Ortgies 32 grip safety repair & functional upgrade

[xtriggerman]

My son just bought this 32 at the Knoxville GS and come to find out, the grip safety has an arm that engages the rear of the firing pin spring, that was gone, snapped off at some point in time. Well, what to do. The 7.65 grip safeties appear to be not an easy find. So after thinking about the way this grip safety is designed to work, I thought a slight remanufacture of the design was in order so I could use the broken grip safety as is.....kinda.  First you have to know how an Ortgies works. The grip Safety does not work like an active 1911 type. If the gun is chambered, you need to depress the take down button to activate (pop out) the grip safety. I just don't like that function in the first place. So I modified the system to work exactly like a 1911 style grip safety with the additional function that any time the safety is out as in out of your grip, the slide will be locked in place "in battery". This gun must be griped to unlock the slide and this simultaneously takes the safety off.  This slide lock function is needed just in case some one try's to cock the slide back with the grip safety out some how. That would have the potential to damage the firing pin. A very nice upgrade. Here is how its done.


In this shot a few mods are shown. The area that shows 2 fresh angled cuts used to have a thick retaining lip there that would capture the take down button and hold the grip safety in the forward position. Those fresh cuts allow the take down button to protrude from the side of the frame by about .050 while the grip safety is in the out position.



Here are the mods to the mag catch. Powering it from a different position since the "new" grip safety spring takes up the spring pocket that was the original mag catch spring position.

 

Here the only mod to the take down button is to mill out the pictured corners so the flat of the button can be allowed to enter the slide body rail.



Here you can see a notch that is about .045 deep in the slide rail. And an additional .045 slot that was milled with a dull cutter I had. It forced a raised line in the slide finger grooves.



Finally the completed Ortgies 32 that now has a far more practical grip safety as they were latter developed in history. Back in gun school, a friend had bought a newly released HK P7 squeeze cocker 9mm. That was a fool proof safety shooter and this new remake reminds me of that ol HK.