I am thinking of making a set of grips for my RH and was wondering what type of wood is the best to make grips out of.

Up to you. I've made em from walnut, rosewood, laminate, and maple. Migth even look good from linen micarta.

Blue/black look great with maple and light laminates, SS looks good with walnut and rosewood.

Larry
Tinkerer

basicly any hardwood, I've even used oak and even with the uneven grain they feel nice. Like one of the guys on here said it's like built in checkering.

Thanks for the info. I'm going to try walnut for my first try.

Where can you get blanks to make handgun grips?

I planned on starting from scrach with just a peice of wood. I do make alot of custom musky crankbaits by hand and figured I would give it a try making my own custom grips.

it seems like I've seen some in the Dixie gunworks catalog I believe but your alot further ahead to just get a piece of hardwood and either trace out the outline of an existing grip or make a cardboard template of the grip frame and go from there. Generally the panels on a single action Ruger are just a hair over 1/2" at the thickest point so I normally try to find boards roughly that thick or a little thicker and then cut out a rectangle just larger than the form I traced and then I use a scroll or bandsaw to cut the rough taper from top to bottom and then using the scroll saw I cut out the form. I use a 4" upright belt sander to true both sides and to get it close to final thickness and then using a combination of files, a 1" vertical belt sander and hand sanding I get to final shape. I bought the special bit for the escutcheons and the escutcheons themselves from Brownells. Hope that is helpful.

I found this website on ask.com. They have ready made grips or you can buy it in a kit form. http://www.klamathriverwoodworks.com, they have all kinds of exotic wood available.

Thanks for the help. I am going to start on my first pair tomarrow. I have some walnut I bought from the local lumber yard. I am going to make a template by eyeing up the frame and making it a little bigger. Then I will shape it until I am happy with it.

you might try making a cardboard template of the fram too.

Oh, I'd really like to see some micarta grips.

You can buy blocks of it on Ebay and make some. They polish up nice and look great sand blasted also.

Larry
Tinkerer