Ruger Blackhawk grips

[Lucas]

The roads around my place were pretty bad this morning, so I didn't go the the group shoot. I had to do something gun related today, so I made some grips for a blackhawk.

Here's the process:

Make sure the gun is NOT loaded


We wouldn't want one of these little guys to go zinging through a neighbor's house or worse. Besides that, it would be a waste of a perfectly good cartridge!


Now, we have to get the factory plastic things out of the way
Why yes that is a "poorboy" trigger job

Now we need some wood, this happens to be stabilized curly maple


Scribe the outline of the grip onto the wood, when doing this make sure to take the time to match the direction of the grain from one side to the other, more on that later


Cut along the lines to fit the gun to the frame


On this blackhawk we have to make some clearance on the back of the grips for the grip frame


After that we'll locate the hole for the roll pin


Trace out the area to sand away


Now it is time for some dremel action. Yes I know this sanding drum is about hosed.


This should be good enough


It fits


Now remove the roll pin, and mark the location to drill a hole in the grip. Drill this hole to a depth of 1/8"


Now we can scribe around the grip frame, cut along our scribe line and start sanding


Make it fit nice


A sanding drum mounted on a drill press makes easy work of the inside curve


Lookin' good






Now before we start to shape the grip we need to locate the hole for the grip screw, and counter sink the grip screw bushings into the grips


See the ledge to hold the bushing?


Now it's time to thin the grips down to match the frame


Sand the grips on a taper to get the thickness right. We need thin up top, and about 3/8" or so at the bottom. One the left is what we started out with, on the right is what we end up with


Remember when I said to match the direction of the grain? Notice how the grain of the wood I used runs up and down through my grips, while the curl runs from front to back at a slightly upward angle


Time to sand. I started out shaping with a belt sander running 80 grit, then moved on to a palm sander with 120 grit


I like the looks of grips with an angled bottom, so I put in a steep angle at the base using a 6" disc sander


Some more sanding with 220 grit. The wood I used wasn't the color I was really looking for, so out came the yellow food coloring. Yes I said yellow food coloring. Plain old yellow.


A run around on a loose buff with blue compound, and put on the gun




Gratuitous porn with the Vaquero sporting walnut grips





Time consuming? Yes. Worth every minute? IMHO, Hell Yes!

[smithwessn]

Great write up. Fantastic looking grips!! Very nice job!!

Thanks for posting!!

[Emptymag]

Your wood gave me wood.


Hope to see that in person one of these days.

[Lucas]

EM, I'll refrain from any number of "wanna touch my wood?" jokes. I'll make sure and bring this gun to the next group shoot I make it to, no telling when that will be though.

[normanvin]

Not to shabby..

[markheck1]

Real Nice job, man

[moshan]

You have the woodworking skills to pay the bills my friend! Nice job!

[ar15jules]

Great job! I enjoyed the step by step photos.
Jules

[CZJedi]

Awesome grips!

[bripro]

Great job!!