Colorful laminated J-frame boot grips - options?

[Owen Meany]

Dear friends,

I'm looking to dress up one or more of my J-frames with some eye-catching boot grips. Though I currently have an assortment of exotic wood grips from Eagle, Craig Spegel and Hogue on my Js, I'd like to get a pair or two made from some kind of colorful laminate or other material, something flashier and more colorful than any natural wood would be.

I should add that I already have Hogue's Lamo Camo and like it very much. But I want to explore others as well, if there are any out there.

As an example of what I'm talking about, I once saw a photo of a Smith & Wesson 627PC wearing finger-grooved, square-butt grips made from a laminate of two colors: bright blue and silver/gray. I wish I could provide a link to the thread on the S & W Forum, but the picture's now deleted. Suffice it to say, those grips looked exquisite and were a perfect example of the kind of material (though they weren't for a J-frame) that I'm hoping to find somewhere. I'm sure there are purists here who would close their eyes in horror, but to each her own . I desperately hope that someone will recognize these grips from my description.

So, is anybody familiar with manufacturers of brightly (or bright compared to normal woods) colored grips for J-frames?

 

[Iggy]

Take a look at Badger Grips.

http://www.badgercustomgrips.com/

or perhaps Ahrends.

http://ahrendsgripsusa.com/

 

[Owen Meany]

Thank you, Iggy!

Though Badger's current offerings are somewhat tame compared to the kind of color schemes that I'm looking for, I have this hunch that he used to make grips out of brighter materials. In my travels on the Internet, I'll occasionally run across pictures of J-frame boot grips that I think may be old Badgers.

So far I've seen three or four of these boot grips, and, though they were colored differently from each other (and in some cases there were variations in the finger groove placement and other minor differences, though they all ended flush with the bottom of the frame), the overall styling was very similar, leading me to conclude that they were likely made by the same outfit.

One color scheme was like an enlivened version of Hogue's Lamo Camo. The laminate colors (especially the green) were very bright and distinct - some would say gaudy.

Another appeared to be made from a laminate of chartreuse (kind of lemony light green) and brown.

As far as Ahrends goes, I looked at their materials page and was disappointed to see that the more colorful Dymondwoods are only available for 1911 grips. I wonder why on earth this is? Three of the Dymondwoods (Cocobolo, Silver-Black and Rosewood) are available for both 1911s and revolvers. But the other Dymondwoods, the really eye-catching ones, are only for 1911s.

I think I'll contact them and ask.

 

[rdrancher]

S&W used to carry quite a few of the colors on their website (probably Badgers.) I've seen a few of them at local gun shows still in the package.

There were some cool red/wood grained laminates on a j-frame in a snubnose in Combat Tactics last summer that I crave.

Here's a link to what S&W has now.

http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&pageSize=10&beginIndex=0&resultType=2&searchTerm=grips&searchTermCaseSensitive=no&searchTermOperator=LIKE&markForDelete=0

You may find what you like here...

http://www.inventorscolony.com/collinscraftgrips/results.php?Q=Smith

Good luck in your search.

rd

 

[Owen Meany]

Thank you, rd! That charcoal/ruby S&W grip looks pretty snappy, I may have to give that a try.

 

[35Rem]

http://www.shop.dandjgunrepair.com/main.sc

 

[rdrancher]

Thank you, rd! That charcoal/ruby S&W grip looks pretty snappy, I may have to give that a try.

You are welcome.

Great minds think alike. Those are as close to the set in the Combat Tactics photo as I've seen.

rd