Do any of my fellow forum members have any experience with fitting a set of grips to a N frame? Its got some gaps around the backstrap that aren't uncomfortable in the hand, just to my eye. My next question is can anyone inlet a grip medallion into a 1911 grip panel? It doesn't look that hard, but I'm not a woodworker and don't really know how to do the process. I'm kind of curious about all this cause I have picked up a pile of 1911 in honor of the 100th birthday

I have heard a 10mm forstner bit in a drill press makes the job easy. With a drill stop on the bit and the 1911 panel being flat it should a piece of cake.

__________________
S&W Accumulator

Where do you go about finding metric forstner bits? All my wood working supplies (read: set of drill bits, clamps, hammer and saw lol) are in SAE. Thanks for the heads up Mike.

10 mm pretty darn close to 3/8"

__________________
JIM
NRA Pistol Instr

I always used an end mill to cut the inlet for medallions.

Mic the diameter of the medallions you're using and get an end mill that's as close to it as possible. A few .000" oversize is better than undersize.
They cut cleanly, a nice flat bottom to the cut and won't tear the wood or ivory edges if the panel is clamped securely.

A drill press w/ stop is sufficient if the set up is sturdy/solid enough. Don't attempt a free hand operation.

Press medallion into position w/ a dot of epoxy glue underneath to secure. Don't use too much glue or it'll ooze out from around the medallion and onto the panel.

I've used 'super glue' also and it has worked nicely but that was on grips that were only used as display pieces. I don't know how it'd hold up to field use.

FWIW, Colt used nothing more than a black 'mastic' adhesive under their medallions in their ivory & pearl grips since the 70's.
A stickey, rubbery adhesive that never drys hard but holds the medallion in place and can actually be reused if you can get it out of there.
IIRC they still glued the medallions into the wooden grips.