New product: Radom wood grip reproductions
 

Just made a small batch of the hard-to-get "ersatz" wood grips for the Radom VIS P.35. These have been reverse engineered from a mint original set, cut on a CNC machine and color matched to resemble the originals. The material is birch with a light stain/distress and oil finish, and I also have a few unfinished sets for those who want to do the finish work themselves. The wood grain and finish will vary slightly, but the pictures should give you a good idea of what they look like. Guaranteed to fit perfectly.

Supplies are very limited, simply because I didn't have much birch. Will make another batch when I get hold of more wood. :)

SEE FOR SALE SECTION FOR HOW TO ORDER


More pictures here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/252619000554...84.m1555.l2649

http://www.ebay.com/itm/252619085094...84.m1555.l2649

Looks great, Olle! Too bad we can't discuss them in this forum... :(

Well, I was thinking about posting it in another forum section, but it's really a "for sale" ad so this is where it belongs. I'd be happy to answer any questions though.

Ollie,
there is plenty of birch lumber available on ebay; so if you need it for more grips- it is there.

Copied to here

Thank you, Sir!

I have just finished up a few more sets, and thrown out some hooks on eBay. The problem with eBay is that it's either long sticks where the shipping absolutely kills it, or nice, short project pieces 12" or 24" long when my blanks need to be 6 3/4". I found the wood I'm using when I was in Nashville last week, so I might just wait until I go next time. This is about 3/4" thick, so I have to resaw and plane it to roughly 3/8" before I can use it.

So for those of you thinking that the grips are expensive, this is just one of the problems you have to deal with when you want to make authentic reproductions. ;)

BTW: For those who are wondering how I can resaw a 3/4" board into two 3/8" pieces: I don't. Planed 3/4" (ie not dimension sanded) is a bit thicker than 0.75", so I can get the 0.32" I need for the Radom grips if I'm really careful when I saw it. If it ends up too thin, I plane it to 1/4" so I can use it for 1911 grips. Just gotta keep that CNC running. :cheers:

Olle, great looking grips. Those grips make me want to buy a Radom just so I can put a set of your grips on it!

Ollie,
I've been searching the last week for thick boards for making repro "erma kit" boxes.
Found them on ebay.
Did a quick search for birch lumber, over 700 hits.

This one looks like it would be great for your grips:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PACKAGES-OF-...QInRTApWS0QSqQ

I believe that's one of the sellers I emailed about custom lengths. Everything pre-cut is in multiples of 12", so I would waste a lot of wood if I bought it like that. Unless I buy an 8' or 10' board, of coarse, but the shipping cost would be horrendous.

So what kind of wood are you going to use for the Erma boxes? I was thinking about making more repros (probably Femaru 37M next time) and have been picking around in the stores for something that resembles the original type. Birch worked great for the Radom grips, but a lot of the higher quality grips seem to be made of beech or similar. I talked to two local vendors about ordering some, but they said that they quit fooling with it as the quality is usually too poor to do anything with. I don't know if they just had bad luck with it, but they both recommended finding somebody who imports European beech (=more expensive).

BTW: I saw a discussion about the Erma boxes, and I thought that the insert looked like a perfect candidate for CNC-cutting. Just let me know if you need any help with that, it's a pretty simple thing to do if you can just provide a good drawing.

Well, that dilemma is easily solved, isn't it? :D

When I first saw your ad I immediately thought of the vertically-grooved (or corrigated) Russina Luger grips. I have a set in black plastic [possibly Bakelite] and tried to interest a member in doing them in dark walnut but with no success... :(

I'm going to be doing a set in walnut for a S&W model 41 with a short barrel [think Loveless] but got into shortening the barrel first. Wood work always comes second here. ;)

Is this a kind that was originally done in walnut, or do you want your own lookalike set in walnut? There's a lot of work to do before you can flip the switch, so making a one-off set is actually easier to do by hand.

It would be more feasible if I could find an accurate 3D model of the grips, that's how I made the 1911s. Now when I have located the model, I can use it as a blank canvas where I can apply pretty much anything. I figure the Luger grips can be made the same way, if I had a good model of standard grips I could modify them in different ways.

Ollie,
using CNC would be just too easy, I'll be doing it the old fashioned way the Germans made them, with a vertical mill.

Wood will be the secret sauce, the originals I've seen are clear, off white hardwood. Not beech, there is no "figure":confused:. I 'm going with one of the maples.

