As a rule I don't give reviews on a manufactures aftermarket devices. But in this case I think one is needed to prevent a unknowing novice from buying this product. A few months ago the was a thread on this board about the Gentry safety of which I didn't completely read. Perhaps if I did I wouldn't have even consider trying to install one as I did yesterday. Here's what I found:

1. The pin that locks the bolt when the safety is applied is too long. It prevents the shrould from being screwed into position. The screw coming into contact with the back of the bolt before it is the firing position.

2. The screw that holds the safety lever in place is to long. When tighten completely the end of the screw comes into contact with the cocking piece and prevents the rifle from firing.

3. Maybe some of you didn't know this, but on the cocking piece there's a slot cut almost to the end on the rifle's ejection post side of the action. This slot is there encase the cartridge misfires, you can use the rim of a loose round to recock the firearm without opening the bolt. Place the rim of a case in this slot and pull to the rear. With the Gentry safety when the cartridge is fired this slot disappears in the shrould. This slot needs to be visiable when the cocking piece is in the fired position.

4. With the safety shrould mounted on the back of the bolt, when your closing the bolt the lip, on the bolt hand end of the shrould, came into contact with the receiver. It stoped the bolt from being closed by about a .125.

5. As I turned out the lights yesterday I got to the point where I was about to close the bolt for the first time and I couldn't get the bolt closed. What happened was the safeties shrould bottomed out on the rear bridge of the receiver with the bolt half way closed. I'm working on a G33/40 and I'm not going to mill off the end of the receiver bridge to get this safely to work. Instead I'm giong to place the should in my lathe and face off .010 to .020 off of the should to get the rifles bolt to close.

What's going on here? This safety is so poorly designed that I wonder if there isn't something else going on. Maybe the lawyers told Gentry that if the gunsmith has to go to such lengths to use this product that if there is a problem, it will be the gunsmith's falt.

There are other 3-position safeties on the market besure to buy one of those and NOT a Gentry. On Monday I'm going to write Frank an email telling him that he need to STOP selling this part.

Mark,

First, thanks for the heads up on the Gentry, and for the nice job you did on resurfacing my Mauser.

I purchased a Gentry 3 position from Brownell's, but sent it (with the bolt and reciever) to Gentry's to have them install it.

Turn around was 10 days, with $60 for the cost (which included shipping and insurance).
They did a nice job, but I notice that moving the safety off "fire" to the middle position requires more force than it should. I'm going to ask them to address this when the rifle comes back from having the barrel installed.

It may be that no one should buy the Gentry unless they plan on having Gentry install it (which is a mighty poor business plan for Gentry Custom).

Garrett

Mark,

Forgot to mention.

Gentry's wife was speaking to me on the phone about shipping my action/bolt back.
She said: "Who reworked that Mauser? It looks nice."
I told her it was you.
She says you do nice work.

Garrett

Mark,

Thanks for posting, I was going to buy their unit for a commerical Mauser I am upgrading.

My plan was to send it to you with a Blackburn trigger (I have the trigger).

Which unit would you rather see in the box, or do you prefer to supply?

If you recall Chic introduced me to you at the Silver Legacy two years ago and we had breakfast and talked about the M99.

thanks...jim

Hi Jim,

Are you going to the Gunmaker's Guild show next month? If so bring your action with a Dakota 3-position safety and we can avoid postage. Blackburn make a fine trigger and will work well with the Dakota 3-position.

Garrett has a New investment casted Charles Daley. For some reason, Charles Daley has their name engraved in a script behind the receiver ring and in front of the bolt stop. It takes away from that classic custom rifle look. When I surface gound his receiver, I took care of the Charles Daley script as well, it turn out nice.

The post from a couple months back was by Jeffeosso who had trouble fitting one to a brazilian 1908...he had many of the issues you described.

I use the Dakota three position safety & have had no trouble fitting them to FN's & Military Mausers. Fitting them to the Charles Daley Mauser is troublesome due to the sloppy fit of the CD firing pin to the cocking piece. The cocking piece OD is usually under diameter & that doesn't help either.

Mark,

Thanks, I feel vindicated after the last negative comments I posted here a while back. Somewhat the same problem, but when I tried to tell Gentry about it he more or less told me I didn't know how to do the job. A$$ whole he is.

You know Jim, when you buy a product you don't want to have to rework the intire product for it to work. If you don't have a little knowledge and a machine shop, if you buy this product you're screwed. I wonder how many of these safeties are returned to Brownell's because they're defective?

