How is this pistol grip stippling done?

[Russel Nash]

Hi all,

Yeah, like this:
http://www.vaabensalg.dk/forside-pistol.jpg

Just wondering how that is done.

Thanks!

[Cap'n Morgan]

I had a friend who did a grip like that using a pointed punch - no hammer, just elbow grease if I remember correctly. It took him forever, but the result looked good. I believe you could speed up the process by bundling half a dozen nails or similar pointed objects.

[crossdraw]

Or, use a Dremel tool.

[fecmech]

Back in high school shop(50's) we did that stuff on aluminum using a prick punch. You hold the punch lightly in your hand to guide it and someone else uses a piece of hardwood or small rawhide hammer and taps the back of the punch as you move it around on the work piece. I did the front and back strap of a 1911 many years ago with my wife doing the tapping and it looked great. Play around on some scrap to get the hang of it. Different shaped points on the punch will give you different patterns and uniform tapping gives you evenness to the pattern.

[Casting Timmy]

I think I remember someone telling me that certain plastics you can also do with a pointy soldering iron tip.

I've never done stippling but was told that you want to do it in the right direction so make sure the stippling gives more grip and doesn't make the gun even harder to hold as it's now slippery than before. This was from a guy that did glocks for the local competitive shooters that I meet one night when I tried out bowling pin shooting. He would not stipple directly into the surface, but instead did it at an angle.

Hopefully this makes sense from my posting.

[MtGun44]

Plastics with a soldering iron, make you tip the shape you want.

On wood, I'd GUESS that a rotary bit with the appropriate shape and touched randomly
with some significant skill.

Bill

[Any Cal.]

You grind a punch so it has somewhat random facets leading to the point, then with one hand rapidly "tink,tink,tink" with a tiny hammer, while the other hand randomly moves the punch over a small area. As the area gets covered to your satisfaction, start drifting onto a new little spot. It isn't hard once you try it, and makes for a nice design.

[theperfessor]

I'm betting they are using the equivalent of a pneumatically powered needle scaler with appropriate shaped tips on the needles. These are designed to knock off rust, scale, frog eyes from welding, etc. but with a little control they could be used for stippling on wood or some plastics with no problem. Wouldn't take long either, as opposed to one ding at a time.

[Frank46]

Sears used to sell a small engraving tool that had a small carbide tip. You could set the depth depending on what you were trying to mark. Check their tool catalog as it may be still available. Frank

[Moonie]

I know people that have used the soldering iron trick on AR pistol grips and polymer magazines to great effect.

[Russel Nash]

I'm betting they are using the equivalent of a pneumatically powered needle scaler with appropriate shaped tips on the needles. These are designed to knock off rust, scale, frog eyes from welding, etc. but with a little control they could be used for stippling on wood or some plastics with no problem. Wouldn't take long either, as opposed to one ding at a time.

I think you might be on to something with that needle scaler idea....if maybe it just had one needle.

But I gotta ask, what are "frog eyes" when you're welding?

[Russel Nash]

I did some more googling and found this thread:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/thread/1133003993/1133099694/Anyone+here+know+how+to+stipple+a+hand+grip-..Would+like+to+try+it

You were right about the craftsman engraver.

awesome!

[peterthevet]

I reckon the perfessor is spot on.A needle scaler is the first thing that popped into my head.............this is a production grip and I think, therefore that some tool that would achieve the desired result ASAP would be the way that they would go.Of course I could be totally wrong.

Often looking at the finished result/product and rtying to envisiage how that was achieved/made brings up a multitude of results that are all correct in some way.....a bit like reverse engineering I suppose.Good thread!!

[KCSO]

Air operated stippling hammer, I happen to have one. You plug it in adjust the speed and put in the tip you want and go to town. If I remember right Gravemeister also has a tool for doing that.

[theperfessor]

Russel, frog eyes are the little balls of filler metal that come from arc welding and that end up stuck around the weld joint in places you don't want them. It is weld spatter, and they make sprays that you can use to keep them from sticking.

The hollow ball shape gives then their name.

[Longwood]

The first time I saw it,, it had been done with a small finish nail set.
Someone used to sell punch sets for doing it by hand with different looks.

