I picked up my first S&W auto, a '3rd gen' silver CS45E (Police trade-in gun, ambi-decock only) and have been working on it for the last few months trying to improve it's fit and function. The ultimate goal was to get it softened up and pocket carry it. There wasn't a lot left on the table so I had to be creative. Here is my best effort to make it what I wanted. Not as close to the goal as I would have liked but in the end a fair bit better than what I started with. Thanks to the members that helped with questions, your guidance was most appreciated.

My completed job list:

• Trimmed mag and custom fit modfied Sig P220 floorplate
• Cut down larger delrin grip and fit with custom grip pin (BigDog grip modification)
• Relieved trigger guard area to reduce knuckle bite
• Retrofitted frame with traditional mag catch (Ditched plastic button)
• Scallop cut slide to mimick custom shop gun slide features (like Shorty 45)
• Bevel border cut top of slide
• Melted slide to remove hard edges, rolled rear of slide top towards sight
• Cut dustcover on frame to blend with new slide features
• Matched frame to slide at backstrap
• Cut down and dehorned slide stop
• Cut down and dehorned ambi-decocking levers
• Lowered extractor surface to match scallop cut in slide
• Installed XS big-dot night sights
• Bead blasted frame / slide to remove old finish
• Deleted magazine disconnect
• Replaced plastic disconnector with SS version
• Crowned and polished muzzle (Typical factory burr still on it when I got it)
• Frame hard anodized black (Type III - Class 2: black)
• Hard Chromed: Trigger, trigger pin, mach catch, mag catch button
• Laser marked factory model/ser# back in original location
• Laser marked RHS of slide for manufacturer and location of manufacture
• Laser marked LHS of frame with S&W logo and CHIEFS (S&W) SPECIAL
• Built tooling, experimented with making my own sights, and wasted a lot of paper in the middle of it all

So in the end the length didn't change but the overall height with a mag in the gun is now 4.805" down from 5.196" for a reduction of nearly 0.4". This is mostly because of the magazine chop but the XS sights helped here too. The widest controls (decocking levers) narrowed down to 1.256" from 1.386" (reduced 0.130" , a little over an 1/8th). The grip thinned up a bit too with the BigDog mod, down to 1.090" from 1.280" (reduced 0.190")

T-h-a-t i-s a-w-e-s-o-m-e!

****WOW!****

Hold on a sec.....gotta have the wife dry the drool off the keyboard !!! Beautiful work, and I'm very green with envy, Shoo

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"Get Hammered By a Shooboy!!"

Very well thought-out and executed. Really nice work. Congratulations and enjoy it safely.

Awesome...........

You are very talented.

Once upon a time there was a man named Scott Mcdougall who made a nice living for himself doing mods to the Colt Mustang!
I'm just saying...
I have a CS9, what is your mailing address? :-)
With your skills you could be working for yourself, if your not already.
Awesome work, Mike

Thanks for all the compliments! I should mention I'm absolutely not a gunsmith. The time I have in updating this gun is ridiculous. There is no way I could make a living doing this as I would starve to death before I completed a project. I started on this one back in September last year.

I took these at work after I finished the laser marking with my $150 pocket camera. The shots above in my first post where taken with my nice digital SLR. Obviously photography isn't high on my skill set, probably should have waited to shoot with a little less sun?

Very, very nice! Excellent job!
That looks great!
G

Thanks Mike, comparing me to Scott is quite a compliment! I'm curious how you came to make the comparison? I've actually worked on a few of those Colt .380's myself. It all started with that damn plastic trigger and Cylinder & Slides long back-order on an aluminum replacement... (picture that text scrolling to oblivion towards a horizon in a star field)

It's not too hard to do nice work for yourself at your own pace. It's when you make a business out of it we find out who the real gunsmiths are versus the weekend hacks like myself. Meeting expectations under the pressure of a deadline and competitive pricing quickly shakes out the hobbyist. Since I struggled a lot with this project, I'm not sure I'd be real eager to run it again, but thanks for the interest!

That gun is a work of art. I wish my little CS9 could look so good. Quality craftsmanship takes time.