Another problem that caused a lot of the other problems is that the thread timing on the shrould is off. The shrould need to be in the proper position before it crashes into the rear bridge. It's like there's a 4 year old putting these units together and sending them out. No disrespect to the 4 year old....

Hello Mark.

I had the misfortune to talk to Dennis Gentry this spring, He is Dave Gentry's son. Dennis runs the CNC machinery.

I quit making the safeties for Lazzeroni, this spring. Gentry was going to bid on them. Dennis wanted cad drawings and programs etc so he could start to make them. I informed him that that safety was only on paper drawings and typed notes, plus what was in my head. That was the main reason I was getting away from it.

The next thing he asked is what can I change on the saftey. Mind you this was a unit that I had made for 11 years and there was not a whole lot that could be changed on it due to the action design.

Needless to say after a half hour on the phone with Dennis, I came to the conculsion that talent will SKIP a generation sometimes.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith

Over the past 5 years I have fitted 3 of these safeties to Mausers, and one to a Remington and the instructions that came along with them state that it requires a gunsmith to fit them. Both work admirably and none was a "drop in". Considering the variations you get in bolt spec between DWM, FN, Czech and the rest, I think the Gentry safety does a very good job of "one size fits all".

David shipped me two bolt plungers in case the smith duffed one up, with handwritten instructions to phone him personally if there was a problem.

I think they are excellent bits of kit. I'll buy again.

Hi Jim,

There are several great 3-position safeties on the market. I did a New England Custom Guns a few months ago that was really nice. The feature with that unit that I liked was the 3rd position locking bar. When the safety is on and the bolt is locked so it won't open, there's a bar on the lever that locks the lever into position and the safety won't move until the bar is releasted. Nice feature... but it adds lot to the cost.

When you need to remachine the shrould and rebuild the unit, when there are better safeties on the market for the same price, it's time to let the novice know in which direction to go.

Also, given that its a safety, I don't want the legal pit falls that it has to offer.

Like I said in a previous post - Learn something new everyday!

I was seriously considering purchasing a Gentry for a Yugo M48 action. If they aren't "idiot proof" or require more than simple fitting and minor work then it isn't for me. Thanks for the insight everyone.
Eric

I had a gunsmith do a NECG and a Gentry at the same time. After working through all the issues, he told me in no uncertain terms to NEVER bring him a Gentry safety again.

So far I have honored that request.

That was the problem I had with the Gentry; the timing was off. I swore I would never do another after Gentry told me I did it wrong. Bull S$it. I have fitted Wisner's, Dakota's and others in both left and right hand dwithout any other trouble. I think the sight of the dollar bill got to cloud his vision.

For those who are taking notes, here's what I had to do to finish the Gentry 3-position safety installation.

First I stripped the bolt shrould plunger and spring along with the firing pin and main spring. Just in case there were other problems I wanted to deal with them one at a time. I had to remove .035 off of the gas sheld to get the bolt to close. Next I reinstalled the plunger and spring and tried to close te bolt. Of course the plunger bottomed out in the drilled hole before the bolt closed. I measured the depth of the hole in it was very close to breaking out the end of the shrould. I decided to shorten the plunger. I took a small amount of material off on both ends of the plunger. When I added the main spring and firing pin, for the first time, there were no problems. I drilled the 3rd position bolt 1/2 hole and that went well. I was able to adjust the cocking piece and trigger with the safety without problems. The Gentry safety was to be a 1 1/2 hour project to a 4 hour non money maker. This is the last one of these safeties I will install.

I took mine to the gunsmith after I couldnt outsmart it. Now mind you I am not the most mechanical guy around. These posts do make me feel a little better. The safety does work fine but was beyond my ability to put together right. Maybe this explains some of it.

Hello Pete.

To be blunt, there is not that much difference between the MILITARY Mauser bolts as you think. The late Yugos are almost as loose as the 50's Commerical FN bolts.

I am talking .004 - .006" difference in thread pitch diameter from the tight 1909 Arg bolt to the LOOSE FN commerical bolt from the 50's.
This amount will change the sleeve indexing front to rear only a small amount, not the almost 1 MM that Mark had to remove. Which by the way would be one half of a thread.

In the past 20 years before I quit making these safeties I figure I made over 4000 Mauser units all on MANUAL machines.

To have major indexing problems like what several people have had with the current batch of Gentry M98 safeties. This shows that someone messed up with the tooling or never checked the machined parts against a master print or gage.

I guess it just shows that CNC machinery is nice but the old Manual machines will do just as good of a job.

