My take on the S&W CS45

inboost

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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")

CS4502.jpg


CS4501.jpg


CS4503.jpg


CS4504.jpg


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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?

CS4507.jpg


CS4508.jpg


CS4509.jpg
 
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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 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!
 
Beauty

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

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

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?
 
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 :D

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?
 
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.
 
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
 
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??

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.
 
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