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I have, for some time, wanted to cut down the grip of a glock to the next smaller size. I had the Glock 17 in mind because from what I can tell, the hump towards the bottom of the grip is lower than the 19 and I have smaller hands so anything longer than a standard G19 doesn't help me, it also allows reverse comparability with G19 mags. The only full size glock I have is a gen3 rtf2, and I couldn't bring myself to taking a saw to it. I found a used, low round count Gan3 G22 that I oft with plans of using it as a victim for some different modifications including chopping the grip. Once I got it home and convinced myself it was in to good of shape for that use I decided I just hate making permanent changes to guns. I know feelings are mixed on chopping grips down, I see both sides. I pretty much decided I wouldn't carry a double stack gun every day so my only reason is to allow the use of both 17 and 19 mags and the added grip length of the full size doesn't benefit me.
I came across the longslide conversion parts from lone wolf and don't see much mentioned about them. The parts are just a G17 length barrel with the different G19 locking lugs and a little dust cover spacer to fill the added gap and allow the use of the G19 recoil spring. Unfortunately, with the parts needed it isn't a cheaper way to get a longslide but if you don't like permanently modifying your guns or like me like to be able to swap things around it may be an option.
At most you would need a complete glock 17 slide, less the barrel and recoil spring, a complete glock frame, the dust cover and the lonewolf barrel. If you have both a complete G19 and G17 you get the ability I like, to either have a stock size 19, stock size 17 or a G17L (longslide). One benefit is if you are limited to a fixed number of guns you can list on a carry permit and are not against carrying with aftermarket parts you could almost get 2 guns in one (something I'm not sure I would do, as I'll mention in a minute).
Putting everything together is pretty straight forward, with unloaded guns, take the slides off the frames and take the recoil springs and barrels out of the slides. Lone wolf dose say fitting may be required on the dust cover. In my case it was slightly to wide to slide into the slide rails, some very minor grinding up with a dremel and a little touch up with some sandpaper and it slid in snugly. It's not a moving part but I polished up the sides were it fit in the frame channels anyway. From there, drop the extended barrel in the G17 slide and it slides right on the G19 frame like any other glock.
I actually like the look of it overall, the slide doesn't seem overly long for the frame and a like the length of the compact grip. The finish on the rtf2 slide seems slicker than a normal Gen3 glock and the fish scale slide serrations are not as grippy, in my opinion, so I would prefer a standard slide, but for my needs it is fine and I like the uniqueness of the fish scale serrations. The one thing that concerned me was because the muzzle end of the recoil spring assembly fits into the back side of the dust cover spacer, the hole on the muzzle of the slide that the guide rod protrudes through when the slide is back is now around a half inch in front (I'm confident that made no sense but I'll try and show in a picture) so I was afraid the lip on the guide rod would catch on the end of the muzzle when shooting. I thought I may have felt it catching on 2 rounds but when I looked at the plastic I saw no signs of wear. This is also the main reason I would hesitate to actually carry this, you now have an open hole in front of the guide rod, if something got jammed in it, I could imagine it causing cycling issues.
I just put it together and ran 50 rounds of freedom munitions RPT (range, practice and training) reman ammo. This was my first time using this ammo but have had dodo reliability with all the other Freedom Munitions ammo I have used, both new and reman. In the 50 rounds I had one problem, it seemed like one round was slightly underpowered and the spent case didn't eject and it didn't pick up a new round so I ended up with the slide closed on a spent casing. It had plenty of power to ring the steel, just didn't seem quite as fast as the others. I wasn't sure how the spring from the 19 would like working with the slightly heavier 17 slide but in the limited number of rounds it didn't seem to be an issue. I have used the 40 to 9 conversion barrels from lone wolf with acceptable results and this one seems to be the same from the little use I gave it. I was more just testing to see if it functioned so it is hard to say how the accuracy was compared to a stock barrel or if there was any added benefit to the slightly longer sight radius but I was happy with how it was grouping.
