After the grips were off and the glamour shots taken, I sprayed some RemOil up inside the frame and started on getting the sideplate off.
I still need help from my emotional support llama when I think about that stuck sideplate screw on Mud Hen, so I was very pleasantly surprised when all three sideplate screws came out without any fuss at all. The screws went into my favorite "these have to go back in a certain order" parts holding device: an old .45 AARP ammo tray.
With the screws safely stored in the correct left to right order, I started whacking the grip frame with an old hammer handle to raise the sideplate. I whacked. I whacked some more. I pondered how my life had led to me banging on things with an old piece of wood in the garage at 9pm on a Thursday night. More whacking. Turn on some music. Whack some more in time with the beat. Maybe the hammer handle is defective. Found another one and whacked more. This handle had a slightly deeper tone that made for more pleasant whacking. Whack whack whack. SWMBO woke up and wanted to know what the h*ll I was doing. I asked for some privacy during my whacking and she went away mumbling about how the dog was smarter than I was.
Finally after what seemed like 3 days of whacking the sideplate started to lift. After that life was easy and it only took 173 more whacks to get it loose.
The inside turned out to be better than I had hoped for. Nasty, but just dirty nasty...not full of pits and orange shag carpet.
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