1911 USGI Grip safety is killing me

[hnm201]

I recently purchased a Springfield Milspec 1911 GM which I really like. However, I'm having the same problem that I've always had with the USGI grip safety - it's biting the heck out of the backside of my hand. To be clear - it's not the hammer - it's the saftey. I figure that I have four options:

1) grow a huge callous. Cheap solution.

2) send the gun to springfield so that they can swap out the hammer and saftey for a commander hammer and beaver(duck) tail safety and refinish frame. Expensive, but everything would match.

3) drop in a wilson replacement beavertail that doesn't require frame modification - this would look dorky and wouldn't match the parkerized finish.

4) modify the existing saftey and refinish somehow. Gunkote?

While perusing some of the THR's threads on 1911s, I've come across a number of interesting pictures. A cropped portion of a pic that I found last night appears below. It shows a USGI grip saftey that has been chopped and is flush with the frame. Can anyone think of any reason why this would be unsafe? I am wondering if it would make it harder to actuate the grip saftey and I wonder if the owner of this gun (who did the customization himself) might have pinned the grip saftey. I'd like to keep the grip saftey working.

Do you guys/gals have any suggestions?

 

[romulus]

If you do a search over here, I think you can find a thread about this showing some alternatives to BT installation. There are pics of a frame tang dehorn job, with mild re-contouring of the GI grip safety, I believe done by Ted Yost. This alleviated the "hammer bite problem" while leaving the gun essentially GI. That's how I plan to do my milspec. I'm over the beavertail thing...

 

[Andrew Wyatt]

The gripsafety is not pinned, and is fully functional.

It doesn't seem to be any harder to actuate.

I'm seriously considering doing that to my fullsized 1911, as i have the same problem with the grip safety on it.

EMail me offline, and i can provide instructions on how to bobb the grip safety.

 

[Old Fuff]

Hammer bite is really a case of pinching a fold of skin between the hammer and grip safety, which acts as an anvil. If you pull the slide back and lock it you may notice a small amount of clearance between the bottom of the hammer spur and the top of the grip safety’s horn. As you ease the slide down the hammer will move slightly forward as the slide passes it on its way into battery. You can cure this a number of ways, both expensive and not.

The easy way is to re-contour the back and bottom of the hammer spur to follow the same radius, but remove about .093 to .125 inches of metal. In addition you can take a little metal off the top/front of the hammer where the firing pin stop cams it backward. If this is done correctly you should be able to retain the “mill-spec†look, but eliminate the biting. You can also take a little metal off of the top of the grip safety horn, but not shorten it. The idea is that if the hammer doesn’t have an anvil it can’t bite.

As for cutting the horn down to make it flush with the frame. The original 1911 pistols had a very small horn combined with a thick, long hammer spur, and they were grand champions when it came to biting. During the 1920’s the Army tried to correct this by lengthening the horn and slightly changing the hammer. It was better, but no sure cure.

I would try reshaping the hammer. If this didn’t work I think the only solution is a “duckbutt†rear end.

 

[Andrew Wyatt]

I have the same problem dominic does. The actual gripsafety horn digs in and causes some discomfort. (mine's a series 80 gripsafety with the wide horn).

WIth a commander hammer or series 80 hammer, the hammer bite problem is nonexistant anyway.

 

[Texasbagman]

I recently purchased a Mil-spec myself. And it was chewing on my hand as well. The problem was the hammer. The skin on the back of my hand was getting caught in between the hammer and the safety.

I bobbed the hammer slightly and have had no problems since then. The hole in my hand is healing nicely.