A common gripe with permanently modifying the grip that I have heard is resale value going down. Unfortunately, if cost is a concern this is no better an alternative. By the time you buy an extra slide and the lone wolf parts, $55 alone for the little dust cover is way overpriced I think, you are way past anything you would lose in resale if you just chopped the grip and I doubt you would recoup much of the cost if you sold it with both slides and the conversion parts but I could be wrong. If you already have a full size and compact 9mm Glock and think you may like having the ability to change slides I can at least tell you, so far, it seems to function well and is fun to shoot. The main benefit I could see is if you, like me, enjoy being able to swap parts around on different guns for no particular reason, for that, it dose what it says it will.
I came across the longslide conversion parts from lone wolf and don't see much mentioned about them. The parts are just a G17 length barrel with the different G19 locking lugs and a little dust cover spacer to fill the added gap and allow the use of the G19 recoil spring. Unfortunately, with the parts needed it isn't a cheaper way to get a longslide but if you don't like permanently modifying your guns or like me like to be able to swap things around it may be an option.
At most you would need a complete glock 17 slide, less the barrel and recoil spring, a complete glock frame, the dust cover and the lonewolf barrel. If you have both a complete G19 and G17 you get the ability I like, to either have a stock size 19, stock size 17 or a G17L (longslide). One benefit is if you are limited to a fixed number of guns you can list on a carry permit and are not against carrying with aftermarket parts you could almost get 2 guns in one (something I'm not sure I would do, as I'll mention in a minute).
Putting everything together is pretty straight forward, with unloaded guns, take the slides off the frames and take the recoil springs and barrels out of the slides. Lone wolf dose say fitting may be required on the dust cover. In my case it was slightly to wide to slide into the slide rails, some very minor grinding up with a dremel and a little touch up with some sandpaper and it slid in snugly. It's not a moving part but I polished up the sides were it fit in the frame channels anyway. From there, drop the extended barrel in the G17 slide and it slides right on the G19 frame like any other glock.
I actually like the look of it overall, the slide doesn't seem overly long for the frame and a like the length of the compact grip. The finish on the rtf2 slide seems slicker than a normal Gen3 glock and the fish scale slide serrations are not as grippy, in my opinion, so I would prefer a standard slide, but for my needs it is fine and I like the uniqueness of the fish scale serrations. The one thing that concerned me was because the muzzle end of the recoil spring assembly fits into the back side of the dust cover spacer, the hole on the muzzle of the slide that the guide rod protrudes through when the slide is back is now around a half inch in front (I'm confident that made no sense but I'll try and show in a picture) so I was afraid the lip on the guide rod would catch on the end of the muzzle when shooting. I thought I may have felt it catching on 2 rounds but when I looked at the plastic I saw no signs of wear. This is also the main reason I would hesitate to actually carry this, you now have an open hole in front of the guide rod, if something got jammed in it, I could imagine it causing cycling issues.
I just put it together and ran 50 rounds of freedom munitions RPT (range, practice and training) reman ammo. This was my first time using this ammo but have had dodo reliability with all the other Freedom Munitions ammo I have used, both new and reman. In the 50 rounds I had one problem, it seemed like one round was slightly underpowered and the spent case didn't eject and it didn't pick up a new round so I ended up with the slide closed on a spent casing. It had plenty of power to ring the steel, just didn't seem quite as fast as the others. I wasn't sure how the spring from the 19 would like working with the slightly heavier 17 slide but in the limited number of rounds it didn't seem to be an issue. I have used the 40 to 9 conversion barrels from lone wolf with acceptable results and this one seems to be the same from the little use I gave it. I was more just testing to see if it functioned so it is hard to say how the accuracy was compared to a stock barrel or if there was any added benefit to the slightly longer sight radius but I was happy with how it was grouping.
A common gripe with permanently modifying the grip that I have heard is resale value going down. Unfortunately, if cost is a concern this is no better an alternative. By the time you buy an extra slide and the lone wolf parts, $55 alone for the little dust cover is way overpriced I think, you are way past anything you would lose in resale if you just chopped the grip and I doubt you would recoup much of the cost if you sold it with both slides and the conversion parts but I could be wrong. If you already have a full size and compact 9mm Glock and think you may like having the ability to change slides I can at least tell you, so far, it seems to function well and is fun to shoot. The main benefit I could see is if you, like me, enjoy being able to swap parts around on different guns for no particular reason, for that, it dose what it says it will.
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