An Expert Look at the Jacob Grey TWC Black Pistol

Bond should have been so lucky

April 22, 2025 By Patrick Sweeney

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What used to be a competition pistol is now the hottest thing in everyday carry pistols. That is, a 1911-based double-stack magazine-fed 9mm pistol with a red-dot on top. The Jacob Grey TWC Black is just such a pistol, and if you are willing to pack the weight (admittedly, not that much) you can have it all. Okay, construction. It should be a familiar setup by now, but there are still shooters who are unfamiliar with the manufacturing process. The JG TWC Black (and the other Jacob Grey models) uses a dual-assembly lower, and a 1911-like upper slide assembly. The slide first.

Jacob Grey TWC Black 1911 — The Jacob Grey TWC Black is a full-featured double-stack 1911 in 9mm, which is like saying the Mona Lisa is a nice painting. (Photo Provided by Author)

The commander-length slide and its barrel are given a black nitride finish. This comes after the slide has been machined with a set of aggressive cocking serrations, fore and aft, that provide a secure grip for working the slide. The slide also has suppressor-height iron sights on it, the better to clear the base of which red-dot optic you mount on it. Oh, and the TWC Black comes with plates for all the popular optics. The barrel is a bull barrel, so there’s no bushing out front, and the stainless steel of the barrel has been given its own black nitride finish, to match the slide and frame.

Since there is no bushing, and the barrel fits the interior of the slide up front, the recoil spring assembly is held in by means of a reverse plug. That is, the retainer doesn’t get assembled from the front, as you would with a 1911 using a barrel bushing. To explain, I’ll go through the disassembly first, not later. Unload. Lock the slide back, push the slide stop pin out, and then remove the slide assembly from the frame. Usually, on reverse-plug setups with a guide rod, you have to fish a bent paperclip tip in under the barrel and snag the tip of it into the hole drilled in the guide rod. Well, the TWC Black does things differently. The guide rod has a spring-loaded and hinged lever. Push the guide rod to compress the spring, then press the lever to turn it cross-ways to the rod. Now, while holding the lever open, ease the rod back. (This will take some practice to do it without slamming parts into each other.) When the rod moves back enough to bear on the lever, it stops. The recoil spring is now captured, and you can proceed to the rest of the disassembly.

TWC 1911 ejection port view — The TWC Black has an ambi-thumb safety, and single-sided everything else, appropriate on a 1911-based pistol. (Photo Provided by Author)

This is a clever setup, and it means you can disassemble the TWC Black whenever and wherever, and not be in a fix if you have forgotten your paperclip. On reassembly push the guide rod forward a small amount. Once it stops bearing on the guide rod disassembly lever, the spring in the assembly will pop the lever back flush with the rod, and you’re good to go. This is such a clever setup I can see custom pistolsmiths already scheming to knock off their own copy.

The frame is a two-piece assembly. The rails and firing mechanism section is a steel rail that has been machined to be the upper half of a 1911 frame. The rail/frame section provides a place for the slide to cycle, and the barrel to be linked down and back up again, and the steel frame is also slotted for the integrally-ramped barrel to have clearance. This part of the pistol has to be metal, as polymer just isn’t up to the task yet. Someday some clever chemist will come up with a formula that permits it, but until then we still have steel. And on the TWC Black, the rail is aluminum, not that you could tell just by looking at it. Jacob Grey machines this from a billet of 7075 aluminum. At the rear, the rail section contains the hammer, sear, disconnector and thumb safety, all kept in place by the grip safety. So far, all very 1911-like.

Four images of features on the TWC Black — (top right) There is no bushing up front. The barrel is a bull barrel, and locks directly to the slide at the muzzle end. (bottom left) To remove the recoil spring, push the whole assembly forward. (Photo Provided by Author)

One change from the originals (1911 and 2011) is the forward part of the frame. There, Jacob Grey machines the frame to include an accessory rail. Now the interesting thing about this is that the dimensions of the rail are greater than the customary width of the frame. So, Jacob Grey continues the width of the rail back behind the slide stop pin hole, to provide greater width at that point. The 1911 never had problems with the slide stop pin sidewalls being too thin, but the extra width covers the interior end of the recoil spring tunnel. That’s a place it is not at all uncommon to see high-mileage 1911s cracked. Not gonna happen here, that’s for sure. The extra thickness on the left side continues back to and around the slide stop lever, so both sides get support in that prone-to-cracking area. Below that, where the stresses are not nearly so great, the frame is a reinforced polymer shell that is bolted to the aluminum rail section. The stainless bolts are given their own Black Nitride finish, to match the rest of the pistol. The polymer portion holds the trigger, magazine catch and magazine. It also contains the mainspring housing, which drives the hammer.