And yes I have known Dave Gentry since 1985, he even bought my safeties back then before he bought his first CNC mill.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith

Anyone who has used Ed LaPour's product?

Like in all cases "know how" and quality control is a must.

Jim, will you make a run?

Cheers
/JOHAN

I am just curious. Who was the first one to make these 3 position Mauser safeties. Was it Jasper Rabourn, or was it somebody else?

As far as who made the first 3 postion safeties, not sure, but I remember a machinest in Sulfur Oklahoma made them long time back, I think he is dead and the business is a knife making supply store now......Jannis supply or something like that. But seems it was called Jannis machine in the sixties or something like that.

Billy

That was Ken Jantz metalsmithing in Sulphur, Oklahoma. But he only did the two position safeties for mauser. I am trying to find out who was the first one to do the three position for mauser, which I am sure, was a guy looking at a Model 70 one day and saying, hey, that safety will work on a mauser as well.

Ken Jantz did a two position safety for me in the 70's. Nice neat work, finely checkered safety lever and blind screw hole that the lever pivots on. All for $29.95. Also did some fine metalwork. Sorry to hear he passed on. I guess the Jantz knife supply is whats left of the busniess.
Bob

Gents,
do a search in here on my gentry woos...

the threads are 180deg out of time .. brownells is sending quite a load of these back

jeffe

Mark:

Thanks for the heads up post. I have had several customers ask about the Gentry Three position safety. You should know the difference in being a gunsmith and a social worker. At least the social worker gets a government check.
I will not be at the Custom Gun Makers Guild this year but will be at the Shot Show in February. We met at the airport snackbar when leaving Las Vegas last year. I had just bought your book the previous July. Drop me an e-mail ngl_services@juno.com if you might be interested in getting a group together and eat dinner one night during the Shot Show in February.
Longshot

You would think I could at least remember how to spell his name.......I grew up about 30 miles from Jantz shop.

The more I think about it, it was 2 postion safety, but I don't ever recall having one. I was in the store once, bought some sanding disc and sanding belts or something of that nature about 6-7 yr ago. I think that was the only time I was in the store......I know they had a lot of knife stuff.

I gave up on mine and had to get Dennis Olson to do mine, he sent it back with a note telling me it was a bear to fit.

I like the looks of the Gentry the best of all of them. I need to buy a couple more, may buy Dakota the next time, but I havent held one, from the pic is kina looks FN to me, which I'm not crazy about, but could live with. The NECG seems over priced to me, but havent seen of them up close either.

Its one thing for a guy doing his own work having a problem, its another for a guy with a shop trying to make a living.

Wonder what Gentry is doing to make them fit, surely they know they have a problem, I'm under the impression they get lots of guns sent to them to fit. Looks like Dennis had to mill a little bit on right side of my action to get mine to fit........didnt bother me, but some might not like that.

I think that Gentry knows that they had a quality control problem but couldn't afford to scrap the parts. They sent them out and caused us gunsmiths to deal with their mistakes. From what Jim Kobe said Gentry is giving his customers grief about his products installation. That's no way to run a business. No one will buy another safety...

Do they have an email address. Maybe somebody should send them a link to this thread so they can see that people are not satisfied with their products.

quote:

Originally posted by 22WRF:
Do they have an email address. Maybe somebody should send them a link to this thread so they can see that people are not satisfied with their products.

I sent them a link to this thread last nite. Their reply: Thanks for letting us know about the forum/Gentry safety
This was brought to our attention by one of our customers that was very upset
We have been mfg. the 98 safety for a long time , have been making the safety for quite a few other companies
and send them all around the world.
I have helped many people install the safety.
We are always here to help some one with a problem.
I am amazed.
David, Dennis, Beverly Gentry

Rather than be amazed, they should be ashamed. These are skilled metalsmiths that are saying they will never use them again. They need to be fixing their problems and apologizing rather than saying they are there to answer questions.

quote:

I am amazed.

That one little sentence speaks volumes about his attitude & general lack of insight. What a homer.

I read the Gentry's responce late last night and I was speechless..... No I was AMAZED. I guess they did send out these safeties and plan on us metalsmiths to remove the rear of the receiver bridge to get thier safety to work. That can open up other cans of worms. One that comes to mind is wood to metal fit. All of a sudden there's wood not being backed up with steel. I guess I remove the extra wood and then refinish the stock?

