Made a couple more birdshead grips

I've never liked the fit or shape of the grip panels Ruger puts on the birdsheads, hence the replacements. Only trouble is I have to put the screw ferrules in so deep to re-use Ruger's screw.

Finish is shellac - contents of the jar in the background of one pic :mrgreen:

French walnut:




Curly claro walnut. This was an offcut from another project, too small for plow grips so I made another set of birdshead.




Nice thick bottom swell makes for a comfortable grip:

Very nice

Beautiful grips, I really like the french walnut grips.

Very nice job of fitting them.

Thanks guys.

I like the French walnut too, it finishes up better than claro, being a denser variety. I've grain filled claro before, I probably will do that even on grips going forward. Filling helps a lot, but working with French walnut tends to spoil me :mrgreen:

Ooohhhh, nicely done .
I've never gotten along with Birdsheads as Ruger does them . Your reshape might do the trick.
Looks to be fat in back and rounded taper to the front with a flair at the bottom.
Good lookin well fit grip.

Well done

Those are beautiful grips. You did a great job on them.

If I may ask, why shellac? And what cut?

Over the years I have come to prefer Tru Oil, and when CaryC was making grips, specified that on all my grips.



Bob Wright

Mostly because shellac is a very fast and easy finish, I can usually do 3-4 coats in a day, then lightly sand and recoat once or twice more or finish up with an overcoat of Waterlox (a fast drying oil like Tru-oil). Sometimes I do all Waterlox instead, or BLO followed by Waterlox, mostly depends on what I have open at the time - none of this stuff but BLO has a great shelf life.

That is probably a 3 lb cut, I don't remember offhand but its pretty thick. I never liked shellac until I tried some button lac for that orange color to match a K31 stock repair. Button lac seems to behave a lot better than de-waxed shellac.

I like Tru Oil too because you can bring it to satin, then gloss with more coats depending on what you want. And hard to make any errors with dripping because it is a wipe-on product.

Nothing wrong with Tru-oil, I just haven't had any on hand in 25 years or so, my dad used it on grips and gave me some to try. I was making furniture then so I would buy oil by the gallon and stuck with Waterlox because it was easier to source in quantity. The two products were similar in properties and ease of use, and presumably still are.

Both are wiping varnishes more than oils. That is, they are an oil and a resin, with solvents and driers for modifying application and drying properties. As I understand it, Tru-oil uses linseed oil and urethane resin, Waterlox uses tung oil and phenolic resin. The solvents and driers are probably about the same between them. I recall Waterlox being a thinner product - which is good in ease of application and not so good in that more coats are required for the same effect compared to a less thinned product. If you're on the clock, that can be inconvenient. The nice thing about wiping varnishes is that they are so easy to use and so easy to repair. The worst thing is that they tend to cure in the can if you don't re-bottle them into smaller containers (this is Waterlox's biggest fault, I've never had a bottle of Tru-oil long enough to find out if it does the same).

Shellac is a much harder finish, but is also easy to renew. Like the wiping varnishes, all that is really needed is a quick swipe of a rag wetted with the finish and it looks great again. Its probably the most difficult one to get a high gloss on without polishing, but fortunately it is compatible with the others so you can overcoat with a wipe of a wiping varnish for an easy gloss appearance. Doing so means you have to renew using that same overcoat rather than a wipe of shellac though.

Shellac is arguably less waterproof, due to its hardness - hard finishes tend to crack a bit as wood expands and contracts with varying humidity, and the cracks allow liquid moisture in - water vapor getting in is inevitable, no finish does more than slow it down. If there are any visible cracks in an old shellac finish, they should be easily repaired with a coat of thin shellac (like a 1/2 pound cut) followed by overcoating with a heavier cut for appearance. Never had to try that myself though so that's a bit theoretical. Shellac (button shellac in particular) is the easiest one to store - the dry product keeps well and you just mix as needed. No worries about keeping the air out of a partial can of oil.

All three make great finishes for gunstocks, easy to use, easy to maintain. Like different loads for the same gun, it's handy to have lots of options to choose from when it comes to finishing.

You do outstanding work Mr. Downey.

My favorite grip frame!... do you make grips for others (to sell)?

seasterl said:

My favorite grip frame!... do you make grips for others (to sell)?

Click to expand...

I have considered it at times. I've been making and selling grips for various surplus rifles (922r parts) for years, and single action grips are another niche that I like. The thing that keeps me from really pursuing it is that I prefer making small runs of a product and selling the whole batch to a vendor rather than doing all the customer service work that goes with selling custom sets one at a time. With milsurps there were some pretty clear opportunities to do that, with SA's I've yet to see one.

However, I can certainly make some BH sets for sale and see where it goes. I've found I like making that style a bit better than plow grips, and I don't think I'd be cramping the other custom grip guys much by doing it.

PM me if you like. I'll be traveling this week (leaving this morning) so replies may be spotty but I always get back to people when I finally catch on that there's a message :mrgreen:

I've stated before how I appreciate the talent of grip making as I do not have it. I do have the often seen ability to screw up someone else's hard work though.