Sammy

Thanks Big Dog, I'm sure it could look even better if I had a real set of your grips on it. To be honest I spent a fair amount of time agonizing over how I would build a set of clear polycarbonate grip panels and an aluminum mainspring / backstrap housing like an ASP. In the end I (shamefully) chickened out. In the mean time I wanted something to put on the gun for testing and development and your modification fit the bill perfectly.

Thank you,
I have made in the area of 150 sets of these grips now and really with all the time and work there is not alot of profit in them. You did a great job and your CS45 is one of the nicest I have seen.
Congratulations.........That is one fine looking piece f wrk!
G

That's really a wonderful job! How did you do the magazine floorplate? Did you lose one round capacity?

No lost capacity, the magazine still accepts all six rounds. When I first set about on this I calculated that the mag body would shorten by 0.200" so I made an aluminum spacer that thick and dropped it in the mag under the floor plate. I shot the gun before hacking the thing up and it ran 100%.

Sure, the mag is a little harder to seat, but these guns always needed a firm seating action anyway. There is also a little more pressure required on the mag button to release a fully charged mag, but this isn't much of an issue to me as I prefer to empty the gun the old fashion way with the trigger

Since making this modification I have put at least 100 rounds through that mag alone. When run next to a stock mag the only difference is the annoying (to me) balancing act of laying my pinky on the nose of the stock base plate . Otherwise you'd never know the mag had been shortened. I knew I would probably be okay going into this as KurtC had done a similar thing to his CS45 long before I even knew the CS45 existed. I merely executed his design with a different floorplate.

Great tips on the process. I'm going to try to figure out something similar on my CS9.

Did you have to modify the P220 floorplate much?

I only trimmed the nose down to my preference and trimmed the lock-plate to fit the slightly stubbier interior of the CS45 mag. All of my modifications were to the magazine body. The P220 floorplate likely won't do for the narrower 9mm mag body. There might be better choices out there, the P220 was chosen only because I had an opportunity to buy four mags for the P220 cheap after looking at a friend's gun and learning of their low profile.

It would be pretty important to see how much room was left in a full CS9 mag, considering the extra capacity and small size it may have less room than the CS45 did and not offer up much of a reduction. I found that a stock fully loaded CS45 mag would allow 1/2" more compression of the top round. I basically took away 0.2" of that still allowing 0.3" of top round compression.

Love your mods, I have a CS9 in the air and have been thinking of the simple tweaks I can do.

The mag bumper-BUMP was the 1st I looked at. I wonder if the early model 39 steel floorplates might not fit the CS9?? Or the P225 single stack??

I really like the work you did on the slide. Did you get a before and after wt? it looks like my may have shaved over an Oz??

Tx
Jim

Thanks for the compliment JJ! Not sure about the P225 baseplates or others. Sig has moved to big plastic floorplates these days like S&W.

As for the wieght, it did come down a little, but the slide cuts were more for easier holster release and to try and take the bulky and very 'printable' corner off the slide. They look pretty good too (I saw a 'Shorty 45' not long after I got my CS45 and decided I had to copy that layout come hell or high water).

Some weight info:

Original gun, empty, no mag = 24.5oz
Completed gun, empty, no mag = 23.4oz

Delta was 1.1oz but this was also due to the lighter 'BigDog' style grip.

Stock magazine = 2.38oz
Modified mag = 2.31oz

Total of completed gun with 6+1 round of Winchester Ranger-T series ammo is 30.9oz

Very nice work Inboost. A piece one can be very proud of. You've taken an exceptional gun and made it even better. Congratulations and thanks for sharing the pics and details.

I don't really know why, but that just popped into my mind when I saw it.
Maybe the fact that are both niche guns with a loyal following and both his work and yours are both radical transformations. Yours even more so than his. I did notice that you trimmed the extractor flush with the slide and my Shorty 45 extractor is full thickness the entire length. I prefer your extractor design to my SFF.

Well thanks again for the compliment and the appreciation of my handiwork. I had hoped there would be a noticeable difference in extractor 'elevation' between loaded/unloaded so it would serve as a loaded chamber indicator by touch. Due to the long pivot point it moves so very little it's hard to tell. Since the extractor is hardened it was also a chore to try and skinny it up. That's cool that you have a Shorty 45, I think it looks a bit better than my chopped up CS45.

