Fancy Wood - Making my own grips

So, I've got big hands, and navy sized grips really are just too small. The army grips are a bit better, and I've got a Pietta 1860 franken gun with navy grips I wanted to swap out. The triggerguard and backstrap parts were available, but no decent grips were popping up. Taylor firearms sometimes stocks raw grips, but they were out.

Figured I'd try and make my own. Could do it by hand, but I have 3D printers and a home built CNC router, and in the future I'd like to make a detachable buttstock (since they're pretty much unobtanium). Some grips seem like good practice, and my CNC machine needed maintenance. I can tune the machine, and practice cutting stuff without being out as much as a full stock.

Started out with modeling a grip in Fusion360, then 3D printing various test samples. This one is a bit early, I settled on being a bit more oversized to make sure final shaping would be as good as I can do.



First wood cuts were on a piece of curly maple board I had on the shelf. This is a 7mm 4 flute bit. Travel speed of 20 inches per minute and spinning about 20k rpm.



After the roughing was completed I did the finishing pass with a 1/16 2 flute ball end mill. Was all I had, and didn't have enough clearance so I needed to get fancy with the CAM settings. Was able to finish the grip, but the grip ended up a bit long. No big deal, I've since had some proper bits arrive. Had video of the finishing pass, but it's too big to upload apparently. Here's a picture instead.



Fit is pretty good on my test gun. This one has a factory Army grip, so it makes for a good template. More material to remove by hand than I'd like, but with some minor tweaking and the correct ball end mill the next pieces will be better.



I've got some Karelian Birch I'm playing with, and some various maple burl wood coming. Still shopping around for a nice chunk of highly figured walnut.

Very impressive!

AwwNaww said:

Very impressive!

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Thanks. It's been working better than I expected. I thought curly wood would be giving me fits with the router bits.

Even the Karelian Birch with its crazy grain and inclusions has cut like butter. Probably the high spindle speeds I'm running. My end mill life span may be short.





Finishing with a 4 flue 1/8" ball end mill. 10% stepover, 22k RPM, and 25 inches per minute travel. Much nicer to have a bit that reaches where it needs to.



Working on some different stains right now. Using scrap to come up with various combinations to see if I can find something I like. I'll try and get pictures processed later.

I really wonder what machines they used in the Colt factory to make grips. Anyone know if there are any books out there with pictures of that kind of stuff?

I'd try Irom Nitrate for the maple grips. That Birch has some crazy figure in it.

stubshaft said:

I'd try Irom Nitrate for the maple grips. That Birch has some crazy figure in it.

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Yeah, Iron Nitrate is definitely in the running for the Maple, it's actually the first thing I try on most woods when experimenting, and the go to for maple.

In fact, here's a test on the Birch. Maybe a bit darker than I'd have liked, but it really brings out the richness of the wood.

Iron Nitrate applied and still wet. Makes me think the wood would look pretty awesome with just oil applied, no stain. At least for a nickel or stainless gun.



Here's the iron nitrate after a bit of going over with the heat gun.



And here it is with a coat of tung oil. Didn't get a picture as my hands were very messy, but the first bit of oil added to the wood made it very dark. I applied the oil with a scotch bright pad and was able to knock back a lot of the black.

Makes for a pretty awesome deep rich color. If I go with this, it should look even better on the grips. I'll do a more thorough job sanding them than this quick test piece.

Awesome !

Got some more samples going.

Top is of course the previously shown Iron nitrate. It's gone dull, but that's generally how the first coat of tung oil goes.

Next is Laurel Mountain Forge Cherry on the left, nothing in the middle, and LMF Maple on the right.

Third down is a light coating of Maple followed by a light coat of Cherry.

Fourth is a heavy coat of Maple, and a heavy coat of Cherry. Dunno that putting the stain on changed things much, guessing the wood kinda stops absorbing stuff.

If I want it to be darker I might just need to do multiple coats of stain, letting in dry in between.


