Is grip fitting as simple as...

[JamesH]

Some top-level shooters seem to get on OK with unmodified factory grips.

The mark of a great grip is if it doesn't need to be modified for each tiny change of your hand.

[Muffo]

To be fair they stated While the above explanation is somewhat theoretical, the EFFECTS of stress are well known and obvious..

Indeed, I did not muster enough fortitude to read it that far, and rather unjustly. It would make for an even better laugh. Why waste the reader's attention developing a profound theory explaining something obvious? Besides, "theoretical" is no justification for any gibberish one might decide to come up with. I might want to argue that the planets orbit the Earth and put a sticker of "theoretical" on my drivel, but it will not make it so.

Sounds to me like you have never mastered a thing. It makes quiet a lot of sense, but clearly you dont understand it.

Moving on the the grip. You arent trying to make a mold of your hand. Infact a mold of your hand wont make a good grip at all. It will be comfortable but wont help you shoot well. You are trying to insure that you grip the postol from front to back without having to use too much or too little pressure and use points of reference that you can feel so that your hand grips it the same every time

[Gwhite]

I have a Morini free pistol grip that needs a bit of fine tuning. I've tried a few small experiments, but I'm not sure where to start whittling/puttying. I'd like to get input from the forum on how to best approach it.

if I bring the pistol up naturally with a relaxed grip, the sights point slightly left. The front sight is about one & a half front-sight-widths to the left of center. If I tighten my grip a little with my fingers, the sight swings to the right. I can shoot with everything pointing nicely by adjusting my grip pressure. However, this means I get a lot of horizontal variation in my shots because of slight fluctuations in my grip. I often find that I get shots to the right, or I have to abort the shot when the sights go off that way because I have tightened up a tiny bit during my hold.

I think there are two issues to solve: 1) I want the pistol to naturally point straight, and 2), I'd like to make the pistol's pointing characteristics less sensitive to grip pressure.

#2 seems like the easiest. If I remove some wood under the right side of the fingers, increasing my grip pressure shouldn't push the sight to the right. However, the fingers don't feel like they are applying a lot of off-axis pressure. On the other hand, #1 & #2 may be related, in that increasing the pressure corrects the initial misalignment. Something is starting out pointing things left, and when the pressure is increased that gets compensated out by pressure elsewhere.

The one experiment I've tried is to put cardboard shims under the large pad below the thumb, on the left of the pistol. If the pivot point is at the back of the hand, I expected that to shift the front sight to the right. It made almost no difference at all. One issue with grip fitting is that different parts of the hand are varying degrees of squishy. The pressure in that location isn't very high, and it may be that part of the hand is soft enough that it isn't pushing back hard enough to matter.

The grip I have is 2nd hand (as it were...), and already has some putty in a few places. One spot is on the right rear, in the center of the palm. There is a bump built up there, and I've had to grind that down a bit years ago because the pressure in that one spot was actually hurting when I first got it. I could see where that might be pushing the sights left, but I'm not sure why tightening my grip overcomes that effect. On the theory that Morini knows how to make good grips, I'm a pit suspicious of what's left of that bump.

I'm looking for suggestions on reversible experiments to try (building things up with mole-skin, for example) to figure out what is going before I make permanent changes. Is there some high/low spot that is more likely than others to produce what I am experiencing?

Thanks!

[Muffo]

I have a Morini free pistol grip that needs a bit of fine tuning. I've tried a few small experiments, but I'm not sure where to start whittling/puttying. I'd like to get input from the forum on how to best approach it.

if I bring the pistol up naturally with a relaxed grip, the sights point slightly left. The front sight is about one & a half front-sight-widths to the left of center. If I tighten my grip a little with my fingers, the sight swings to the right. I can shoot with everything pointing nicely by adjusting my grip pressure. However, this means I get a lot of horizontal variation in my shots because of slight fluctuations in my grip. I often find that I get shots to the right, or I have to abort the shot when the sights go off that way because I have tightened up a tiny bit during my hold.

