A gripping project (Dial-up beware!) *Update.*

[joe-nwt]

Have a Ruger .22 that the grips have seen better days, chipped, one side has a chunk missing all together. So I figured rather than buying a set of grips for $30, I would do what any true gunnut would do, spend $300-400 on tools and supplies.

The old grips, and the rough blanks for the new; the wood is purple heartwood.

The blanks after shaping;

At this point I was'nt happy with the color so I whipped out my trusty heat gun (unregistered) and brought out the purple a bit;

After the first coat of tung oil, still wet in the pics;

Work in progress. The color was darker than I expected, after the first coat dried I sanded it with fine sandpaper to lighten it. More pics to follow.

One thing I'm not all that keen on is the Ruger grip screw. Anyone have any ideas on something that looks better?

 

[sunray]

Please reduce thesize of your pictures. A dial up member will be loading this page until Tuesday.

 

[marshall]

grips

oil will darken up purple heart a lot,
what I have gone is buff them after
you are done and you can use past wax
marshall is SK.

 

[joe-nwt]

Well, I finally got around to doing something with these grips. As an experiment, I wanted to see what laser-engraving would look like:

Nothing to write home about, I posted them here just so others could see what the engraving might look like.

In the end, I guess the grips look better than the beat-up old ones.......

 

[josquin]

Looks excellent, Joe!

But yes, reducing the size of the pics would be a VERY fine idea for the bandwidth-challenged. For example, your first pic was about 10 x 14" and 400k.(!)

Cropping it to about 5 x 9" and reducing quality a little brings it down to about 40k:

I did this in Graphic Converter on the Mac but there must be something similar on the Windows platform- maybe even the software that came with your digital camera (?)

No criticism of the work, though.

Stuart

 

[glang1]

Hi Joe,

Nice work on the grips! I love it when people post their handcrafted stuff. I am a woodworker too, & I can tell you that the nice purple color of that purpleheart will turn much darker over time. You may already know this, but exposure to UV rays will also degrade the nice purple color. The laser engraving is a nice touch. Do you own the laser engraver?

George

 

[fogducker]

lmao. @ spending $400.00 to make $30.00 parts..
looks great though Joemoney well spent
about how long did it take you to make them up?what did you use for the etching part?

 

[joe-nwt]

I had the engraving done at the local jeweller. They do trophies and plaques, etc.

The actuall cutting shaping only took an afternoon, and the 6 coats of tung oil.

lmao. @ spending $400.00 to make $30.00 parts..
looks great though Joemoney well spent
about how long did it take you to make them up?what did you use for the etching part?

Yeah, but now those tools only cost about $360.00......NEXT!

 

[josquin]

lmao. @ spending $400.00 to make $30.00 parts...

But, alas, we've ALL been there, haven't we? Plus, it keeps the mind busy on those long winter nights, planning other projects to further justify the cost of the tooling.

Stuart

 

[P0WERWAGON]

looks real nice.