Might see about doing a really light coat of Iron nitrate, heating it, then sanding it back. If I can get it lighter than the previous Iron nitrate, some cherry over the top might look really good. Can apply oil to it after the cherry dries.

Ok, WOW. Excellent work.

KingOfKindling said:

So, I've got big hands, and navy sized grips really are just too small. The army grips are a bit better, and I've got a Pietta 1860 franken gun with navy grips I wanted to swap out. The triggerguard and backstrap parts were available, but no decent grips were popping up. Taylor firearms sometimes stocks raw grips, but they were out.

Figured I'd try and make my own. Could do it by hand, but I have 3D printers and a home built CNC router, and in the future I'd like to make a detachable buttstock (since they're pretty much unobtanium). Some grips seem like good practice, and my CNC machine needed maintenance. I can tune the machine, and practice cutting stuff without being out as much as a full stock.

Started out with modeling a grip in Fusion360, then 3D printing various test samples. This one is a bit early, I settled on being a bit more oversized to make sure final shaping would be as good as I can do.

View attachment 351274

First wood cuts were on a piece of curly maple board I had on the shelf. This is a 7mm 4 flute bit. Travel speed of 20 inches per minute and spinning about 20k rpm.

View attachment 351275

After the roughing was completed I did the finishing pass with a 1/16 2 flute ball end mill. Was all I had, and didn't have enough clearance so I needed to get fancy with the CAM settings. Was able to finish the grip, but the grip ended up a bit long. No big deal, I've since had some proper bits arrive. Had video of the finishing pass, but it's too big to upload apparently. Here's a picture instead.

View attachment 351276

Fit is pretty good on my test gun. This one has a factory Army grip, so it makes for a good template. More material to remove by hand than I'd like, but with some minor tweaking and the correct ball end mill the next pieces will be better.

View attachment 351277

I've got some Karelian Birch I'm playing with, and some various maple burl wood coming. Still shopping around for a nice chunk of highly figured walnut.

Click to expand...

Neat-O!

Gonna cut out the center section and get the birch grips glued together today. Might also cut out a pair of maple grips while I'm messing with the CNC.

Here's the grips and the frame they'll be going on. Second picture shows the toolmarks that need removing. I could get rid of a lot of that on the CNC with a second pass, but it'd be wasted machine time. Sandpaper removes the lines faster, and you need to remove a bit of wood to match the metal anyway.



Now, as for the first maple grip I cut, it likely won't be getting a matching side. I only had enough room on this pieces to cut 3 grip sides, and honestly didn't expect the first attempt to go well.

Since It's gonna be lonesome on it's own, I figured it'd be a good test to properly sand it, and do more stain testing.

Here it is with a really light coat of iron nitrate. It's been sanded to 320 grit and whiskered twice.



Here it is after heat was applied. You can see some splotches up towards the top where I had to add more iron nitrate and it got a little darker. Missed some spots on the first application.



Fortunately, the darker spots blended in just fine with everything else. Here's the grip after I knocked back the iron nitrate with some green scotch bright (~600grit).



I then added some LMF Cherry, and LMF Maple to get a look I liked. Here it is next to a Uberti Walker grip for reference.

Mighty fine. You could turn that into a profitable small business.

Rifleman1776 said:

Mighty fine. You could turn that into a profitable small business.

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Thanks. I'd wonder if there's even a market out there for it since no one seems to make wood grips. Lot of plastic, fake ivory, and fake bone. Was surprised I couldn't find anything.

Might have to do with the cost of the guns themselves. They're so cheap that many might shy away from the cost of a nice grip.

That and I don't think I could sell fully finished grips. Variability between all the samples I have is high, if you want it to be nice, the grips have to be fit to each gun. Something to think about though.

Didn't cut out any more maple grips, ran out of time, but I did get the center section done.