I think there are two issues to solve: 1) I want the pistol to naturally point straight, and 2), I'd like to make the pistol's pointing characteristics less sensitive to grip pressure.

#2 seems like the easiest. If I remove some wood under the right side of the fingers, increasing my grip pressure shouldn't push the sight to the right. However, the fingers don't feel like they are applying a lot of off-axis pressure. On the other hand, #1 & #2 may be related, in that increasing the pressure corrects the initial misalignment. Something is starting out pointing things left, and when the pressure is increased that gets compensated out by pressure elsewhere.

The one experiment I've tried is to put cardboard shims under the large pad below the thumb, on the left of the pistol. If the pivot point is at the back of the hand, I expected that to shift the front sight to the right. It made almost no difference at all. One issue with grip fitting is that different parts of the hand are varying degrees of squishy. The pressure in that location isn't very high, and it may be that part of the hand is soft enough that it isn't pushing back hard enough to matter.

The grip I have is 2nd hand (as it were...), and already has some putty in a few places. One spot is on the right rear, in the center of the palm. There is a bump built up there, and I've had to grind that down a bit years ago because the pressure in that one spot was actually hurting when I first got it. I could see where that might be pushing the sights left, but I'm not sure why tightening my grip overcomes that effect. On the theory that Morini knows how to make good grips, I'm a pit suspicious of what's left of that bump.

I'm looking for suggestions on reversible experiments to try (building things up with mole-skin, for example) to figure out what is going before I make permanent changes. Is there some high/low spot that is more likely than others to produce what I am experiencing?

Thanks!

post up some pics of the grip

[Gwhite]

I took a few photos. Here's what my sights look like (roughly) when I come up with a relaxed grip:



The front sight might end up a tiny bit more to the left than this, but this gives an idea of the offset I wish to correct. It took quite a few tries with the camera to get this close to what I see...

Here are a couple views of the grip with the existing putty. If you look closely, you will see the bump in the middle of the palm that i have ground down a bit in the past:



I could probably dispense with the little bit of putty down at the bottom near the palm shelf. My hand is apparently a tiny bit bigger than the original owner's, but the difference is so minor I don't feel a ridge from the putty. It's epoxy, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to chip off without chewing up the grip.

[rmca]

From my experience it is better and faster to start from scratch than to try to modify an existing grip with putty on it.
Most epoxy putties come off rather easily, just pry it out. It usually comes off in a big chunk.

Read this before you start: http://www.issf-sports.org/theissf/acad ... istol.ashx => right hand position

From your pictures you need to add putty at the back of the grip. See picture.
Use some cardboard shims to get a feel for how much and where you need to add.

Sand/scuff the areas where you need to apply the putty, so that it has something to adhere to.
Mask all areas that you do not want putty on. Masking tape works well.
Have a butter knife at hand to remove and adjust the putty while it's still pliable.
Don't add too much hardener so that you have some time to play with the putty. Too little and it won't cure.
Spread a little oil on your hand so that the putty doesn't stick to it. Just a little, you don't need to wet the hole hand.
Mix more than you'll need, apply to the grip, and set your hand in the position needed for the front sights to appear aligned.
Correct by sanding high pressure points, and adding putty to low pressure or void spots. Go slow, and add/remove as many times as it will need.

Don't try to do it all in one go. Work on one area at the time. As you get more experienced you'll get a better feel for this.

Finally, the grip on a free pistol is the most difficult grip to work on, it will take time, trial and some errors.
Once you correct your sight alignment, some other factor may come up, so do this after your free pistol season has ended.
Then, shoot with it a lot before entering in a competition. You'll have to "relearn" the grip. Your scores may drop a bit at first.

Good luck with it!
Hope this helps

[Gwhite]

Thanks! I'll stat by building that up with something temporary to verify that it is the right spot & to see how much I need. I'm guessing it won't take much.

