data-csrf="1711710946,866d12f662b0b7d489c1aba834a3f9c5" Glock Grip Reduction | As Real As It Gets

Glock Grip Reduction

Vek

Well-known member
Nov 3, 2009
377
11
I picked up an old G2 or earlier Glock 21, and a G3 model 20. Never felt like I had a good grip on them. I looked at how folks fill up the cavity behind the mag well with epoxy and completely file away the big plastic backstrap lump, but thought maybe I'd do that one better by leaving as much plastic as I could.

This isn't applicable to newer ones with the replaceable backstraps.

The boundary of the raised textured area on the sides of the grip follow the shape of the straight finger area at the front and the humped backstrap area at the back. What I had in mind was to cut a crescent shape out of the back of the textured area at the hump, then press the hump flat against the back of the magwell, eliminating the hump. Here are the steps:
  1. I laid a piece of masking tape parallel to the line at the front, in such a way that it made a new straight boundary of the textured area at the backstrap. The back line of the tape is inline with the back of the magwell partition.
  2. I then cut away the crescent-shaped piece of remaining textured area with a cutoff wheel in a dremel.
  3. In order to be able to fold the hump flat against the back wall of the mag well, I cut a wedge out of it, leaving the hump in two pieces...the bottom part barely hinged at the edge of the magwell.
  4. I roughed up the smooth inside surfaces of the back wall of the magwell and the inside wall of the remaining hump with a fine tooth jigsaw blade held by hand. It's thin enough to reach in there and cut some tracks to grip the epoxy.
  5. I used a hand clamp to squeeze the hump parts against the magwell, and used a candle to slowly heat the areas stressed by the bending. When those areas were too hot to touch but not melting away, I pulled off of the heat and let cool in air. The hump halves now closed against the magwell, reducing the crescent cutout to a straight line. Perfect, it already felt way better in the hand.
  6. I filled the magwell with Marine JB Weld (for lack of any Marine Tex). JB is a bit gray rather than black, and very much moreso when you grind on it....no biggie. JB oozed out the line left where the crescent was cut out, and out the line where I cut the wedge out of the hump.
  7. Once cured, I shaped the JB and the rest of the grip with a rasp.
  8. I rounded off the corners of the grip, hacked away the finger bumps, and generally made it feel less like a 2x4. It's a good idea to see how thin things get at the front corners of the magwell before going crazy. A normal flat/round rasp works great: removes material easily and leaves a texture that's super grippy.
  9. The grey JB colored up nicely with a sharpie. The sharpie on plastic is a bit purple, but I don't care.
 

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cwh

Administrator
Nov 18, 2007
4,574
99
Anchorage
I like it. Seems like it would end up with a slightly shallower grip angle too, which is generally a good thing imo.
 

Vek

Well-known member
Nov 3, 2009
377
11
I had a M&P 9mm to compare with while hacking away...the M&P is narrower where your fingertips touch at the front of the grip, where the glock is a rectangle. You'll see where I blended that front corner of the grip. I don't know if it's my own finger length (or lack thereof) but a little bit of narrowing at the front made a big difference.

The overall grip angle changed a bunch. The backstrap ended up pretty much parallel to the front, and the hump is effectively gone.