1911 BEAVERTAIL FITTING JIG Reviews & Ratings

Allows for easy and precise installation. Gave a perfect fit to the palm safety.

I found this tool to be very useful while installing a new beavertail on an EAA Girsan 1911. As you can see from the photos, it "gets you close." My eyeballs aren't what they used to be, so I overdid the filing just a tad. As others have said, take one stroke at a time, and then look carefully at the effects. Don't overdo it, as I did. I think I took one stroke of the file too many. But I thought it looked okay at the time with my 75 year-old eyeballs. :-) Yet the tool got me in the ballpark with this installation. The Girsan (Turkish made), by the way, is a great shooter with excellent quality parts. It is my sixth 1911 in some 25 years; none of them as inexpensive as this one. Anyway, I am really happy with jig for this job, as it is so much better than trying to do it without a reference of any kind, which I have successfully done before. I should have got this jig long ago! You might note in the photo the little jar of Brownells DICROPAN T-4 Touchup. It's wonderful when working on blued or black steel parts. It's a great "cold blue." Not so good on aluminum, as I have tried it on a few ARs, but it's absolutely great on steel parts. I can't recommend enogh the Wilson Combat jig or Dicropan. Thanks again, Brownells! retired Marine

This jig made my beavertail fitting time go from 3 hours to 1. once done with the file I only needed to fine tune a couple high spots and hit it with some emery cloth. I used wilsons beavertail and it fit perfectly

Great tool and very easy to use, simply screw it on the frame and file till you hit the jig. The Jig will get you about 95% of the way to a perfect fit, the other 5% is slow freehand filing. I used this with a wilson beavertail for a perfect fit.

This is a must have product if you are going to install a Wilson Combat Beavertail. The instructions can be better however after a little investigation its easy enough to understand. I rated this 4 out of 5 stars as I've used this on several model 1911's and on a few, some additional prep work was needed in order to make the grip function properly.

This is a nice little jig that will make things a lot easier fitting the beavertail on my Officers ACP though i must say that the instructions are a joke, why even think of including example pictures when they are just black smears on the paper.. Seriously.

I have fit BT safeties in the past by hand and it took a long time to get it done and look good. Using this tool it took about 1 hour from start to final lapping of the safety. The jig is super hard and the file just bounces off of it. It will get you close then some layout fluid or permanent marker and test to get that last whisker of metal removed and have a perfect fit. The only downside is the instructions. They pretty much are useless.

When drop in beavertails aren't available, you should use a jig - one with the same radius as the new beavertail for best fit. Should buy beavertail & jig made by same company. Provided instructions were pretty basic, but intuitive - mount jig & cut frame to jig surface. At that point, you're not finished. Must trim frame a bit at a time until holes in frame & jig line up. Then finish triming the beavertail tab (the hardest part) to make grip safety/trigger/sear/hammer work. Use old grip safety for reference. Pics on my instructions were poor to black, but not really needed. Cutting can be done w/fine hobby bench grinder, fine files, & Cratex tools. Metal on jig is very hard & difficult to damage. First job took long time, next will be 1/2 as much. Came out really nice for my first job as a rank amateur.

With ed brown jig you file until you get to the jig. This is not the case with Wilson combat jig. I filed off way to much material and I wasn't even close to filing to the jig lobes. Eyeball it and use perminant marker to see where you are rubbing. It is not worth the money. This was used for a Wilson combat beavertail.... doesnt fit it's own brand jig.