You are quite right that these "simple" reproductions are not cheap, neither in material nor in labor required.:thumbup:

What? How hard can it possibly be to make a plain ol' wooden box? ;)

Making the grips is actually the easy part, developing them is what takes time and I guess you can say it's a labor of love. This particular grip style has been in the back of my head for years, and now I finally have the means to do it. But just like with your boxes, there's hours of measuring, head scratching, sketching, drawing, prototypes, test fitting, sourcing materials and so on before you can even start making something you want to sell. I can imagine that just finding original looking hardware for your boxes would be a wild goose chase that can go on forever.

As far as materials go, have you looked at birch? The original Radom grips are said to be made of wood they salvaged from freight pallets and crates, basically just a mix of what they could find. I don't know if that's true, but I found that birch was a very good match to my sample set. I looked at several boards in the vendor's warehouse, and a lot of them were almost totally white without visible grain. I fell in love with it pretty much as soon as I started working with it. It's really hard and dense and cuts cleanly (very much like hickory), so I figure it would be perfect for boxes. If you haven't tried it, buy a few pieces and check it out. I think you'll like it. Still, hard maple would also work well if you just pick around and find some clear pieces.

Ollie,
thanks for the thoughts.
Yes, I thought of birch, but eliminated it because of hardness on the scale- may have been error.
I "found" what looks like nice clear maple boards; one of the problems with the box is the bottom requires a 1 1/4" thick board !

Hardware,
the strange, unusual, or unique latch on these boxes will have to be made from scratch. Bent from flat stock, punched, some parts milled, a spring - very daunting.
I've never seen these latches on anything else, nor could I find them online.
Maybe if I were in Germany they would be common. ;)

Even the hinges are special.

So there's no insert in it, it's just one solid piece of wood? That can get very nasty if it starts warping on you. :eek: It makes me wonder if they really used a solid piece, or if they glued it up. A glued piece would hold up better, and you can't see much of that in the cuts anyway, can you? Two 3/4" boards glued together, plane it to 1 1/4" and you'll have a very strong and warp resistant piece. Even if they didn't do it like that originally, I think it's one of those things you just have to do to make sure it won't move later on.

And I can only imagine how much fun it will be to make the hardware... I guess getting it right is simply not supposed to be easy. ;)

By the way: If you haven't already noticed, there's a huge difference between maple and hard maple. Hard maple can be difficult to find in the lumberyards, but it's fairly common so any cabinet shop should be able to order it for you.

Ollie,
The boxes are solid, top one piece, bottom another. Cuts are all milled into "virgin" lumber.
No inserts.

One false move and big OOPs! 2nd quality or discard and start over.

Glued from two boards - you are absolutely right , cheaper , easier; just not authentic.

If I'm going to spent 8 hours or so building and cutting, I want it to look as it should- same as you and your grips!

Maple boards should be here next week; hope to have the latches pretty much done by then too.

I've made two proto-types so the next one will be a "real" reproduction. :)

Aha, so the end grain will be visible from the outside. So much for that then, gluing it will definitely not be an option. I'm sure the first week after cutting will be nerve wrecking experience, just waiting for the first signs of warping or cracking. I have seen that happening to several expensive "kiln dried" (yeah, right...) 2x4 walnut boards I bought, you just want to cry when your freshly cut piece starts moving on you. :rolleyes:

But hey, so much more satisfaction if you can pull it off, right? :thumbup:

You are correct for sure Ollie; this is a project full of "snakes".
A lamination joint would be visible from the out side, but probably not too bad.
I'll condition the boards in my "gun room" inside for a couple weeks; then plane them; I do hope they are stable.

The three small boxes I bought and re-worked a year or so ago, were warped. Sanding them flat solved the lid/base fit problem, but made the cut outs too shallow. Had to re-cut the openings.
So I have had some "bad" experience with warping already.

I'm amazed at the two or three original long boxes I have handled, that the boxes are still flat and fit perfectly together.

I made a trial small box from really old oak from some piece of furniture to see how that would work, it was really stable. Made another from Teak which was also well cured and made a nice box-just too figured for a close reproduction.

Conditioning them is one key, and the longer the better. I don't trust any "kiln dried" wood, much of it seem to be "kiln dried" in a damp basement.

I try to leave the wood in the shop for a few weeks, unless I'm getting it from one of my trusted sources. Another thing I do is to seal the finished product with oil to prevent it from absorbing moisture again, and I suspect this could be the key to the survival of those old boxes. I have had good luck with Formby's, it penetrates well, dries fairly quick, and you can clear coat it after it's completely dry.