I have been reading this post the past several days. I think it is great that there is a forum such as this to let others know our experiences with products & craftsmen. And for that reason I felt I needed to talk about my experience with the Gentry safety just to be 'fair & balanced"

I have a left hand 35 Whelen mauser project that I have been working on for about a year. I liked the idea of a 3 position safety & had seen they offered the Gentry in a LH version. I promply ordered one. When it came it was the wrong one....they sent a RH version. I had my buddy look at it who is a gun shop owner & gunsmitthing school graduate. He was not sure he could install it, but that had less to do with the Gentry safety & more to do with his inexperience with this type of work. I told him no problem, we'll mail it off to Gentry & have them do it & switch it to the proper LH safety at teh same time. I forget what the price was but it was not that much. In a few months time it was back in my hands and functioned perfectly. I am very pleasd with it.

Last night I dropped this barreled action off with a custom smith with the guild named Gary Stiles. He will be doing stock work & metal work for my project. Since I had read this thread I asked him if he had any experience with the Gentry mauser safety. He told me that he had recently installed one with no problems what so ever. He said he felt they were fine. I had him look over mine & he said that there was nothing wrong with it.

Now I can see that others here have had some issues that seem to be caused by a quality control problem, that Gentry most definitely needs to work out if that is the case. But I felt I needed to relay my positive experience.Sometimes when the negatives come out these threads become a runaway train wreck LOL. MAybe my experience was unique & lucky. But then, maybe some the negative experiences here where the unique ones.........the exception to the rule.

22 WRF.

The background of who has, is making the M70 three postion safety is as follows.

About 2000-01 the Recknagel, NECG ones started coming in the USA. This relates to the time when ownership changed within Recknagel and they stopped buying from me.

About 1999 -2000 Johanson ?? started making them for his actions, He copied mine so close that at the NECG booth at SCI I handled a rifle for 5 minutes before I realized that the safety was not mine.

About 1989 Gentry started making his Mauser safety. I stopped and saw Dave at his shop in June of 90 and he had been making his custom Mauser actions and safeties for a while then.
Prior to that he bought mine.

I started making my saftey in 1985 and sold the first ones in Oct of 85. I remember that first batch well. I started with 25 parts and finished 13 of them. I bugged Pete Grisel a lot on how to hollow mill the sleeve recess.

About 1983 - 84 Grisel started to offer his safety. I still have a 1984 cataloge of Pete's which the safety sold for $165.00. This was a lot of $$$$ in those years.
FYI Pete used Winchester M70 satey levers for the first 100 or so. Then Winchester stopped selling the levers and Pete had to make his own. By 1986 - 87 the price had dropped to $145.00

The very first ones are a little cloudly. Jasper Raybourn and a guy who's last name is Zufluh ???, were making the first ones. I am not sure who was the salesman or who was the machinest on this one.
This was in Golden CO.?? and Jasper then went up to MT. and then to OK. No one seems to want to talk about this. Seems there some hard feelings about what happened to cause the spilt.

The other guy still ran adds in Rifle until the past 10 years or so. I also know he made the first LH safeties for Granite Mtn.

I had to think about this for a while before answering your question. Seems a lot of water has gone under the brigde the past two decades.

I hope this helps.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith

Jim

thanks for that history. I was trying to figure out who was first, and I never knew that Pete Grisel made them.

I think Jasper was in Greely, CO before he went up to Montana. and then later Joseph Zufall took over and he was in Golden CO I just didn't know if they were the first ones or not.

I do remember they had a speedlock version though, and nobody seems to offer that anymore.

I owned one of yours and its a shame your aren't making them anymore!!!

I wonder what ever happened to Gentry's custom action. Don't hear much about it anymore.

Mark, Jim, Jim, et. al.:

Regardless of the history, I'd like to thank you all for giving "the rest of us" a heads-up on this. There are a LOT of us out here that buy what we think are well made, well designed, custom parts that we either try to fit ourselves, or take to our local gunsmith to fit. Knowing what folks of your caliber think about aftermarket parts is extremely valuable to those of us who are not machinists or gunsmiths, but still want the best we can get for our hard earned dollars.

Thanks, again....

MKane160

P.S.: The fact that I bought a Dakota 3 position for my 1909, was pure good luck, it seems....

22WRF.

I did forget to mention that the Grisel safety is now the Dakota safety.
When Pete went in with Don Allen then the name was changed to what we know now as the Dakota safety.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith

If I send a commercial Mauser receiver and bolt to a 'smith (with a 3 position safety to be fitted), how much should I expect to pay?

Thanks,
Garrett