Inboost,
That is one BEAUTIFUL job you did on that firearm!
Where did you find someone to laser mark it?
Regards,
BM1

I'll take it. Sorry wrong forum man. The proper place to list this item in the for sale forum. I will say it again before anyone beats me to it when you do post in the correct forum. I WILL TAKE IT.

That looks fantastic. Very nice job. I would also be interested to learn more about the laser etching job. Im contemplating milling the flat sides of my 1006 and one of my concerns was loosing the S&W logo and model information. Love the two tone color combo. Looks sweet.

That would be myself! I'm lucky enough to have a mill, lathe, and 35W Legend Epilog laser engraving machine at work I can twiddle with after hours. To apply the laser marking to the aluminum is just a simple burn. The Stainless requires painting on a special material (Cermark) and then fusing in onto the stainless with the laser which turns it black. I hated the goofy original CS45 slide markings, looked right out of Mork & Mindy to me. The font I picked gives it an 'agency' look and S&W is kind enough to provide hi res logos on their sight for download. I toyed a lot with the idea of marking this gun with the Performance Center logo on the RHS of the frame. In the end felt like I would be misleading those who saw it even though it got far more than that crew would be willing to ever do to it. Can you believe I was turned down for frame refinishing by S&W because I did the bead blasting myself (Even when I suggested/offered to sign a 'best effort' waiver)?

I'm really glad I decided to share it on this website, as no one I show it to locally understands it's not a 'regular' CS45. Just not a lot of them floating around here I guess. The armorer where I had it inspected exclaimed to his coworker, "Look, S&W's made a new CS45" to which I replied, "No, I made a new CS45" which instantly got me access to the tool room and about 100 questions to follow. Other than the group here at the forum every other comment has been, "Oh, nice gun". So thanks again to all who have showed appreciation

A true custom combat hand gun. Exceptional job Sir. Thank you very much for sharing your work with us.

I'll take that as quite a compliment, thank you GFD. I'm not sure I could add up the blood, sweat, and tears I lavished on this piece to a dollar amount that would make separation possible

Absolutely, DROP DEAD gorgeous and a huge improvement over the funny look of the stock CS45 and the Chief's Special line of autoloaders.

If you could duplicate the work on customer's guns I would be willing to bet you'd have quite a line of people begging for the mods on their pistols.

All of the modifications have a purpose and an aesthetic value that is beyond compare to the original. And the laser engraving is more than first rate. And what is better than "First Rate" anyhow?

is it legal to remove the serial number, even if you re-etch it? Because, honestly, how does S&W, and the BATFE know that's the right ser #?

It is absolutely illegal to tamper with a serial number. Lucky for me the CS45 has it's serial number in three places and three sizes (the one under grip is huge) so there was no way I could get in trouble. All of the original serial numbers were visible after bead blasting and anodize as the laser used by the manufacturer is very powerful and I was specifically careful about maintaining their integrity. The model and serial number listed below the slide stop was easy to see if you wet it with oil, but on a dry frame is was a little difficult to make out. So I went the extra mile to make it stand out again by re-marking over the top of it. It turned out to be about 17 extra miles in the end but the visual improvement and factory look made it worth it.

Here's how I did it:

• Scan high resolution picture of frame using flatbed scanner
• Import picture into drawing program
• Spend a day looking through font catalogs only to find none match
• Trace over original text with 'pencil' tool at 1600% magnification
• Create line-up marks based on frame pin holes
• Lathe turn delrin line up pins to insert in frame pin holes
• Laser cut a piece of plastic flat stock with holes made to fit delrin pegs
• Load frame on to work jig which is now aligned with the drawing
• Place paper over serial / model number area and rub with fingernail to emboss
• Run job with laser at min power / max speed to burn paper only
• Lift paper and evaluate line-up between embossed characters and hand drawn characters using backlight
• Adjust location of text block and try again
• and again
• and again
• and again
• and again
• and again (getting the idea this might be a slow T&E process )
• Remove paper and run job at proper marking speed

Wow! I can't tell you how much I love what you did with that!