[Russel Nash]

Russel, frog eyes are the little balls of filler metal that come from arc welding and that end up stuck around the weld joint in places you don't want them. It is weld spatter, and they make sprays that you can use to keep them from sticking.

The hollow ball shape gives then their name.

okay, thanks!

I just never heard welding splatter called frog eyes before. That does make sense.

I have heard/read that PAM cooking spray applied around the weld keeps the splatter from sticking.

The Mig welder I have now is pretty sweet, especially with the Argon/CO2 mix tank. No splatter, and no slag to chip off.

[Longwood]

I have one of the Chicago Pneumatic air scribes that is way more powerful than the electric ones. As in way way more powerful.
I would think the electric ones would be pretty anemic on hard stuff.
I have seen real good deals on ebay.
They are a 'low use' tool but they sure come in handy now and then.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Actually Brownells sells a punch to do this type of stippling. It is in amongst the checkering tools in their catalog. it is operated by a small hammer.

Keith. Frog eyes? I never heard that one. we call them "dingleberrys"

Randy

[theperfessor]

Around here dingleberries have a much, uh... earthier connotation. But I can see that name applied to weld spatter also. I use anti spatter spray inside my gas shields/nozzles on my MIG gun. Some combos of gas/flux/wire type are worse than others at making spatter. Almost anything oily will keep spatter from sticking.

We now return you to your original thread...

[Russel Nash]

I bought a Dremel version of that Sears Craftsman Engraver. The tip came with a sharp point.

I tried that at first but it just little circular dimples or dots.

Then I ground the tip to a small rectangular shape.

In a way, that worked well. I just twisted the tool each time it hit the wood so I could achieve a more random look.

I think this is the look I am going for:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2435/3945851509_5141f6798a_o.png

I see some texture similar to that on the target pistols:

http://www.jnb.com/~funggrip/images/main.image.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/xapc29.jpg

[10-x]

Target grips on the OP pistol look to be blasted by some grit type agent with tape covering the other areas?

[MBTcustom]

I'm not dissing your work Russ. Darn good looking grips you got there, but you didn't quite get the same look as the original example you posted.
I'm watching this thread pretty closely, because I have wondered the same thing. I'm about as good as anybody at putting dings in wood (fixed that problem with my custom gun socks) but I can't figure how they get that finish.
Like you, I have tinkered with it for a minute or two four or five years ago, but I could never get that awesome, clean, rough texture that those guns have. I tried sand-blasting and that just exposed the grain of the wood (worth tinkering with if you are curious) and I tried the electric marking pencil (you know the one that sounds like a POed bumble bee with glass packs on his mufflers?) That was a flop, can't see how you could get good results with that unless you slow it down and give it a longer stroke.
I never tried a punch with a hammer though. That might be the way to git-er-done.

[Wal']

Maybe some kind of acid burn into the timber................just a thought.

[flounderman]

in the leather tooling tools there is a seeder that stamps the seeds in the flowers and it would work and there is a stippling tool for the stippled background between the leaves and flowers. both are used by tapping them with a leather mallet. I would learn the process by hand before I tried anything electric or air driven. prevention is a lot easier than damage control.

[waksupi]

Any one looked on YouTube?

[Russel Nash]

Thanks again guys for all the replies.

I did try looking on YouTube. I'm just on my iPhone so the best result I got back was by sargesgrips. But he doesn't go into detail on how he does it. Tons and tons of videos of guys taking a hot sodering iron to the plastic grips on their Glocks, XD's, or M&P's .

The same thing happens with google searches too... All these guys with their plastic pistols.

[blaser.306]

Peterson pipes do a finnish very simmilar to this on pieces of briar that have visual flaws! Wait for it , they are bead blasted!

[I'll Make Mine]

Making a stipple as in the photographs with a bead blaster isn't a matter of blasting evenly and hoping for a stipple; it's a matter of randomly changing the amount of time you blast any given location compared to others, so the beads knock off or compact the wood more or less to produce the random texture.

Mind you, if you see this on a production gun, it's probably pressed, just like cheap checkering; some master die maker does the job on a steel mold, once, and they then produce a few thousand identical pieces to go on their pistols. This also accounts for the fact that if you bead blast a stipple, you'll get random spheroidal indentations, while the stippled grips are frequently random spheroidal protrusions: they're stamped 3D negatives of the original stipple.

