My KSD Grips have arrived!

[Trooper224]

I've seen these grips in person and I wouldn't put them on a gun meant for serious purposes.

FSW, would it be possible to modify the Hogue retaining piece rather than the grips? If so, that might be easier to work with.

 

[Old_Cop]

Could you show a photo of the KSD part?

 

[raljr1]

This should help remove that pesky pin.

 

[Echo40]

Could you show a photo of the KSD part?

Sure, here it is...

 

[4T5GUY]

Well that's weird and it sucks.

My KSD grips came with what looks like a Hogue adapter. (Just like "TercGen" supplies with his.) They fit great and were perfectly aligned with the grips. They were identical to the Hogue adapters including the material which was NOT "particle board."

So since you were replacing Hogue's can you reuse the adapter piece from them?

I'm thinking even though the grips were from Turkey they may not be KSD's. What did the packaging look like?

I've got an "extra" adapter that I can get you but if things are not to spec it might not help. Let me know.

Jim

 

[Echo40]

Yeah, the retainer I received is nothing at all like the Hogue retainer at all. The Hogue retainer is made of polymer and is shaped completely differently, is much larger, and is designed in such a way that it actually interfaces with the frame and is held in place under tension from the mainspring.
Unfortunately, because the Hogue retainer is larger and shaped differently than the retainer that came with the grips, the grips won't go on with the Hogue retainer installed. However, I'm confident that the grips could be easily modified to accommodate the Hogue adapter by simply removing a bit of material from inside the grips, so eventually I'll probably do that as a project, but for now I'm just burned out with it.

There wasn't any packaging at all in the commercial sense, it came wrapped up in bubble wrap inside of a plain paper business envelope with a simple return address bearing no company information.
I've just always sort of assumed that KSD was just making these on the sly then selling them on various websites other than their own in order to get around any potential threat of a lawsuit by Smith & Wesson over unauthorized use of their logo, but given the terrible particle board retainer that mine came with compared to the comparatively nice polymer retainer your genuine KSD grips came with, maybe they are just knockoffs afterall.
Furthermore, it's worth noting that these grips only cost me $50, whereas genuine KSD grips typically sell for $90+ on the official website, so that's more evidence to suggest that they're knockoffs.

I appreciate the offer, but there's really no way to be sure that the genuine KSD mainspring retainer would even work with my ambiguously bootlegged KSD knockoff grips, so I wouldn't have you pay to ship me a spare one. I'd rather just modify the grips anyway, it'll give me a little side project for a rainy day. I should be getting a new Buck 110 in the mail in a couple of weeks, so maybe I'll even whittle away at it with that a little at a time until the grips fit with the Hogue retainer.

 

[Oldtimer2]

DON'T BUY FROM KSD!!!! My experience with KSD has been an absolute NIGHTMARE. I ordered some grips from ksdgripsusa.com website with an Inlay in them. Shipping took 4 weeks! I paid extra for the inlay to be in REAL SILVER it came in thin cheap Brass! ($159 WASTED) The wood type I selected was NOT CORRECT either! It seems as though they just sent me whatever JUNK they had in stock. After 20 emails and pictures and a LOT of WASTED time, I determined that it was impossible to communicate the issues to them because they DO NOT SPEAK OR READ ENGLISH! They could NEVER understand the ISSUES. They kept saying that I could return them but they wanted ME to pay the return SHIPPING TO SEND THEM BACK to maybe get a refund. My local UPS told me it would cost $200+ to ship them back but by FEDERAL LAW they CAN NOT SHIP any kind of gun parts out of the USA to them. NEEDLESS TO SAY, GUYS, STAY AWAY FROM KSD AND BUY FROM THE USA ONLY IT'S JUST WAY TOO RISKY THAT YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE ALL OF YOUR MONEY AND GET TOTAL JUNK AND A LOT OF FRUSTRATION!!! JUST DON'T DO IT! PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!

