I received a Hogue Pau Ferro checkered grip for "Fathers Day". They really are beautiful on my gun. The gun functions perfectly except for disassembly. With the Hogue grips on the slide it will not come off. It slides forward then stops about 1/4 inch. The safety is in the upright position, gun uncocked with magazine removed. Removed slide stop, then nothing. Externally and internally I can see nothing causing it to bind. No part of the slide is touching the grip. But when I remove the grips, slide comes right off as it should. I put the factory grips back on and she functions normally. Any ideas or suggestion? I really like these Hogues on my gun.

I had a similar issue when learning how to make CS9 grips, and my impression was that the grip was making contact with the back of the drawbar assembly under the beavertail somehow, and wouldn't let one of the levers go all the way down. It only happened to me once and that's just my best guess, so maybe look at the inside of your Hogues just under the beavertail area, see if anything looks like it's sticking out and catching? Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be along to offer more concrete info as well.

Best of luck, and I suppose you could always contact Hogue and see about exchanging them for a new set.

Thank you sir so very much. You were right, the grip was not milled very well and was preventing the slide bar from fully retracting. After a little polishing with a Dremel tool on the grip it works fine. Again thank you.
P.S. Hogue was no help at all, they wanted me to ship my gun to them at my expense plus if I altered the grip it would void the warranty but was told by their rep to have a Gunsmith alter it. So in other words if your Hogue Grip does not work. TOUGH!

I know I sounded a little harsh about Hogue Grips. But in reality they make some beautiful stuff. Their rep did try to help me but was at a real loss. He really did not know what to do except for me to send them my gun. From N.C. to California over a grip? No way. Though they were expensive. But I figured it out on my own. I guess they did not whittle all that needed to be whittled on the inside of the grip. I have a couple of Hogue Exotic grips on my revolvers and they are great. But the poor Hogue Rep was no help on this matter. I kinda felt sorry for him.

We wouldn't know as we don't have pics to look at!

You are very welcome, and I'm glad that you were able to get the problem solved yourself. I've had a fitting/production problem with Hogue wood grips for a Kahr pistol before, and it kind of turned me off of them. For the high price, their quality control seems a little suspect to me (though wood grips usually look very nice).

Now that I ponder on it, I did have a problem with a rosewood grip from them that went on my Dan Wesson 44 mag. There was a bit of fore and aft play after I put them on the revolver. But I cured it with some Teflon tape wrapped around the grip stud to fill in the slack. The hole in the grip was a little over sized and I did not want to mar the beautiful finish on my gun when I shoot it. But they are pretty on it. But again, thank you so much for your help.