[Mooseman]

We used a shot Peener to produce the rounded indents...Like a sand or bead blaster that used shot like small steel balls instead...but you had to work fast and move fast to achieve the proper look and finish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_peening

Rich

[W.R.Buchanan]

Did you remove your video? That what it says when you click the link?

Randy

[fecmech]

This took about 3 minutes( yeah I know it's not even) but it gives you an idea of a simple prick punch and hammer. My wife was tapping the punch while I moved it around on the work. With a little bit of side lighting you can easily even things out. Use a metal or plastic material to get a perfect edge mask.

[Russel Nash]

Did you remove your video? That what it says when you click the link?

Randy

Yea, i took them all down.

[Old Shooter]

I have not done it in years, but hold the punch in your hand with upward pressure so that when you hit it it sort of bounces.
With a little practice it looks very professional.
I think I got the idea from an old gunsmithing book.

[Russel Nash]

I have a piece of mahogany around so I chucked this into my dremel rotary tool:

http://mdm.boschwebservices.com/files/r19747v15.jpg

It is Dremel #192 steel ball nosed cutter, and got these results:

http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt112/gryphon1994/0E6014FD-DF0E-4274-8DFE-ECBEC63F0CF9-505-000002679B4E5494.jpg

Then I flipped the block over and used the engraver cutter, #107:

http://media.toolking.com/catalog/product/cache/1/image/275x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/0/107.jpg

Which yielded these results:

http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt112/gryphon1994/4966FC74-4367-4F3D-A955-759E128283E2-505-00000267D8DDE80C.jpg

Then I thought that didn't look quite random enough, so I chucked the bigger #192 back into the dremel and got this:
http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt112/gryphon1994/5E12B43C-8232-4231-B59D-38FFF1EC69A1-505-0000026807C12B09.jpg

So I am thinking that is the way to do it, small egraver bit first, then a deft touch with the larger round ball second.

The method I used was strictly straight in or straight down and then straight back up or out, holding the dremel perpendicular to the wood. When I pushed the larger ball in too far it would chatter. That was my clue to let up and move to another spot.

[Cap'n Morgan]

It doesn't look half bad!

I had a Tikka sporter stock where the stippling clearly was done with a rotary tool - Some sort of serrated cylindrical cutter, maybe 3/8 long and perhaps 1/4 in diameter. It was obviously from the pattern that this tool could cover a large area fast.

[MBTcustom]

Its still not exactly like the one in your OP, but it looks good! You might be onto something there.

[Russel Nash]

I went to YouTube and did another search:

I found this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rb-eVE1Eig&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Which is one big infomercial for this engraving/rotary tool called the SCM 400XS .

In the background of some of the carvings there appears to be some stippling, but they don't really show how that's done.

I did try looking for videos at SCM's website, but I didn't see any.

[JHeath]

Had I a bead-blaster, I'd experiment by shooting it at a piece of wood through mesh or perforated plate. I'm not suggesting that's how the factory does it (I am sure the guys above have the correct answer to that), but suspect the results might be interesting or useful.

[Russel Nash]

I caught an episode of The Woodsmith Shop on public TV on Saturday. They were going over workbench designs. One was a Shaker style with a leg vise. The leg part had stippling done to it.

try this link:

http://www.woodsmithshop.com/download/601/shaker-style-workbench.pdf

On my iPhone, their stippling process is described on page 13 of 22.

if that doesn't come up, then try this link:

http://www.woodsmithshop.com/episodes/downloads/

Click on Episide 601: workbench basics. Then click on Shaker bench.

You will probably have to enter your email address, but once you do it will take it right to the plans.

Sooooo.... It looks like I was on the right path using two different ball shaped bits chucked in a dremel.
:mrgreen:

[Doc Highwall]

The last time I did it I just used a nail punch clamped with a small pair of vise grips and hammered away.

Grip the gun the way you hold it and trace around your hand for the pattern you want.
You can even put tape on the grip to trace the pattern you want.

Then start by using the nail set in one hand and with a small hammer do the outside of your pattern about 1/8" to 1/4" in from the edge.

When this is complete, clamp the nail set in the vise grips and just continue until you fill the whole pattern.

You can do a light indenting all over followed by a heavier impact in local areas.

Remember the wood will be slightly smaller as you are crushing the wood fibers