PO Box 2171 White City, OR 97503 USA www.TombstoneGrips.com Fax: (541)-826-8669 Email: Dave@TombstoneGrips.com 
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offers an extensive collection of economically priced, high quality semi-finished custom grips for modern and obsolete handguns! Custom colors, conchos, medallions, and reproductions of your original grips in tough polyurethane; extensive collection of special grips for target shooters and reproductions of originals for restoring collector pieces, with "you-fit/finish" pricing! Tombstone Gun Grips PO Box 2171 White City, OR 97503 
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While most other Tombstone Gun Grips will require fitting and sanding, the typical 1911 grip can be used just as it is shipped. You can enhance it somewhat, if you wish, but most people feel the 1911 grips are ready to use as received. Mounting holes are pre-drilled using special countersink drills and test fixtures to assure proper depth, diameter and alignment. Tombstone Gun Grips for Colt 1911 and equivalent handguns are made slightly oversized, to allow exact fitting to your grip frame. The grips may benefit from sanding to size, flattening the back while reducing the width and height as needed to fit, and finish work to achieve the degree of polish you may desire on some smooth grips. You can specify that you want NO holes drilled, so you can do it yourself and make it precisely right for your gun, if you wish. Otherwise, the 1911 style grips will be drilled according to G.I. Specifications for the standard stud mounting system found on government issue pistols. Some grips have a built-in countersink on the outer surface, because they are made using a "master" grip that had such a feature as part of the design. Some hand-carved grips such as the very popular Chinese Dragon were in fact made from a one-of-a-kind hand-made master, long lost. They were not made with CNC machines and lasers, but by the skill of an individual craftsman working with woodcarving knives, gravers, and other hand tools. This is part of their appeal and uniqueness. Before doing anything else, you will want to determine how thick you want to make the grips. Grips can be made thinner by sanding the flat back of the grips, with a piece of 120 grit abrasive paper taped or glued to a flat board. The abrasive cloth or paper should be at least one and a half times wider and longer than the grips, so you can move them back and forth to sand the back (change to a circular motion every so often). Gently press down with the palm of your hand while lightly guiding the grip with your fingertips just barely over the edge (so you don't sand your fingers!). 
The back of the grips may not be entirely flat when you get them, and you may need to remove just a little material to achieve this. You can tell because if you look at the back while tipping it to reflect light, you will probably see a border that is very shiny compared to most of the rest of the area on the back. This is the slightly curved area with mold release agent on it, which gives it the shine. You may want to sand the back at least enough so that it is entirely flat, removing this shiny border. How much further you sand depends on your hand size and the feel you desire for the grips. In most cases you could mount the grip on your 1911 pistol just as it comes, and it would work. Sanding to make the grips thinner is an option, not normally a requirement.
The 1911 G.I. Specs call for the grips to be mounted on two 1/4-inch diameter studs, which project 0.175 inches from the surface of the grip frame. The two studs are supposed to be 3.075 inches center to center. Two fillister head screws secure each grip panel (left and right grips). The two screws fit through a 0.150 inch diameter hole in the grips. The inside of the grip must be drilled with a 1/4-inch (Letter E) bit to a depth of 0.175 inches, so the studs will fit into these holes. The outside of the grips must be drilled with a .281 (Letter K) drill to a depth of 0.100 inches for the screw head. This hole can be larger in diameter or deeper, as long as the frame-mounted studs are a good fit into the 1/4-inch holes on the back of the grips. If the studs fit into a 0.175 inch deep hole, then you sand off the back, the depth of the hole is reduced. The studs will bottom out sooner and the grips will "rock" back and forth on top of the studs. If the stud holes are made deeper, then the grips will fit against the pistol frame. So long as there is at least some additional thickness beyond the .175 high studs, the grips will be held against the frame by the .280 diameter mounting screw head. If the .280 diameter screw head countersink hole meets the .250 diameter stud hole, then it becomes very important for the depth of the .280 diameter hole to be short enough to assure that the screw head will actually bear on the small difference in diameter (.280 - .250 = .030 inches, divided by 2 = 0.015 inches per side of the screw head). If the .280 hole is too deep compared to the grip thickness, you may be able to tighten the grip screw against the top of the stud without applying any pressure to the grip itself. The grip, in other words, won't fall off but it move in and out a tiny amount and