Some of you may be familiar with my recent refinishing of a couple of Sistema 1911 pistols.

It turned out really nice and they are fine shooters.

However, I tend to grip a 1911 "high" and this causes a problem with the original design of the 1911.

Look at this pic.

You can see that the hammer spur extends to the end of the grip safety.

It doesn't look too bad in that picture, but when we lock the slide back, as it will be in recoil, you can see the problem.

If I grip it really high, I'm going to get some meat under that hammer and it is going to bite me.

I can testify that it hurts and is not conducive to best concentration and accuracy.

The answer was to grind off a little of the hammer spur and relieve it so that it didn't come into contact with my hand.

Here it is after Tman did his smithing on it.

All he did was to shorten the spur about 1/8th of an inch and then relieve the underside of the spur to keep it from reaching the grip safety.

Here is what it looks like in full recoil now.

Of course, no project is complete without a trip to the range.

Here I am running some 200 grain semi-wadcutter handloads through it.

A nice light load and very accurate.