Here's the maple sample at least with 1 coat of mostly dried tung oil. Probably give it another day before knocking back with 600 grit and adding another coat.



Lined up one side and clamped it, then used some titebond wood glue. Added more clamps but forgot to take a picture.



After a couple hours dry time I un-clamped things, and sanded the center section down flush with the frame. I really don't care about messing up the finish on the back strap. If you look at the frame to backstrap fit, you can see how terrible it is. Gonna have to remove a bunch of metal and reblue the thing anyway.



Next I glued the other piece on.



After that dried, I just needed to sand the wood down flush with the metal. Gonna have to polish up the brass and backstrap, but that'l probably go faster than the wood fitting.





One things were fitted how I liked, I incrementally sanded up to 320 grit, and then whiskered it twice.

Decided I like the Iron Nitrate and LMF Cherry/Maple combo on the maple wood test sample so I'm doing the same thing here.

Here's the grip with a knocked back coat of heated Iron nitrate:



And here it is after adding stain. Just got a few more hours of dry time, then I can add a coat of oil.

That is some serious skill you have! Those grips are beautiful. Could we get a pic of your CNC mill please?

Thems some purdy handles, pard!

Those look great! I wonder if you could use a chamfer end mill to do some checkering or engraving. Or, if that would require a 4th axis to keep the curve of the grips normal to the end mill.

How'd you go about building the home made CNC?

CyrusP said:

That is some serious skill you have! Those grips are beautiful. Could we get a pic of your CNC mill please?

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It's storming pretty good out, so here's a rendering. Hopefully stuff calms down in a bit.

It cut's an area roughly 29x31.

Smokey Plainsman said:

Thems some purdy handles, pard!

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Thanks!. Now I need a gun to match. Maybe I should test some CNC engraving on scrap.

Hawthorn1213 said:

Those look great! I wonder if you could use a chamfer end mill to do some checkering or engraving. Or, if that would require a 4th axis to keep the curve of the grips normal to the end mill.

How'd you go about building the home made CNC?

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It's certainly possible to do some without a 4th axis. Just depends on the geometry. You can do a whole lot of cool looking stuff with a simple V bit. Look up vcarving on youtube.

My machine is old, and most of the suppliers and manufacturers have been wiped out by the chinese. The base design uses a lot of older openbuilds parts though, and there are modern equivalents for sale on the openbuilds site. You can piece together machines now like legos.

KingOfKindling said:

My machine is old, and most of the suppliers and manufacturers have been wiped out by the chinese. The base design uses a lot of older openbuilds parts though, and there are modern equivalents for sale on the openbuilds site. You can piece together machines now like legos.

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Are you modeling in something like Creo/Autocad/etc. and then importing into something like Mastercam, or do they have all in one programs now for something like that? (Sorry, it's been years since I've messed around with CNC's and when I did, it was mostly typing out all of the G-Code.)

Hawthorn1213 said:

Are you modeling in something like Creo/Autocad/etc. and then importing into something like Mastercam, or do they have all in one programs now for something like that? (Sorry, it's been years since I've messed around with CNC's and when I did, it was mostly typing out all of the G-Code.)

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I use several CAD programs, but for complex curved shapes like these grips Fusion360 is easiest.

For 2D cam, I have been primarily using CamBam. Recently purchased VCarve desktop to do a 2D project for my brother, and it's been working much more smoothly, while not being quite as straightforward for more complex things.

Vcarve Desktop is also what I used here to cut the grips. Some of the 3D model handling in the program is a bit counter intuitive, but it's gotten the job done. In the past, I did most 3D CAM work with MeshCam.

Fusion360 also has some very good CAM software built in, but you've got to pay out the nose for it. Something like ~$650 per year. Way too much for me to justify as a hobbyist.



And before I forget, here's the first coat of tung oil on the grips. Got things a bit on the red side, but I still think it looks pretty awesome. Will probably take a couple days of drying, then I can work on the next coats.

Incredible!