Kimber .45 Grips

Those grips look great

-- Monty Q, Columbia, South Carolina.

beautiful grips for wonderful weapon

-- If you don't have time to do it right, do you have time to do it twice?

Very nice work, the inlay looks great.

-- A hammer dangling from a wall will bang and sound like work when the wind blows the right way.

Good looking grips, I’m sure they feel and position as well as they look. Nice symmetry and balance on the diamonds. BTKS

-- "Man's ingenuity has outrun his intelligence" (Joseph Wood Krutch)

Fine looking sidearm, you did good!

-- "Bordnerizing" perfectly good lumber for over a decade.

Nice job. I’d love to make a set of Kimber grips, but wouldn’t know where to start. Do you have dimensions or plans that you started with?

Looken good, proud to carry that. Heck, I am proud to carry.
NRA LIFE MEMBER, Doug

-- A childs smile is payment enough.

Sweet. Those grips look great.

Why a .45? Because they don’t make a .46! HA!

-- Wipe the blood stains from your blade before coming in.--

I used the old set of cheap rubber grips he had on the gun before as a guide.

I started with a flat blank about 3/16” thick for each side. I traced out the grip onto the blanks… if you aren’t doing an inlay, you could go ahead and cut out the grips to just outside your trace line with a bandsaw. If you are doing inlay, I highly recommend you do that before shaping it.

Once it is cut to shape, I use a disc sander to take the blank down to the exact dimensions, sanding until the pencil line i traced is just gone.

Once in this shape, go ahead and place the old grip onto the blank again and mark your center holes for the mounting screws.
From here I used a drill press with a forstner bit to the diameter of the widest portion of the hole down to the depth you want. (I used the old grip on my drill press table to set the depth on my drill press.) Once that is drilled, go ahead and drill through the blank with the smaller diameter drill.

Once this is complete you can cut the relief into the top of the one side of the grip for clearance. I used a band saw for this.

Once the holes are drilled, i take the blanks back to the sander again and sculpt it by hand to the desired radius. Nothing real technical about this part, just go slow and constantly check your progress. I sanded to 220 on the disc sander, then to 600 by hand.

Once the sanding is done, I applied a couple coats of Boiled Linseed Oil, and then about 3-4 coats of high gloss poly which was knocked back at the end with a bit of 0000 steel wool.

If you have anymore questions let me know.

-Robert

-- San Diego, CA

Nice grips! I really like the bloodwood on the dark frame.
I made a set out of purple heart a few years back for a Colt Govt model 45 and found that getting the screw holes set correctly was the hardest part.

So how does it shoot now with those grips?

I do not own any guns myself. The only guns I get to shoot are the M16’s and the M9 pistols that the Navy uses. I don’t feel comfortable with guns in my house with small children. I saw several accidents in my past from un-experienced gun users getting ahold of someones weapon and killing or injuring themselves or someone else. Don’t get me wrong though, I have nothing against guns though.

The guy i made these for said that it shoots well, he is at the range probably 3 times a week and has received several comments on the grips. He has actually asked me to make another set of grips for him, but this time he wants an ebony grip with a white inlayed punisher skull.

-- San Diego, CA

Outstanding job Great Grips on a Great Frame best ever built. The inlays are verry custom. Anyone can make something plain it takes a real Craftsman to do custom

“Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not” Thomas Jefferson

-- GAR