feel "loose" other than the snugness of the studs in their holes. If you make the grip too thin, and create this problem, it can be solved by adding a thin layer of backing material to the grip. Whatever material is used should not retain moisture. A thin layer of plastic or shim stock made of stainless steel or brass can be trimmed to fit under the grips. Or a spacer made of a turn or two cut from the appropriate size coil spring can be put under the screw head, if the head is not thereby made to stick up beyond the grip surface. Ultimately, the problem can be solved by returning the grips and having a layer of additional polymer added to the back, which works with ivory but may not always be satisfactory with pearl colors due to the different plastic chemistry involved. Preparing the Mounting Holes (for people who wish to drill holes themselves)
FINISHING YOUR GRIPS Your 1911 style grips usually need some sanding and polishing along the edges and in the circular cut-out areas. This can be done with a couple of standard sandpaper fingernail sticks, one coarse/medium and one medium/fine or fine/extra fine. Usually these flat sticks have two sides with different grit sizes. Hole the stick flat along the edges and gently slide it back and forth to make the edges smooth and straight. Switch to finer grades of grit to get a good finish. Finally you can use 320, 400, and 600 grit abrasive cloth and "crocus cloth" to put a nice shine on the edges if you desire it. Checkered and carved grips normally don't require or benefit from much sanding except along the outer edges. A stiff toothbrush can be used to buff up the carved or checkered area. Rounded areas at the top of the grips require more careful work to avoid putting flats on the curve. Move the fingernail sanding tool smoothly and follow the arc. Brush off the dust so you get a good view of the surface. On the concave round cutouts along the edge, you can roll up some sandpaper to make a rod or stick with the same diameter as the cutout. Then use this rolled up bit of sandpaper like a file, to polish the curved surface. Be careful not to remove too much material! Use two or three steps of finer grades to get a better finish. Power sanding drums and "Moto-tool" bit are not recommended unless you are removing a lot of material in a hurry (such as cutting out surplus material for slots on the back of a special grip). Once you have the grips ready to be mounted, and finish sanded and buffed to meet your desires, you can either seal the surface with car wax or clear shoe wax (any good clear, hard finish wax) and buff it to a nice hard finish, or you can use various kinds of stains or acrylic paints as "rubs" to add a patina, natural-looking streaks and grain, or other custom features to the ivory or aged ivory grips. Paints and stains will tend to soak into the unsealed surface slightly, leaving a lighter color when you rub or brush them off. Painting the surface will result in a superficial layer that will rub off, and a penetrating layer that won't come off without actually sanding the surface away. You can experiment on the back side of the grips before trying it on the side that will show. With BLACK grips, you can achieve different effects by buffing the surface using black paste wax shoe polish! First rub a little on the grips, then buff it back off again. With carved or checkered black grips, you will need to remove the bits of wax in the grooves with a toothbrush (one you don't intend to use for its original purpose again!). This is not as tedious as it might sound. Brush with the checkering in both directions and angles. Carvings require more attention to direction, brushing out of the crevices toward flats or high points, where extra wax can be removed. The remaining "stain" gives the black grips a deeper, more "hard rubber" look, like original factory grips of the old days. To achieve a more brownish black, you can use first a brown and then a black wax shoe polish. If you apply the brown around the edges, buff it well, and then apply black in the center and buff it, you can get a shaded effect that is subtle and artistic. Smooth grips can be buffed with muslin wheels on a power buffer, and can be polished with fine polishing grits as well. Carving, Checkering, and Scrimshaw Work The polyurethane used to make Tombstone Grips is not "brittle" but has a slightly resiliant quality that makes it easy to do checkering, carving, and scrimshaw work on them. Ivory and aged ivory can be decorated with scrimshaw having black India ink applied to the lines and allowed to "soak in" to the pores before sealing with clear wax. Regular checkering tools used for wood stocks work well with the grips. You can experiment with Tombstone Grips and create your own masterpiece. If it does not turn out so well, you can usually sand it off and try again, or for the price, you can afford to get a new grip or two until you master the technique. Grips that are incorrectly drilled can be returned to have the holes filled with fresh material (there may be a slight color mismatch, however, since each grip is subject to unique and individual natural aging and color variation). If you will take care of shipping both ways, there is no charge for helping correct a drilling error! |