work.

The edges still looked "crisp", but none were sharp. With the pistols I carry now, HKs and Walther's it's honestly not needed unless you put some sharp aftermarket sights on them.

JCooperfan1911 said:

I recently bought one of Ruger's GP100 revolvers and the crane had an especially sharp point on it that made it distracting during reloads, manipulations, and cleaning.

I gently filed it round and stoned it, now it's really smooth and nice.

Does anyone else like to "knock back" the sharp edges on their defensive guns? My feelings are the more comfy and user friendly the gun is, and less likely to cut or jab the user, the better. 1911 guys call this "de-horning".

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

JCooperfan1911
Yes, I de-horn all of my carry weapons. Here is a Custom Colt Combat Commander I built from raw slide/frame that I built for my Son as a carry weapon, my custom 4" Redhawk, 3" Factory DAO GP-100. All three have de-horning in critical areas.

I even de-horned the ejection port on this Commander


I even worked on rounding the grip corners on this Redhawk

My factory DAO GP-100

A buddy of mine, after seeing my work on my guns, brought me his Taurus 1911 and gave me carte blanche on de-horning it for him. I pretty much touched every sharp edge. He really liked the countersunk slide lock pin. I also rounded the end and stoned it flush with the frame.

When I was building my Essex 1911 frame, I encountered numerous sharp and uneven edges along with some burrs and off-centered holes. Using jeweler's files, emery cloth, and finally polishing everything with Mother's Mag Polish I managed to round off and smooth out all of the problem areas on the frame.

Been known to do in the old days.

I inherited an ancient S&W top-break revolver in .38 S&W which had the hammer spur removed and some other things which enhanced its "drawability," including smallifying the front sight for an easy draw.

It was definitely a river boat gambler's "belly gun" at one point, which means it was supposed to to be fired in contact with the double-dealing card-cheatin' lowdown rapscallion's belly and not aimed at all.

I found that firing it single-action was not all that difficult, you just had to raise the hammer a bit DA, so you could grasp aholt of the hammer to bring it to full cock with one's thumb. SA like this gave me minute-of-belly accuracy at three-card-table distances, but not much better. I never tested its under-the-table accuracy.

I've seen pix of guns modified by grinding off the front of the trigger guard, and if I'm not mistaken Jelly Bryce had at least one gun "dehorned" like that.

Terry 230RN

I gave my EDC S&W Model 19 most of the "Bill Jordan" treatment: spurless hammer, rounded rear sight corners, smoothed trigger edges, etc.

Jordan also liked to remove part of the trigger guard - not the whole front of it, like a Fitz, but rather the right side of the front half, to allow better access to the trigger. I thought about that one long and hard and ultimately decided against it - for liability reasons if no other.

Over the years, the terms "de-horned" and "rounded" seemed to have morphed into "tactical" or "rounded for tactical." At least that's what Les called it. I've done hundreds of pistols. We used a hard polish wheel for the job.

If it's on a glock it's called melted instead of de horned .

All of my Glocks get a touch of the dremel on the bottom - outer edges of the trigger guard and a bit of an undercut between the grip and trigger guard. I get a blister on the middle finger of my right hand if I don’t. I try to blend it using progressively smoother stones so that you can hardly tell it’s been shaped.



I’ve also smoothed a few spots on other guns, especially an AIM Surplus turn-in S&W Model 64 that looked like it was used to hammer nails before AIM sold it. I’ve had soup can lids with duller edges than the gouges that were left in the frame of this gun.

The only gun I have that feels like it’s been wrapped in barbed wire is my Springfield Armory V-16 longslide in .45 Super. There is not a single edge on it that’s not “crisp”, making it best for me to use as a static target gun rather than try to be a comfortable carry piece. Maybe someday I’ll get the nerve to fiddle with it.

Stay safe.

Not a handgun, but Rossi 92’s are notorious for feeding ports with sharp edges.

I worked mine over with the upper part of a drill bit to peen down the edges, worked fine and did not disturb the bluing.

Now you are able to load ammo without having to donate blood at the same time.

I’ve wanted to take a step further to the melted look that I really like for some reason-haven’t done it but maybe someday.

https://clarkcustomguns.com/gunsmithing-service/dehorn/

Nasty Canasta

A person could get lost in that deep polished blue!