Nomadr - Can't imagine why you would want to replace those grips with mere originals! I mean, that's ART man!
I have heard of soldiers making various items from the windscreens of airplanes that didn't need them anymore. It was called Perspex or Plexiglas. I have always supposed that the attraction was that the material was pretty exotic at the time, so it was cool to have things made from it, and also that it was reletively easy to work with with common tools, unlike glass for example.
There is an exerpt from an Ernie Pyle piece over on Jouster.com that mentions this:
http://www.jouster.com/trivia/bravemen.htm