It’s been a little over 2 months since I ordered a Tyler T-Grip for my S&W 442. But finally it arrived. I was starting to think it would never get here! To be fair, they warn you it could take 6-8 weeks. When I called a few times to inquire about status, the impression I received was they don’t keep a lot of inventory but make them as orders come in. But as well, they try to accumulate enough orders before doing a batch. Very understandable. I could be wrong about how they do things as I didn’t ask about their internal processes, but that’s just the impression I received based upon how the folks spoke with me.

As an aside, everyone I spoke to there was very polite and friendly. In fact, the guy that seems to do a lot of the actual fab work I ended up speaking with for quite a while and explained the Werner Carry System to him. He thought that was pretty darn cool. Nice folks.

So anyway, the Werner Carry System is why I obtained the T-Grip. My Hip Grip arrived a little while ago. Now with the T-Grip I can start to put it all together.

All photos taken with my crappy iPhone 3GS camera and what lighting there was in my office. Photos can be clicked to enlarge.

That’s the T-Grip itself. It’s just a piece of powder-coated metal (I think aluminum, not sure). Mine is a flat black to fit a J-frame. See those little copper tabs sticking out of it? Those are what hold the grip to the frame.

All you do is take off your grips (and you must have “standard size” grips, else it won’t fit) and slide the copper tabs over the frame. That’s it. You do NOT bend the tabs. It’s all held in place by the tension of the grips. So you put the grip panels back, screw them together, and the pressure of the grips against the frame provide enough tension/friction to hold the T-Grip in place.

So why get this?

Because it helps fill the hand.

That little dinky J-frame grip just does not fill my hand. Oh sure, I can put on my Pachmayr Compac grips and they are awesome: fill the hand, good grip, and absorbs a lot of the recoil/shock. But the downside is those grips are HUGE and concealment isn’t ideal. But this? The T-grip helps to fill the hand, and since it goes in front of the grip instead of behind, not only does it change how the filling of the hand works, but it also doesn’t add to the profile of the J-frame, which really aids concealment.

Take a look. Here’s the gun without the T-Grip:

It’s a little hard to see with my crappy iPhone camera, but if you look between the base of my middle two fingers and the frontstrap of the grip, you’ll see airspace. Sure some of that goes away when I close my hand around the grip, but without question there’s still airspace and wiggle room in there. Now compare to the same gun with the T-Grip installed:

Look at that same area at the base of my middle fingers against the frontstrap of the gun. See how that space is now filled in? Fantastic! It feels so much better in my hand. One downside is you can see how the T-Grip takes up some space at the top, where it rests upon the top-edge of the middle finger. That then raises the gun up a slight bit and if you compare where the butt of the gun comes to on my pinky, you’ll see there’s less pinky on the grip with the T-Grip installed. I’m not yet sure how much of a problem that is, as I haven’t shot it yet. But my guess is it won’t make a huge difference because even without the T-Grip there’s just not enough room for me to get my pinky on there anyway. YMMV.

Here’s what it looks like all together: S&W 442 with Hip Grips and T-Grip:

In dry fire, it feels a lot better in my hand. I really like it. But the real test is how it shoots. Since I got the grips in I haven’t been able to make it to the range, but I hope to remedy that soon.

When I shot 5 rounds of my carry ammo (Buffalo Bore 20/20C) with just the Hip Grip, it stung like hell. My intention is to try that again, shooting 5 rounds of the carry ammo and see how it goes. Then I’ll try shooting something like the Texas CHL test with the snub (and practice ammo) and see how that goes… if my hand isn’t in pain. My hypothesis is it’s still going to hurt because there’s nothing but a metal backstrap, but it won’t hurt as much as the Hip Grip alone because the T-Grip fills the hand, I’ll have a better grip, and the gun will wiggle and move less on recoil so it won’t just be freely slamming into my hand. Better grip, hopefully will lead to less pain.

I’ll post results when I have them.