Lately I have been trying my hand at fabricating some pure white grips for my new little nickel 40-1 and decided to use Corian for the material.
I know most of you have probably see this picture before but for those who haven't here is how the gun looked with the plain set:
Not bad, but I wanted to try doing a grip carving like I have seen on so many of the beautiful grips posted here on the Forum. So I made an extra right hand grip panel (in case I screwed it up) and proceeded to design what I wanted to carve. I am no good at drawing eagles, steers or patriotic designs so I had to keep it simple. After several attempts I came up with this:
Using a copier to enlarge or reduce the design until it fit the grip, I printed it, cut it out with an Exacto knife and used a glue stick to paste the design on the grip where I wanted it:
Everything looked good so off to the garage to start carving. I brought out the old Dremel tool...loved by some and hated by others..and some carbide bits. I attached the grip to a 1" wood dowel with a small screw so I could work the Dremel around the grip as needed and started cutting around the design:
Continuing to slowly work my way around the design until I had the relief that I wanted, I then removed the paper pattern and began cutting the relief between each symbol to give a layered or overlay look that seemed right.
Once I was done with the Dremel tool (that was the easy part
) next came hours of sanding around all those little cut in relief areas with tiny scraps of sandpaper starting with 180 and working up to 360 grit.
After I had everything sanded as smooth as I could get it, I wet sanded the whole grip several times using wet or dry auto body paper going from 600 grit up to 1000 grit. Finally buffing the plastic with a small loose cotton wheel and some white compound it was nearly finished. Here is a photo of the polishing setup being used on a different grip:
And yes, that's my trusty hand drill lightly clamped in the vise to do the polishing work
So, after all the work is done and a coat of Ren wax applied, time to show the finished grips:
I am happy with the results but I am my own worst critic. In retrospect I got a little over ambitious with the sanding and polishing and softened a lot of the detail more than I wanted. But overall I ended up with a pair of grips that are unique and I made em' my self.
I hope you enjoy my little how to post. Bob
Aces Wild! New grips for my 40-1. PICS
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