New product: Radom wood grip reproductions

[Olle]

Originally Posted by DonVoigt

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". 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.

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.