Features of the TWC Black pistol — (left) The aluminum grip assembly, bolted to the metal frame, is checkered for a non-slip grip. (right) The recoil spring assembly uses a reverse plug design, required because of the lack of a bushing. (Photo Provided by Author)

The end result of this construction, as we have known about now for some 30 years, is that there is no need for a set of grips. The housing is strong enough to hold the magazine, and can be sculpted to be a good grip and not be bulk. The generic term for this is now a “2011” but Jacob Grey goes beyond the original.

The original grip of the design was boxy, square, one could even call it “two-by-fourish” and not be far off the mark. The Jacob Grey TWC Black (all the JG models) has softened edges on the grip, and the result is a lot friendlier to your hands than the old ones. I have some oldies, and I haven’t modified them so I’ll have originals to compare to (it was quite common to attack the grip with a belt sander, back in the day) and the JG TWC is a marked improvement. The grip gets a full wrap-around textured pattern.

The frame has the bottom of the mag well flared for faster reloads, aided by the taper of the double-stack magazines that come with it. The bottom of the trigger guard has been lifted and sculpted, so your hand can get as high as possible on the frame. The thumb safety is an ambidextrous one, with levers on both sides of the frame, so left-handers are going to be fine with it. The trigger guard on the TWC Black is squared, but this is more for appearance than anything else. Squared trigger guards were the hot thing in IPSC competition back in the 1970s. (Yes, back when we were dancing during the Bicentennial to Wild Cherry and “Play that funky music.” Shudder.) We also quickly learned that it didn’t help, and those of us who hadn’t too-deeply built the grip, left our finger off the front of the trigger guard. But it sure looks good, doesn’t it? The companion pistol, the TWC 9, has a rounded trigger guard, if that’s the way you roll.

Falco holster with TWC Black 1911 — Falco makes an excellent holster (they all are) for the TWC Black. The thumb-break strap is not a problem at all for speed in an EDC holster. (Photo Provided by Author)

The grip also has the area behind the trigger guard deeply relieved, so even those of you with short fingers can reach the trigger without having to reach around the corner. The grip is relieved in a small groove on the left side leading to the magazine release button, again so you’ll have clearance to reach there as well.

The rear of the TWC has an ambi thumb safety and a grip safety as one would expect on a 1911-based pistol. The thumb safety is nicely fitted, with a distinct click up and down. I found the right-side lever to be tapered enough that it cleared my hand. Longtime readers will be familiar with my peculiar grip, developed back about the time Jimmy Carter was considering the wisdom of wearing a cardigan on TV. My right knuckle rides so high on the frame that some wide-lever ambis don’t clear my hand. You won’t have that problem here.

The trigger is flat, and is about medium in length, so again, no problems here for most of you. As an interesting detail, Jacob Grey machines the trigger as one piece out of aluminum. Called the CRT, or controlled radius trigger, it eliminates the need to pin or epoxy a trigger face to the trigger bow. Now, when it comes time to plunk down the credit card and spend this much on a semi-custom pistol, the trigger snob in all of us comes to the forefront. When you are putting the cost of as much as fifteen cases of practice ammo into buying one pistol, you expect a nice trigger. No, a superb trigger. Jacob Grey does not disappoint in the TWC Black. The promised weight is three-and-a-half pounds, and my gauge measured it at three pounds, nine ounces. That’s close enough for me, and the best part is that it behaved exactly as we expect a top-end 1911 trigger to behave: a clean take-up, then it stops. Three pounds, nine ounces later the hammer falls, with a minimum of overtravel. There’s a positive reset, so those who work on that can count on it.