 

[colt_saa]

DON'T BUY FROM KSD!!!! My experience with KSD has been an absolute NIGHTMARE. I ordered some grips from ksdgripsusa.com website with an Inlay in them. Shipping took 4 weeks! I paid extra for the inlay to be in REAL SILVER it came in thin cheap Brass! ($159 WASTED) The wood type I selected was NOT CORRECT either! It seems as though they just sent me whatever JUNK they had in stock. After 20 emails and pictures and a LOT of WASTED time, I determined that it was impossible to communicate the issues to them because they DO NOT SPEAK OR READ ENGLISH! They could NEVER understand the ISSUES. They kept saying that I could return them but they wanted ME to pay the return SHIPPING TO SEND THEM BACK to maybe get a refund. My local UPS told me it would cost $200+ to ship them back but by FEDERAL LAW they CAN NOT SHIP any kind of gun parts out of the USA to them. NEEDLESS TO SAY, GUYS, STAY AWAY FROM KSD AND BUY FROM THE USA ONLY IT'S JUST WAY TOO RISKY THAT YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE ALL OF YOUR MONEY AND GET TOTAL JUNK AND A LOT OF FRUSTRATION!!! JUST DON'T DO IT! PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!

Welcome to the forum

It is a shame that you have had a bad experience with this vendor but I can tell you that the many of us on this site who have done business with him and have exactly the opposite results

I have three or 4 transactions across the past several years and have always got very good product and very good service

While you are unhappy that you received something other than what you were expecting you might want to take some photographs of the grips that you do not like and place them for sale here on the forum. Perhaps they will appeal to one of our members even though they do not appeal to you

In this way perhaps you can recoup some or all of the money you have invested in them

 

[4T5GUY]

DON'T BUY FROM KSD!!!! My experience with KSD has been an absolute NIGHTMARE. I determined that it was impossible to communicate the issues to them because they DO NOT SPEAK OR READ ENGLISH!

If you are even going to come back and read this……

I'm sure everyone here feels sincerely sorry for you.

As was posted in this original thread, (and other like threads here,) there are many very satisfied KSD customers. I had an issue that was corrected and not on my dollar. But GaryS, (I think,) sent them a factory pre-rail 3913TSW grip for a pattern to reproduce in wood. THAT would have been cool although I don't think he ever heard anything back. There were issues with the grip pin hole being too small for the factory grip pin for those attached grips.

From my experience KSD personnel actually are literate and do speak/understand/type English. My last order although a while ago I was emailed several images of my finished grip. The caption was "you like?" Might been broken English throughout all of our communications but we understood each other and it was all in English. Maybe something changed.

You joined at least two different Forums on the same day, (with two different "handles",) to resurrect two old KSD posts, (one from 2016 the other 2021,) for both of your initial first posts to complain about KSD?

Jim

 

[dsf]

I have bought more than once from KSD and every time the grip was high quality and delivered on time. Fitting grips properly to 3rd gen Smiths can be a challenge and one grip had a bit of wiggle room. Would have been cured with a spot of epoxy but I didn't want to fiddle with it so I contacted them. It does seems they have a communication problem.

I requested a return address for exchange and they told me to keep the first set of grips - and sent me another free of charge.

A photograph of the sub-par grips referenced would be educational.

 

[Echo40]

DON'T BUY FROM KSD!!!! My experience with KSD has been an absolute NIGHTMARE. I ordered some grips from ksdgripsusa.com website with an Inlay in them. Shipping took 4 weeks! I paid extra for the inlay to be in REAL SILVER it came in thin cheap Brass! ($159 WASTED) The wood type I selected was NOT CORRECT either! It seems as though they just sent me whatever JUNK they had in stock. After 20 emails and pictures and a LOT of WASTED time, I determined that it was impossible to communicate the issues to them because they DO NOT SPEAK OR READ ENGLISH! They could NEVER understand the ISSUES. They kept saying that I could return them but they wanted ME to pay the return SHIPPING TO SEND THEM BACK to maybe get a refund. My local UPS told me it would cost $200+ to ship them back but by FEDERAL LAW they CAN NOT SHIP any kind of gun parts out of the USA to them. NEEDLESS TO SAY, GUYS, STAY AWAY FROM KSD AND BUY FROM THE USA ONLY IT'S JUST WAY TOO RISKY THAT YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE ALL OF YOUR MONEY AND GET TOTAL JUNK AND A LOT OF FRUSTRATION!!! JUST DON'T DO IT! PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!

Wow, what a way to bump a three-year-old thread, and on their first post too...

Needless to say, I don't agree with this sentiment, nor does it match my personal experiences dealing with KSD.

