About a year ago I acquired a Ruger 50th Anniversary flat top .44 mag. It has proved to be accurate but not at all pleasant to shoot. If I try to squeeze my pinkie finger onto the grip it wedges my second knuckle against the triggerguard and even upper level .44 special loads rap my knuckle quite painfully. If instead I curl the pinkie under the grip, which many people claim as the proper single action grip, then it pivots upward on recoil and raises a blood blister in the web between thumb and forefinger. And I've never even fired any full bore magnum loads from it, just warm .44 specials, like a 240 grain at about 1000-1200 fps.
Remembering the Bisley Vaquero .44 mag I once had I decided that grip is what I needed. But to buy a grip frame is about 130 dollars + the grips and that is in the white, needing to be fitted to the frame and finished. I looked long and hard at the grip frame and decided I could modify it to be close enough to the Bisley style. It was with some trepidation that I made that first hacksaw cut but once committed it went pretty quickly and well.
This photo shows the wedge cut out of the grip frame. I had also cut off the forward sweep of the grip frame but forgot to photograph that bit.
I then closed the gap by squeezing the grip frame in my vise and secured it with silver solder as in the second photo.
I got some walnut knife handle blanks from Dixie Gun Works and made the grips about 1/4" longer than the frame, finished with Watco Danish Oil. I filed, and polished the cut areas and blued with "Blue Wonder", which I have found to be by far the best cold blue available, provide one follows the directions "exactly".
I have never understood why so may handgun grips flair out much larger at the bottom when no human hand is shaped like that and when it is the top of the grip which drives into the hand under recoil.
