Opinions, 1940 42 Marked

[gunbugs]

The grips have nothing to do with "late war". Probably 90's vintage, or newer.

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by gunbugs

The grips have nothing to do with "late war". Probably 90's vintage, or newer.

Maybe "post-war" was meant.. Definitely that category. They seem fairly well machine-checkered--evidenced by the over-run of the pattern onto the end grain at the top of the right grip, which is properly flat.

90s is a decent guess Here's why I think so: The "diamonds" of the checkered pattern does not seem to be distorted as they make their way around parts of the grip that are not flat; and the closer to the edge (vertical), the greater the distortion. This is because it's easy to make a machine that cuts grooves nicely. The trick to avoid distorted diamonds is keeping the cutter perpendicular to the surface it's grooving.

Walnut grips were offered by Erma as an option for their early Erma toggle pistol models of the 60s, and their second and final line of KGP series guns provided the same relative option.

The early ones are the same dimensions and heft as A Luger, albeit their look was a little weird. The walnut grips look quite Luger-esque, minus the cutout for the safety lever. Their checkered pattern, however, does not go all the way to the edges, towards which the angles/lines be come increasingly more distorted. Thus, a machine complex enough to mimic nice hand work was not available to them for grip production, at least not up until at least 1970. IMHO

The factory walnut grips for Erma's succeeding KGP series were also machine-checkered. They avoided the distortion by simply checkering each panel flat across it's top, and leaving rounded edges front and back for the KGP 690, and with a triple machine-cut border fore and aft on panels for the KGP 68A. A third authentic variation would be rosewood artisan grips (They are nice) on the KGP pistols Robert Beeman imported, replacing the basic factory target grips. The earlier ones looked more authentic at a glance.

My point in all of this that the tooling to checker the way Sean's grips are probably wasn't around/available until the 90s. Too bad about that right grip...

Sean, it's best for future users if you post your pics on the forum, where they can be used for reference and context. Photo services come and go, or change, so this is the best place to archive so all can continue to benefit.