Last year I ordered a pair of custom grips for my Taurus PT92 which unfortunately cracked during installation, but KSD's Customer Service was extremely helpful, and quickly offered me my choice of either a full refund or a pair of replacement grips. I opted for the refund which I promptly received in full, despite the fact that they said it could take up to two weeks to process, and they never asked me to ship the cracked grips back to them either, so I cannot agree with the sentiment that they aren't trustworthy nor that they should be avoided.

As an update to this thread since it has been bumped anyway, to date I still haven't managed to get these knock-off KSD grips fitted onto my gun. I had planned to make some modifications to the grips in order to get them to fit my 4006TSW properly, but it got away from me. I still have the grips, in fact they're on a shelf right beside me, but I doubt that I'll ever get around to fitting them. Besides, as I said in my last post over 3 years ago, I no longer believe that the grips in question are KSDs, but rather a knockoff, so I won't hold them against KSD.

 

[Frank Black]

Necro-thread 'bumped' by newbie OP.

Way to make an entry ….. Ok, not really.

 

[TAROMAN]

Interesting. Just went to KSD:

This Account has been suspended.

 

[ladder13]

They may have been recently hacked. I saw an ad for a company called gungripsusa that appeared to be KSD. I looked at a few pair of grips. That was last night. Looked like KSD grips.
I went there this morning and got the "warning, this site may be impersonating gungripsusa". I did not click on it.

 

[4T5GUY]

I saw an ad for a company called gungripsusa that appeared to be KSD.

I received my FIRST email from them yesterday. I did try to open up the site to take a look and search. Nothing really happened. Today I've already received two more emails from them, (one in "junk" folder.)

I was able to look around and check things out. The grips do look like the KSD offerings. I read the about us part and yes the are made in Turkey. I searched the listed New Mexico address and that was weird in that there were multiple businesses at Ste A. All listed businesses came back to one individual located in Florida.

I'm not sure how they got my email address, maybe since I've ordered from KSD? KSD website IS down.

Jim

 

[ladder13]

I received my FIRST email from them yesterday. I did try to open up the site to take a look and search. Nothing really happened. Today I've already received two more emails from them, (one in "junk" folder.)

I was able to look around and check things out. The grips do look like the KSD offerings. I read the about us part and yes the are made in Turkey. I searched the listed New Mexico address and that was weird in that there were multiple businesses at Ste A. All listed businesses came back to one individual located in Florida.

I'm not sure how they got my email address, maybe since I've ordered from KSD? KSD website IS down.

Jim

Same here, first email from them, whoever them may be, since ordering about 5 years ago. Something seems off, so I'll wait awhile.

 

[The_Truth]

I love the KSD walnuts I put on my 1086.

Hate to see their site down today. Interesting timing.

Hope they get their site back up and running. Knowing they might not exist anymore has me itching to buy a couple more grips for my other 10xx pistols, just in case.

S&W would be keen to offer the same grip choices. I'm sure they would make some money. Maybe they should consider acquiring KSD!

 

[4T5GUY]

I just contacted Gun Grips USA through their question/answer option. They wanted me to enter my name, number and email but I didn't. Told them they had that info already as I'd been receiving their emails.

The answer I got was "yes they are the sellers of KSD in the US." That might explain why the original KSD site is down AND how they were able to send emails to past KSD purchasers. Maybe.

Edited to add two images off the Gun Grips USA site. Obviously KSD.

Jim

 

[cherrypointmarine]

I too got an email from them . I know our forum doesn't sell their email list , but there's lots of other ways to buy them . Seems funny it's us here , and I'm sure thousands of others , that are receiving them . I wonder if other forums are receiving them also ?

 

[GaryS]

Yes, that was me. My conversation started with them just before the 2016 Turkish coup attempt.

I mailed them a grip for the pre rail 3913TSW and got a phone call from someone saying that they had received it and wouldn't let me down.

Still waiting.

Maybe they just decided that it wasn't worth the time to engineer a grip for what was a limited production pistol. I don't know and I don't really have any ill will towards them. People who have more popular 3rd Gens seem very happy with their grips.

As was posted in this original thread, (and other like threads here,) there are many very satisfied KSD customers. I had an issue that was corrected and not on my dollar. But GaryS, (I think,) sent them a factory pre-rail 3913TSW grip for a pattern to reproduce in wood. THAT would have been cool although I don't think he ever heard anything back. There were issues with the grip pin hole being too small for the factory grip pin for those attached grips.