Silver grips

[Aglifter]

I know some of ya'll has silver grips made for your Seecamp, maybe the pup -- any special concerns about doing so?  

[Richard S]

I had sterling silver grips made for a G380 and a G32 (each of which has only one grip screw per panel), but my silversmith was unable to duplicate the R9 grips due to the precision required to align the two screw holes in each grip panel. My friend uses the lost wax process for his molten metal casting. However, even using so-called "no-shrink" mold material, there was just enough shrinkage in the final silver castings to prevent the grips from fitting. We gave up after eight attempts.

Elsewhere on the Forum, there are reports and photographs of work in progress for casting after-market carbon fiber grips. I don't know what mold process is being used in that project. As far as silver is concerned, though, I think that CNC machining might be the only answer for a pair of R9 grips.

[yankee2500]

Richard was it just the screw hols or the screw and pin holes?
If the pin holes were ok it would seem like the screw holes could be drilled in after casting, probably even the pin holes.
John

[Richard S]

John:

The problem was consistently found to involve alignment of the screw holes. My jeweler friend said he could have manually adjusted and fitted the pin holes on the back of the grips after casting. In retrospect, I suppose we might have tried filling in the holes of the original CF panels being used as molds and then drilling the holes to fit.  Even  that process, however, would have required precision drilling which my jeweler friend was reluctant to attempt. It would also have required a degree of polishing which would probably have eliminated the Rohrbaugh crest I was attempting to preserve in the final casting. (On the sterling grips he made for my NAA G-380 -- my EDC before obtaining my R9 in 2004, you can actually read the writing surrounding that company's eagle logo.)