Cross-dominant grips work better?

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tedmosby7
Posts: 40
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2022 4:58 pm

Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by tedmosby7 »

I am shooting with my correct dominant eye and hand. My front sight always points to the left with the factory air pistol grip configuration. On all my air pistols I have to add materials to the back of the hand or purchase the Rink 7-degree offset. Even with the Rink offset I still am adding material to the back of the grip. This in-turn rotates the hand out of the grip. It makes the contact of the web between the trigger finger and thumb much less consistent.

I do have pretty long fingers and am curious if I am wrapping them around too much or if I am holding the pistol with pressure in the incorrect spots.

I don't seem to have this issue on my rapid fire or standard pistols.

Any thoughts?
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Azmodan
Posts: 392
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2019 4:00 pm
Location: Romania

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by Azmodan »

i am also cross-eye dominant (right hand + left eye). i use Rink grips with 7 degree offset on all my pistols and they align corectly
Airpistol: Feinwerkbau 100 / Feinwerkbau P8X
STP: Walther GSP 22
CFP: Walther GSP 32
Freepistol: TOZ-35
PPC: CZ Shadow 2
PCC: Nova Modul CTS9
izzyjim
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Oct 26, 2013 6:29 am
Location: arnold,md.

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by izzyjim »

Yeah, me too. Right eye-right hand, and the dot/sights are pointing left when I raise the pistol.
I have tried different grips, and adding putty to the right rear of the grip. adding putty helps, but it pushes my hand off the anatomical grip, and makes me wrap-around which I don't like either. This happens with my Izzy, and my Pardini SP. Both have Euro grips.
Surprisingly, my High Standard Trophy aligns perfectly when I raise it. I wish I could put a H.S. grip on my Pardini. Right now, I am working with a 1911 style grip on the Pardini. It is an experiment still in progress...Jim
ABerryhill
Posts: 257
Joined: Sun Oct 25, 2015 4:22 pm

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by ABerryhill »

Jim,

If you'd like, I can 3d-scan your High Standard grips you like so much and recreate them (and the underlaying frame feel) as a new grip for your Pardini. The grip angle and the feel in the hand will be just the same as your High Standard. I do this sort of job for shooters all the time. Here is a link to learn more and let me know if you have any questions.

https://www.precisiontargetpistolgrips. ... oduce.html

All best,
Andrew

Precision Target Pistol Grips
sparky
Posts: 643
Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2004 11:44 pm

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by sparky »

I'm *not* cross-dominant, but I use the 7-degree grips because I have short fingers. Plus, I like the benefit of having extra material that I can reduce...looks much better than having to build up the area with putty.
tedmosby7
Posts: 40
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2022 4:58 pm

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by tedmosby7 »

Thanks everyone. I'll keep plugging away at it.
thirdwheel
Posts: 183
Joined: Sat Feb 08, 2014 2:16 pm
Location: England

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by thirdwheel »

Grip adjustment is rather a black art and adding plod is the last thing you do in a grip adjusting journey, it must be done in conjunction of with removing material first, it takes time and you will mess up so you will need to go slowly. First thing you need to understand in this journey is you shoot to get nice scores and feel good about it, not to have a pistol that is pristine and look good or worry about what it will do to it's retail value when you sell it - grips are disposable, and it does not matter what they look like, but you can do it neatly if you use care. You can buy a second hand grip cheap that has been worked on and get that to fit. Some will buy a slightly small grip and remove material until it fits and point where it should and then add filler to swell it with filler to to fill in all those places you need it.
For filler use a styrene free wood filler that is readily available cheaply and is available in many colours, use a wood filler that is polyester based not epoxy based as it is smoother flowing for when you want to hold the pistol with it on and flow to fit your hand and is is also so much faster setting, it also sands down freely if you feel you need to sand it down, but you should not need to do this if you do it last and check what you are doing as you are trying to get a perfect contact fit to your hand.
All of this is about trying to get the front sight to go right which is the most common problem that needs correcting.
First the palm swell is the point that you want to use as your pivot point, first point of attack is to remove material on the left of the grip under your thumb right on the corner to try and start to make a "V" so the pistol fits better in the V made by your thumb and first finger, to do this take the grip off and look inside it for light starting to come through as it gets very thin then stop. I use a little hand held electric drum sander but a round file and glass paper wrapped round a dowel rod works too. You may find this does enough and you can stop or you may feel or see the front sight start it's journey to the right. Next is to remove material from in front of the palm swell as you are trying to rotate the pistol to the right go slowly especially if you have an electric trigger and all the gubbins are in a void in the grip or with Rink grips the Allan adjusting screws for the palm shelf.
When you have the sight in the middle this is now the point you use filler to mould the pistol to your hand and also make an indexing ridge that fits in the fold of the transition between palm and fingers. Put hand cream or barrier cream on your hand put filler in the fold area but do this with the grip back on the frame and align the sights forcing the filler to oooz out as you don't want to create the problem you have just been solving. Before you add the filler wood oil the grip and let it dry this will allow you to "pop" off the filler easily if it needs removing. I also put a little filler on the palm swell after creatin ghe index ridge to totally fill this area again pointing the gun till it sets. This filler gets warm when it sets so if it gets too hot you have added too much catalyst and you need to get your hand off. See Don Nygords notes about grip fitting as I follow his process and it works and someone said there are two types of pistol competitors one that is working on their grip and the other that is about to be working on their grip, have fun it takes ages.
Sprocky
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Aug 28, 2020 8:13 pm

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by Sprocky »

Hi Ted, I can relate to Azmodan; Most of my international pistol have custom grips with a seven degree offset.
They all line up perfectly for my cross-dominance. The last grip I ordered was from Andrew Berryhill, for a
Pardini PGP mod 75 free pistol, with full hand wrap-around and drillings for the wire fixture counter weight. The Berryhill
grip aligns perfectly for me. Andrew is the man to talk with. He'll respond to your questions and will be happy
to work with you. Best of luck; Tony G
lwy.todd.lu
Posts: 60
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 10:18 am

Re: Cross-dominant grips work better?

Post by lwy.todd.lu »

I’m cross dominant too. But I blinder my dominated eye to change the aiming eye to my right eye. It works.
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