Blending the Beaver Tail Grip Safety

Ah, the old beaver tail grip safety.  I originally bought a BTGS from Fusion, but was pretty disappointed with the part they sent me.  In their defense, I knew it was something of a "value line" part, and it was damn cheap.  On almost any other project, the Fusion (actually, STI I believe) part would have been fine, but since this is MY high end project, I decided to fork over the money for a nicer part.  I went with the Les Baer, because I love the way the BTGS is done on my Les Baer TRS.  the LB is on the left, Fusion on the right.

This is how the Fusion part fit in the frame.  You can see a big gap between the beaver tail and the frame tangs.  This allows the part to fit and swing freely without much fitting (though blending is more difficult), but I think it doesn't look as good.

This is the Les Baer after considerable fitting, but I wanted to show it in a similar position within the frame to the Fusion.  You can see how there is zero space between the frame and the BTGS.  Fitting isn't too difficult, I followed the directions here:  http://www.blindhogg.com/gunsmith/wilsonbt.html  

The key to remember is that you need to slowly remove material from the undersides of the little tang nubs, NOT from the sides of the frame or the sides of the BTGS.  When you first install it, it will rub on the frame (you can see where...).  However, it's only rubbing there because it's getting hung up on the underside of the frame tangs.  Follow the method in Blindhogg's website, go slowly, and it will work out.

Finally, it's all blended in.  Once I removed enough material from the frame tangs that the BTGS would swing freely, I used a zip tie to and an old thumb safety to secure the beavertail to the frame.  Then I used a dremel and sanding drums to do the rough blending, and finished with 1" strips of sand paper (120 followed by 220) and my finger to polish out the rough scratches from the Dremel.  

At this point the Fusion has been shipped back for refinishing.  While doing the pre-finish assembly, I noticed that the plunger tube that Fusion had installed was out of spec.  On the firing pin side, I couldn't get the plunger to go into it's hole for anything.  Hopefully they'll fix that without issue, as I definitely don't want to send it back to Fusion for a 3rd time.