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(II) Limit one (1) entry per household multiple entries will disqualify entrants. Deployed military should use stateside address. Mail-in entries accepted send postcards (no envelopes) to: GUNS Magazine, GOM February 2022, P.O. All entries must be received by giveaway end date. There’s nothing better than an obsession satisfied! I told Bill to pick out the wood and make me some beautiful one-piece style grips to go with it. It has some of the best color-case-hardening I’ve seen on an SAA along with lovely deep blue. As this is being written, I’m preparing to send him a Colt Frontier Six-Shooter made in 2008. They feel good, fit well and best of all, have made me happy. 38 WCF was sent down to him and returned with grips exactly as I had envisioned. Among the many services he offers for single-action shooters is making one-piece style grips. Luckily, I dallied because just recently I discovered a fellow named Bill Fuchs doing business as Spring Creek Armory in Ten Sleep, Wyo. I said to myself, “One of these days I’m going to have a set of straight-grained walnut grips put on this Colt.” After all, a Colt of such age and wear wouldn’t look correct with grips of fancy wood. With its 7½” barrel, the Colt turned out to be a fine shooter but the grips not only didn’t suit the revolver’s era, but their fit to grip frame was atrocious. 38 WCF (.38-40) wearing a set of modern so-called Colt hard rubber grips. In 2019 I acquired a 1926 vintage Colt SAA. Aftermarket grip makers have to be exceptionally careful in fitting grip panels lest they get into the metal and leave a major boo-boo.Īnd this brings us to my most recent set of one-piece style Colt SAA grips. In other words the final polishing is done with the wood fitted so the end result is a perfect fit. One reason after-market grip makers might shy away from Colt SAAs is this - at the factory, grips are fitted before the final polishing of the grip frame. With my history of wood butchery I prevailed on another stock maker to fit them for me. Another time the nice folks at Eagle Grips sent me a set of panels made of rosewood. The wood was fancy walnut salvaged from rifle stocks broken in shipment.
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The first finally came in the early ’80s - a talented stock maker for Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing, the producer of those beautifully crafted Sharps Model 1874 recreations, made some for me. My one-piece-style grips have been made by a variety of craftsmen. My favorite wood is usually fancy walnut but rosewood is beautiful also. Right now I have one-piece Colt SAA grips made of water buffalo horn, elephant ivory, bison thigh bone, stag antler, hard rubber and various types of wood. Even better I’ve never seen a glued set separate. However, to simplify matters grip makers today produce each side’s panel and then glue them together with a spacer. The Italian Colt replica grips I’ve examined are made the same way. In the early days of Colt revolvers, the grips were actually cut from a block of wood and inlet so the grip frame fit around it. At the end of the day, I’d ruined valuable vintage grips from a sample Colt by dropping them on concrete, and my block of wood looked like a chainsaw maniac had been turned loose on it. Therefore, I decided to try my hand at it. He was a lot friendlier but just didn’t want to mess with making one-piece style single action grips. On another trip, I tried a fellow in California. Like most things you can’t have, my desire for one-piece Colt SAA grips became a near-obsession.
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Now I’ve had over 2,000 published and still have never mentioned the company’s name! At the time I’d had a mere three articles published in firearms periodicals. When I explained why I walked through their door, the greeter said, “Sure, we made those for Skeeter but we won’t do it for you.” With the dash of cold water, I left. So, in the spring of 1973 I made a lengthy detour on my travels to visit the outfit. Skeeter mentioned the company in Idaho made his. The difference was Skeeter’s were beautiful. Of course I was aware of one-piece grips as they were on virtually every replica Colt revolver coming from Italy. It showed an exquisite set of one-piece grips on a Colt SAA. One that has influenced me unto this day came out in the late ’60s or early ’70s. Like so many readers of my age I grew up on Skeeter Skelton’s great articles.