I have a CS45 and I really like it. You solved all my complaints about it and made it look gorgeous!

So...Would you be willing to modify one of my mags to the flush fit? If so how much do you think it would cost? I'd LOVE to have a flush-fit mag and I can provide a P220 floor plate as well.

Lots of work but definitely worth it in the end. Best looking CS45 Ive ever seen. If S&W had any sense at all they would flat rip off your look and do a limited production run of CS45's and 40's through the Performance Center. There is still plenty of market for small frame autos with big bullets. Alloy & steel handles the load better than plastic, in my opinion. Plus..thats just sexy as hell!

Ever since I saw this I have been envisioning my 1006 in two tone.

Hands down best CS45 I have ever seen.Great job and thanks for posting the pics.

SoCalDep, I'll be the first to admit it's not an easy transformation. The machine work is easy with my jig, but the bending is the b*tch. My first mag required welding both tabs back on, my second mag required one welded back on. I'm hoping my technique is now good and the third will be a winner. The basic problem is bending the tough stainless mag wall material to a sharp 90. It wants to crack and snap off right after you get your first 30 degrees or so into the bend. Heat and finesse are definitely the heart of the technique. If #3 comes out good I'll send you a PM. We'll have to make sure the baseplate and lock you have are in fit and function to the Mec-Gar units I scavenged my parts from.

Vulcan, considering I really stole the idea from their Shorty 45 I would be honored if they wanted to run copies of my project. I would even be happy to send it to them (as long as I got it back!) for the cloning along with the notes I made on my work. You know what they say, Imitation is the highest form of flattery!

My pleasure Two Guns, thanks for the compliment!

thanks for the write up on the engraving.

I dunno... It looks to me like you could use a little more practice to perfect your efforts... And lucky for you I would be willing to trade you my completely bone stock CS-45 even-up for your "first attempt at perfection" CS-45... I live on the WV/OH border and might even be talked into meetin' you halfway for the exchange...

OK enough with my bull c**p... What a truly incredible job... All of it... The rounded edges, the refinishing, the grip mod, the mag mod, the laser work every aspect of your effort is truly top notch perfection!!! I would love to have the skill, resources, confidence, and most of all the courage to undertake such a project.

Thanks very, very much for sharing!

Fantastic! That's what I call a concealable .45acp!!!

CMTaylor,

Thanks for the compliments, you had me grinning as I had a coworker try and work the same line on me (although he had no other gun to offer). It's been a great gun and has withstood the test of time so far. Looks like it did the day it came off the bench.

Engine18,

I wear some big pocket pants (Eotach) so it does drop in well. The only really gripe I have is that the rear XS sight has a pretty sharp corner on it which wants to poke through the pocket material. I would chop it up and smooth it out but I'm guessing the tritium insert would have to be sacrificed. I'm sure XS would relamp it for me but I must admit I've just been enjoying it as it is.

Nice work. I CC a CS45 when able. When not able I pocket carry the 642.

Last evening I was able to get to the range with my CS45 - haven't shot it in a long long time. It's a great shooter for such a compact.

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For God and Country

Got linked back to this while doing research on customizing my 3914. The work by the OP is fantastic. Now how do I find someone to do similar mods for me without having to give up my first born son?

Not much I can add to the other posts other than to agree completely

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Jim in Iowa

ty dacoontz for reviving this old thread!

inboost that is awesome! well done!

I have often thought about getting my slide milled on my CS9D. I was thinking more on the lines of the ASP or was it the Devel that had ball milled grooves along the slide. Now you gave me another option. Have you had any issues with your extractor after you thinned it? Do you still have the gun? How has the finish on the frame held up?

I'll second that, inquiring minds want to know!!

Hrm, actually, looks as if it was sold back in 2012 to another member of this forum...
FS: Custom S&W CS45 - Sold Pending Funds

The questions being WHO now owns it, and how is it looking/performing now??

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Marlin & Calico Specialist

Wow, that is amazing work!

There's a CS45 at LGS for $500 with box and an extra magazine...I might could talk them down on the price.