So, not completely pleased with the ambi safety on my Dan Wesson Specialist, I have been thinking of upgrading it. It works fine, but it does work loose with use. The Swenson type retention and tongue/groove joint is far less than optimal in my opinion.
So, I sought out to replace the part with a better/stronger one. Obvious answer was a Wilson Bulletproof ambi. I have one on my Dan Wesson VBOB that is great. It has developed a little looseness over time, but still is a great part. As my VBOB is black, I fit and sent out the Wilson BP ambi to be finished in Ionbond Diamond Black. It matches perfectly.
For my Stainless Specialist, I noticed the Wilson SS parts were highly polished. I contacted Wilson and they would bead blast one for me after fitting, but I wasn’t thrilled about all the back and forth shipping of one part.
So, I looked at the Nighthawk Ambi Safety, advertised as fully machined. I have long been curious about this part - in fact I emailed Larry Lyles at Nighthawk like 18 months ago at least and asked for some photos of the part (before they were up on the website) to see I wanted to try one. I never received a reply or a picture, until it showed up on the website. The web pictures are not that great - they do not show either side of the ambi properly. My post here is to give my impressions of the part, and hopefully some pictures and information that are NOT available elsewhere on the internet (through my searches!).
The Nighthawk part is fully machined from bar stock. The part immediately draws comparison to the Wilson Bulletproof Ambi… but there are differences.
The shaft joint is similar to the Wilson. However, on the Wilson (I have experience with 2 examples) this shaft joint by itself is rather loose. On the Nighthawk part, the shaft joint when snapped together is VERY tight. I believe this is a good thing. On the Wilson part, the hammer pin is a retaining function of the RH side… on the Nighthawk part, the hammer pin does NOT retain the RH side, but it does provide a positive stop point in the up/down position.
Here are some pictures. I haven’t yet fitted it to my gun, I will do so over the Holiday break. I like this part. I also like the Wilson BP part. When I fit this one and use it, I will comment further, but for now - this is a top shelf part that I would recommend.
Here you can see that the hammer pin with the extended lip does not fit and retain the RH side.
I noticed the lines on the back side of the RH side of the ambi, and my first thought was mold lines of a cast part… I contacted Nighthawk, and was told the following:
“The part is fully machined, the circles are from the end mills that do the final contouring on the outside. The other surface you will see is EDM cut on the shaft. Please contact me if you have any other questions. If I read your tone correctly and you are saying we misrepresent the part I would invite you to come here and I would be glad to show you all of the parts and take you to where some of them are manufactured and show you the process. We have had many tours through our facility and shown these processes to many people. We are happy to answer questions and show these processes to our customers, we have nothing to hide.”
I simply asked the question, but I’m satisfied. My initial impressions, are that this is a top notch part by Nighthawk.