[FredB]

Doug,

I had the same problem you describe on a couple of grips, and nearly went crazy using the "recommended" techniques of adding or subtracting material on the back of the grip. It turned out the problem was related to the way I gripped, and the correction(s) had to do with altering the grip(s) so that only a consistent gripping procedure was possible. The corrections were more in the areas of the finger contact and the palm swell than in the back.

So, before you start adding and/or subtracting, I'd suggest you analyze what's happening with varying grip pressures, especially with the finger tips or third phalanxes of your fingers. Try gripping without any third phalanx pressure at all, just straight back across the middle of the front of the grip. See where the sights point - do they still point left? If so, then adding material in back may be the answer. However, if the front sight points straight with that gripping technique, then try applying increasing third phalanx pressure. I think you'll see the front sight move from left to right.

So what areas of the grip are inducing you to use third phalanx pressure, and what can you do with those areas to eliminate that inducement? Sometimes a grip that's a little too small in circumference for your reach will induce a finger-tip-heavy grip. If that's the case, adding material at the back will make the problem worse. You'd need to increase the circumference without shifting the basic front-back contact areas.

These are just some ideas based on a lot of years working on grips, and they may be way off for your situation. But I think the basic idea of analyzing before altering is important.

HTH,
FredB

[Gwhite]

From my experience it is better and faster to start from scratch than to try to modify an existing grip with putty on it.
Most epoxy putties come off rather easily, just pry it out. It usually comes off in a big chunk.

Read this before you start: http://www.issf-sports.org/theissf/acad ... istol.ashx => right hand position

From your pictures you need to add putty at the back of the grip. See picture.
Use some cardboard shims to get a feel for how much and where you need to add.

Sand/scuff the areas where you need to apply the putty, so that it has something to adhere to.
Mask all areas that you do not want putty on. Masking tape works well.
Have a butter knife at hand to remove and adjust the putty while it's still pliable.
Don't add too much hardener so that you have some time to play with the putty. Too little and it won't cure.
Spread a little oil on your hand so that the putty doesn't stick to it. Just a little, you don't need to wet the hole hand.
Mix more than you'll need, apply to the grip, and set your hand in the position needed for the front sights to appear aligned.
Correct by sanding high pressure points, and adding putty to low pressure or void spots. Go slow, and add/remove as many times as it will need.

Don't try to do it all in one go. Work on one area at the time. As you get more experienced you'll get a better feel for this.

Finally, the grip on a free pistol is the most difficult grip to work on, it will take time, trial and some errors.
Once you correct your sight alignment, some other factor may come up, so do this after your free pistol season has ended.
Then, shoot with it a lot before entering in a competition. You'll have to "relearn" the grip. Your scores may drop a bit at first.

Good luck with it!
Hope this helps

I finally had a chance to play with the this last night. I put one layer of thin moleskin in the region indicated.

Wow! The first go not only straightened out the sights, but it also eliminated the twisting I saw with varying grip pressure!

I will need to tweak things a bit before I make a permanent change, but it looks great so far. I will also need to either drop the heel rest or grind it out a bit to compensate for the added material on the left.

THANK YOU!

[rmca]

I finally had a chance to play with the this last night. I put one layer of thin moleskin in the region indicated.

Wow! The first go not only straightened out the sights, but it also eliminated the twisting I saw with varying grip pressure!

I will need to tweak things a bit before I make a permanent change, but it looks great so far. I will also need to either drop the heel rest or grind it out a bit to compensate for the added material on the left.

THANK YOU!

Glad it helped!

The tricky bit isn't making the change, it's keeping the grip's esthetics... if you care about it.
Masking tape will work wonders for keeping the putty out of where you don't want it.
It saves on the cleaning and makes the grip look a lot better (after you peel it off, obviously!)

Now for the sad news... you've just lost your alibi!!!
Who's going to take the blame for your bad shots now...? ;)