I'm a lefty. Any plans to develop an ambidextrous safety?
Sbardella Arms Fully Machined Thumb Safeties Now Available!
Hi 1911 fans,
Here at Sbardella Arms, we take pride in using only high quality parts machined from forgings or bar stock in our custom 1911s. We machine our thumb safeties in house from bar stock, and we are now offering them for sale to on our website www.sbardella-arms.com . These parts are finish machined after heat treating the blanks, so that there is no chance of warpage. The extended switch lever is serrated on top, and we machine a nice radius on the bottom of the lever. This radius on the bottom edge makes it very comfortable to press the safety "on" with your thumb. It's a small detail, but I find it very pleasing and comfortable to work one of these safeties vs one with a sharp 90 degree bottom edge. We currently have matt finish blued safeties in stock and I am hoping to have stainless safeties in stock in a few weeks. I am also thinking of offering these in a high polish blued finish, let me know what you guys think!
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Neil Sbardella
Sbardella Arms inc.
(802) 265-3555
Here at Sbardella Arms, we take pride in using only high quality parts machined from forgings or bar stock in our custom 1911s. We machine our thumb safeties in house from bar stock, and we are now offering them for sale to on our website www.sbardella-arms.com . These parts are finish machined after heat treating the blanks, so that there is no chance of warpage. The extended switch lever is serrated on top, and we machine a nice radius on the bottom of the lever. This radius on the bottom edge makes it very comfortable to press the safety "on" with your thumb. It's a small detail, but I find it very pleasing and comfortable to work one of these safeties vs one with a sharp 90 degree bottom edge. We currently have matt finish blued safeties in stock and I am hoping to have stainless safeties in stock in a few weeks. I am also thinking of offering these in a high polish blued finish, let me know what you guys think!
Neil Sbardella
Sbardella Arms inc.
(802) 265-3555
1 - 14 of 14 Posts
Thanks for the words of encouragement. Its nice to see that other people also appreciate little details on these parts. I took a closer look and you are correct, the safety is just slightly rubbing the plunger tube. Thanks for bringing this up, I'm going to adjust my drawings to add some clearance here to eliminate this. I don't want much of a gap here that could snag clothing and whatnot, but maybe 0.005" would be good. As for the back of the safety, I have also noticed that most companies leave some pretty deep machining marks here that need to be stoned off. I tried to create the best possible finish on our parts:
We do have a 0.010" radius where the pin meets the body for the exact reason you mention. This is called out on the original ordinance drawings of the part, but you're right most companies seem to ignore this detail.
Food for thought gents.
Current options are just awful, and we now have more Hi Power manufacturers than ever before. A well designed HP safety along the lines of the one on the new Springfield (for God's sake don't copy C&S's safety, it sucks).
I second DarkLord's opinion on the C&S thumb safety for the BHP. This 1911 safety by Sbardella Arms appears to be top shelf comfortable!!! Will be waiting for the BHP version to appear at a theater near me.
Aaaah…the ambi. Also a lefty. I have some opinions I’ll share after doing mods-or shopping for gunsmiths to do them, shipping guns to Wilson and nighthawk to do them…buying a 1911 because it has an ambi, and just generally being a lefty that loves 1911’s-and likes to carry one.
The first thing I’ll mention is that the two best ambi safety’s Ive come across are (drumroll…) the Wilson Combat tactical bullet proof, and the ed Brown-which I discovered after buying a new DW ECO 9mm. Liked it so much I ordered the ambi from DW in carbon to match. When it arrived I took a good look at it, compared it to the Ed Brown on their site-and have made the working assumption its an Ed Brown. Had it fit in the ECO, and it is almost better than the WC Tactical.
What do I want in an amb? Some thoughts:
1) I’m never gonna like the Swenson arm style. Ok, aesthetics maybe-but I don’t like it.
2) every time I see a nicely set up custom 1911 with a retro colt-style safety I pine for a well built retro style ambi,dunno why-but I’d use a nice one for sure
3) a commonly heard reason from right handed shooters is that they don’t like an ambi because when they carry it may catch on something and flip the safety off. Lefty’s ALWAYS face this concern. Build an ambi safety that has literally almost or no actual lever on the left-but just the plate so it can move upwards into the slide notch to lock it when the lever on the right is activated by my left thumb-then you’ll sell a bunch of them. I want one for guns I want to carry. Consider also one with just a very sharply reduced left side, so I can use it if I’m one-armed and have to shoot with my right hand…but the rest of the time its a smaller number that my strong side. There are certainly safety’s like this for right handed shooters
I love the look of your safety-nice shape and ergo’s
At the risk of hyperbole, I’ll just say that I kinda think that the last underdeveloped thing in the 1911 space is a set of really good ambi options-Wilson does it best though, I think
I’d love to see you throw your hat in the ring
This is great input, thanks for taking the time to explain from a lefty's point of view. I can see the appeal of an ambi with reduced left safety lever. No lever at all on the left side would be a really unique look that I have never seen before. Looks like I'm off to the drawing board (AKA computer modeling software) to work up some designs!Aaaah…the ambi. Also a lefty. I have some opinions I’ll share after doing mods-or shopping for gunsmiths to do them, shipping guns to Wilson and nighthawk to do them…buying a 1911 because it has an ambi, and just generally being a lefty that loves 1911’s-and likes to carry one.
The first thing I’ll mention is that the two best ambi safety’s Ive come across are (drumroll…) the Wilson Combat tactical bullet proof, and the ed Brown-which I discovered after buying a new DW ECO 9mm. Liked it so much I ordered the ambi from DW in carbon to match. When it arrived I took a good look at it, compared it to the Ed Brown on their site-and have made the working assumption its an Ed Brown. Had it fit in the ECO, and it is almost better than the WC Tactical.
What do I want in an amb? Some thoughts:
1) I’m never gonna like the Swenson arm style. Ok, aesthetics maybe-but I don’t like it.
2) every time I see a nicely set up custom 1911 with a retro colt-style safety I pine for a well built retro style ambi,dunno why-but I’d use a nice one for sure
3) a commonly heard reason from right handed shooters is that they don’t like an ambi because when they carry it may catch on something and flip the safety off. Lefty’s ALWAYS face this concern. Build an ambi safety that has literally almost or no actual lever on the left-but just the plate so it can move upwards into the slide notch to lock it when the lever on the right is activated by my left thumb-then you’ll sell a bunch of them. I want one for guns I want to carry. Consider also one with just a very sharply reduced left side, so I can use it if I’m one-armed and have to shoot with my right hand…but the rest of the time its a smaller number that my strong side. There are certainly safety’s like this for right handed shooters
I love the look of your safety-nice shape and ergo’s
At the risk of hyperbole, I’ll just say that I kinda think that the last underdeveloped thing in the 1911 space is a set of really good ambi options-Wilson does it best though, I think
I’d love to see you throw your hat in the ring
Update on these thumb safeties, after reviewing tolerances of the plunger tube height I decided to take a few thousands of an inch off the back of the switch lever to ensure that it doesn't rub on the plunger. With a dimension of 0.162" from back of safety to back of switch lever, even if your plunger tube is at maximum tolerance our safety wont rub. I cut a simple soft jaw to hold the parts in one of our vertical machining centers and skim cut the back of the safety lever to rework these parts into tolerance. Here's some pictures of my setup:
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It will take me a few days to get these parts re-blued and available for sale again. All new safeties will be cut to these new tolerances. Thanks again for everyone's interest and input!
It will take me a few days to get these parts re-blued and available for sale again. All new safeties will be cut to these new tolerances. Thanks again for everyone's interest and input!
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