Hello again, I’m David Reed with Reed & Ward, the makers of CCW Guardian, the premier smartphone app for CCW permit holders.
This is a field strip or disassembly video of a Gen 4 Glock, in this case it’s a Glock 23 and 40 caliber, but these instructions are the same for any of the Generation 4 Glocks. The 19 to 23, the larger 17 and 22, even the 21s, also the Glock 26 and 27. Any of them that have the interchangeable back straps system and the new Gen 4 marking right there on the slide.
Okay so first thing we’re going to do is clear lock and show safe. I’m going to press up on the slide stop while pulling back on the slide. Visually and physically inspect the chamber. Naturally, no magazine. Absolutely safe and clear. There’s no one else in the training area and I have no live ammunition anywhere near the weapon while field stripping or cleaning etc. That’s common sense, but I keep reiterating that because people keep having accidents out there and there’s no reason to have a negligent discharge of a weapon while cleaning, field stripping, or doing minor repairs your weapon. Remove ammunition from the area. All right, enough said.
Okay, so what I want to do, first of all, is since I have cocked the weapon, you saw, by clear lock and show safe, the weapon is now cocked. Okay, the Glock system requires that you press the trigger as one of the steps in the disassembly procedure. A lot of people are very nervous about that. Other manufacturers are spending millions of dollars engineering methods by which you don’t have to pull the trigger to disassemble. It’s a big nonissue to me because folks, if you’ve got the weapon clear and safe and you removed ammunition from the area, then dry firing the weapon should not be a problem. Following all the safety protocols for dry fire, check, check, and recheck. Make sure your weapon is clear and safe. All right, so if you’ve cocked the weapon like I have it now, go ahead point the weapon in a safe direction and press the trigger. Okay now, I’m going to place my hand on the weapon in a position so that I can work the slide like a lever. That is, my thumbs here and my fingers will come around and grip these slide serrations on the other side, okay. This is what I’m doing and I’m going to pullback on the slide slightly, not enough to cock it, just enough to break it off of its full in battery position. Now right here on either side of the frame are these little disassembly levers. I’ll pull down on those, let the slide go forward and it comes right off the frame. All right.
So now this is the frame and obviously if you have, you know, your Glock tool, armors tool, you can disassemble this considerably further, but right now we’re going to set that aside. You don’t field strip enough for purposes of cleaning.
Okay now let’s go ahead and finish. You see that this is a, one of the differences in the Generation 4 over Generation 3 midsize and full-size Glocks, is we now have a captured recoil spring and guide rod assembly. So this is under pressure so being very careful, wearing eye protection so that I don’t wind up with a spring in my eye or anyone else and not aiming it towards my computer or my television, I pull the recoil spring guide right out the back right there and then the barrel just tilt it downward out and there you go.
You field stripped your Glock for purposes of cleaning. Now a lot of people will tell you, oh yeah you got to take the back plate off and the firing pin out, all that stuff. Not necessarily for routine cleaning, but you know what, get your Glock owners manual and it will describe the procedure to do a more detailed strip.
Okay let’s go ahead and reassemble by placing the barrel back in. Now you scoot it in, pull it down, and pull it straight back. Now on this captured spring assembly it does not disassemble further. You see you’ve got the black polymer side and the flat aluminum side. The flat aluminum side goes into this notch right here on the barrel. So what I do is I put the polymer in through the hole and then pressing forward and downward until it engages that notch. Okay don’t let the spring come flying back towards you and certainly make sure you wear eye protection.
All right, the next step is very simple. I take the frame assembly, in firing position, slide the slide onto the slide rails. Now, right here you see this piece of the mechanism that’s sticking up slightly, just make sure it clears that hole in the rear of the slide. So if you get a little resistance right there, don’t just, you know, try to ooh rah your way through it. Just slide it back carefully until everything engages and then pull the slide straight back, like you’re going to cock it and let it go forward. Now you notice when I did that these disassembly levers popped right back up into place. Now I’m going to function check, I’m going to cock it, press trigger, holding the trigger to the rear cock it again, check trigger reset, right back on. Okay the weapon now functions correctly. We had field stripped for purposes of minor maintenance and cleaning and then reassembled a Generation 4 Glock.
Now before we move on, in the box that came with your Glock was all of these additional back straps. I really wish they had made this flat, got rid of this bump back and then, you know, had bigger back straps, but instead this is pretty much within a millimeter or two the same shape back strap as the Generation 3. It is slightly smaller, but you’d almost have to have a micrometer to tell the difference. So what Glock has done is they’ve given you this handy carrier and they’ve given you a medium and a large back strap that we’re going to add to the bag and then also a medium and large with the beaver tail. Cause a lot of people that have large hands, now I’m about 6 foot, about a hundred and 88 pounds. People that are a lot bigger than me, some of them when firing Glocks have big hands and the slide cuts on the back of their hand. My buddy Ralph has this problem, so this is a solution Glock has been paying attention. Now this little carrier is not just a carrier. It also includes a pin that is the same diameter as your Glock armors tool. It is polymer is not quite as stiff as a Glock tool like this, but this is all you need, this comes in the box to change out the back straps. So, let’s do that. Let’s add a back strap.
Let’s do the medium one, umm yeah. Let’s do the medium one with the beaver tail, that looks pretty cool. All right, so right here there is a pin right here on the back and what we’re going to do is, going left or right although it doesn’t really matter always go left right, I’m going to insert this pin and as you can see it just pushes that pin out. All right, now this little pin is polymer, I’m sure they make aftermarket steel ones, it might be good investment because if you are going to change these back straps a lot for various shooters in different people I don’t know I can just see that polymer pin having a problem. Now when we’re adding a back strap, we always want to start at the bottom and work our way up onto this frame and you can do this while it’s disassembled. Now it pops on but you’ll notice right up here at the top there’s a gap so you have to push up and you have to pop this puppy on using a grip and pop it up. There should be no gap and it’ll want to pop off, if you’re not careful. So again, using the pin that comes with it, I’m going to feed this through and what I’m going to do is just push it all the way through and what that all the way out the other side. Okay so what that does is it kind of creates a channel for the pin to go. Now, take the pin and I’m going to pullback ever so slightly so that I can press the pin in right here. Okay and then working the tool outward or your Glock tool, however you want to do it, I just continue to push this pin in. Now what a lot of people do is they place their index finger against the side of the pin, press down on a table or other firm object and they just press this pin downward which pushes the tool out. See the pin is almost all the way in. By using the flat part here or the flat part of your Glock armors tool just press that down and if you want to even the pin out, of course you could also press a little bit more right like that. There we go. So now we have this cool back strap onto. We’ve added some girth. We’ve added some length of pull and, of course anytime I make a modification, I always function check the weapon.
It still works and that is how we field strip and reassemble a Generation 4 Glock and it’s also how we would add one of the Glock accessory back straps that comes with a weapon.
Hey, if you’ve got any questions about this video, if you have any suggestions about future videos, be sure to join us at CCWGuardian.com. You know, we’re about protecting what matters most and we want you to train and document your training and that’s why we do a lot of these educational videos. You’re going to find a lot other videos and articles on the website. It’s the premier site for CCW permit holders. Again I’m David Reed with Reed Ward, let’s be safe out there.
