I did do the work myself. It's the Ed Brown Chain link. It comes with the new shorter spring installed ready to go. Now I didn't buy the installation jig. My buddy is a great craftsman, has a good mill, I thought, HEY, we can lay this out and drill it without the jig. We did, but after about an hour of.. OK we'll index here.. re index.. crank the table over and enough "are you sure?" we drilled the hole. I'm now thinking the jig.. would have been a good investment.
The STI has a cast frame and is apparent when you drill, chunky little chips, no long curls.
I was going to band saw off the corner, close to the line scribed into the parker.. I used up using a stationary band saw. I started, 80, 100, 320 then 600 grits on my 4x 36 belt sander.
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As you can see, the existing hole was right there.
I sanded up to it to where I couldn't grab a finger nail on it..
I ended up blending the frame and Ed Brown tail together as a unit with the 600 grit on the non platen area of the sander.. man I had it polished SMOOTH.. umm too smooth.. I used Brownells Oxpho Blue and while not parker the color was fine. but my polished areas stood out as too smooth. I ended up sand blasting the area to get a rougher texture. In the end when you handle the gun you can tell the MSH is aftermarket and blued not parker. Same would be true with any MSH swap. Even parker comes in different colors.
I then took to making some grips from some cocobolo I have laying around from previous grip and knife handle projects.
I highly recommend this combination to anyone.. 9mm Commander, and bob tail. Good lucj finding yours. The STI you were looking for, may be worth continuing to look for. While I had it all apart for the grinding.. I inspected the sear and hammer, they looked fantastic.
