It started before there was a name for it. Nobody was searching for a magazine adapter or a grip sleeve, because neither was something you could buy. There was just the gap under a short frame, and a longer magazine that didn’t quite belong there.
The first adapters were drawn in collaboration with Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson and Beretta, working to the tolerances each of them held their magazines to. Those tolerances are still in the parts we mold today, which is why each adapter is cut for one magazine and the pistols named for it, rather than a range of them.
The shape came from a career product designer whose work includes Boeing, US Surgical, Microsoft, Oakley, and K2. He filed the first magazine adapter patent in 2002, and he still draws the new ones.
Twenty-seven adapters, twenty-seven steel molds, each cut for one magazine and the pistols named for it. XGRIP has been in production for over twenty years. The adapters are drawn in Ojai and molded in steel rather than aluminum — aluminum wears, and a worn mold makes a part that no longer fits.
