i bought a bone stock mkIII back in '93. i’ve always loved the way the BHP feels and looks. wish the BHP had the short travel of a 1911 trigger, but oh well. the first things i did after buying and shooting it was to change out the trigger, sear and hammer with C&S components and added nice spegel rosewood grips.
the stock ambi safety had an uncomfortable pin and were too low profile for me to engage/disengage positively with gloves on. later on i switched out the stock ambi safety to a wider C&S one (i’m a lefty), but was unhappy with how uncomfortable it felt. sharp edges in the wrong places. and ugly. at least i could activate the safety with gloves on now. i stuck grip tape on the front and back straps for more gription as the smooth enamel ‘paint’ didn’t provide much traction for my sweaty hands.
that’s how i left it for years. better than it came stock, but just not entirely satisfactory either. i was too cheap to send it to novaks and spend more than i had paid for it ($369) to get the straps textured and sights changed.
so, last year, i was talking to a friend of mine - he’s a japanese guy who writes articles for japanese gun magazines. he loved guns so much he actually moved to the U.S. to go to gunsmithing school for 3 years, and currently lives in the U.S., where he writes and shoots matches. we were talking about BHPs and i found out he had one pretty much set up exactly like mine. he was thinking of working on his, with just about the same simple mods that i wanted, and offered to work on mine (if i wanted). i jumped at the chance and this is what i ended up with. i had already worked on the trigger and it shot well so we didn’t mess with the internals - the work was mainly practical/cosmetic.
- install novak plain rear and tritium front sight
- hand matte front and back straps and under trigger guard
- shorten slide stop pin and countersink frame (it often got in the way of my support thumb when shooting lefty)
- undercut trigger guard
- smooth all sharp corners. not a melt, more like a subtle carry bevel.
- contour rear tang/beavertail (smooth edges and round)
- contour and shape ambi safety (he did a superb job on it)
- bevel mag well
- bead blast and blue
he did a really great job, i think, and paid a lot of attention to detail, even hand matting the grip screws.
i just got it back last week and am very pleased with the result. it’s exactly what i had envisioned i wanted my old BHP to be. nothing fancy, just practical, and quite subtle until you compare it side by side to a stock Mk III. he doesn’t do gunsmithing for a living, and doesn’t want to - he only does it for friends when he has some spare time. pretty damn good for a ‘hobbyist’, i think.
here are a couple of pics i snapped.
