"Dear Chris, God
made the perfect wood so you could make the perfect grips. Simply Amazing!!!!!
Thank You." Scott M.
Chris in the workshop
Chris Whisler The Grip Maker
Each pair of grips are made by hand in our workshop by professional Grip Maker D. Chris Whisler. Chris has over 25 year experience in custom furniture making and woodworking. During the 1990's Chris and his wife Peggy owned and operated a custom furniture business called Chisel and Plane Workshop and Gallery. He also worked as a master woodworker at a grand piano restoration shop for many years. Chris strives to produce the best single action handgun grips possible for the collector and cowboy single action competitor. To hand produce a set of single action grips is a labor intensive process, no CNC or other fancy modern machines here. Chris is a perfectionist (nice way of saying artistic nut) and takes great pride in his work. His parents started teaching him about firearms and firearm safety at a very young age. At the age of five his parents held the gun for him and let Chris pull the trigger of a .22 Colt Trooper. From that time on, he has been hooked on shooting. Chris has been a single action revolver enthusiast his entire life. He realizes the importance of a good pair of grips and how they should be made. Single action grips need to feel and fit correctly in the hand as well as be appealing to the eye. The grips are made from an array of woods and materials including many types of exotic woods. Each set of custom fitted and finished grips is hand signed on the back of the grip panel. Chris' motto has always been that nothing leaves the shop unless he would be willing to own it himself.
Munden Recoil Control Grips
The Grips
All of our grips are custom orders and are made to the customer's specifications. Every pair of grips are meticulously handmade by Chris. At Chisel and Plane Workshop, handmade craftsmanship really does mean handmade. There are no CNC milling machines or any other type of high tech, mass production technology here. It can take Chris 20 hours to make one set of grips from start to finish. The finishing process alone takes a week. On average, Chris works six days a week in the shop and completes only two to three sets of custom grips per week. Chris specializes in single action revolver grips but can also make knife handles and derringer grips to match your SA custom grips.
Types of Grips
- Munden Recoil Control Grips - Bob Munden's special panel design to control recoil. Bob Munden designed these grips and used them in competition and exhibition shooting. Bob taught Chris the secretes to making the grips for himself and Bob's customers. Munden Recoil Control Grips have a raised area (pad) on top of the grip panels. When holding the gun, the third (middle) finger rests under the raised pads. This locks your hand in position on the grips and prevents the hand from moving up the backstrap while shooting, which is a common problem with single actions. The raised pads, along with the curved shape and proper fit of the Munden Recoil Control Grips, dramatically reduces the negative effects caused from recoil. Munden grips have a nice, round shape to fill the shooter's hand, they are not flat sided. Chris also makes the grips to properly fit the shooter's hand using a hand tracing. Don't be fooled by design imitations of these grip panels that are being manufactured by mass production, "one-size-fits-all" grip makers as they are not the same as the original Munden design.
- Traditional Style - Profile of original factory single action grips.
- Custom - Custom profile specified by customer.
Proper Hand to Grip Sizing
Our custom grips, including the Munden Recoil Control Grips can be made to fit any adult size hand. Please see our Custom Size Grips page for more information on custom size grips and how to make a hand tracings.
Curved Not Flat
Many of the "modern" single action grip panels currently on the market are flatter and have less of a curved profile. Part of the reason is because these grip panels are too thin to begin with. We believe that this is a poor grip design, no matter what kind of shooting you do, there is no benefit from having a flat sided pair of SA grips that are too thin to fit the shooter's hand properly. If you hold your hand out and curl your fingers like you would when shooting a revolver, you will see that the palm of your hand is not flat, instead it is curved (cupped) shaped. Therefore, the grip panels need to have a nice round shape so that they can fill the palm of your hand for a good fit. All of our grips (unless otherwise specified by the customer) have rounded, curved profiles including the Munden Recoil Control grips.
Accounting For Grip Frame Thickness Variations
Grip frame (backstrap and trigger guard) thickness varies from one firearm manufacture and/or model to another. For each custom pair of Munden Recoil Control Grips, Chris calculates this difference and adds or subtracts that measurement into the thickness for the size grips being made. This means that if you have the same size grip panels on both a Colt SAA and a Ruger Blackhawk, both guns will have the same overall grip width dimensions. One revolver's grips will not feel wider than the other because of the deference in grip frame thickness and will fit the hand the same.
Beveled, Flat or Extended Bottoms
Unless otherwise noted or specified in a custom order, all of our SA grip panels are beveled (angled) at the bottom. If you would prefer flat or extended, please specify at time of order.
Have a wide hand? Extended grips are also available.
Photo below shows the three different styles of bottoms as seen if looking at the back of the grips. Not drawn to any specifications, for demonstration purpose only.
One or Two Piece Grips
Chris can make one piece style grips with no screw for Colt and Colt clones or two piece panel grips with a screw. Your choice.
Fitted and Finished
Fitted means that the grips have been final fitted to your frame and are ready to be installed. For the benefit of our customers and to ensure customer satisfaction, Chris will only final fit grip panels to Colt and Colt clones if the customer provides their firearm (backstrap, trigger guard and cylinder frame) for fitting. This is due to tolerance variations in grip frames. Some Ruger single actions, can be fitted by sending just the Ruger grip frame and not the entire gun but it is best to send the entire gun if possible.
Oversized Grip Kit
Oversized means the grips are not final fitted to a grip frame. Grip Kits are made to order. The grips will come with grip panel ferrules installed and grip screw but are not finished or fitted. Please see our Grip Kit page for more information.
Wood
Only properly dried wood that has been carefully selected for the making of grips is used. Some of the wood in our inventory has been stored in our heated shops for more than fifteen years. You can pick a set of grip blanks from our Wood Grip Blanks pages or just tell Chris what kind of wood you want the grips made from at time of order and he will choose the wood blanks for you.
Below is a list of some popular woods that Chris makes grips from. If you don't see the wood you are interested in, contact us.
American Black Walnut - Plain and figured
American Holly - Simulates Ivory very well
Claro Walnut - Plain and figured
Cherry - Plain and Curly
English Walnut
Maple - Plain, Birdseye, Curly, Burl and Spalted
Mesquite
Checkering and Carving
Custom hand checkering and carving is available upon request. Please contact Chris for prices and information.
Inlay
Custom inlay work can be applied to the grips.
Ranger Stars Card Suits
Bookmatching
Grips can be made from wood that has been bookmatched. Bookmatching is when a single board is re-sawn on it's edge to make two (or more) boards. The two halves are then separated like opening a book. This process creates two boards with grain patterns that mirror each other. Bookmatched boards are most often seen on table tops, flat panels and other flat surfaces. When shaping a pair of grips, some of the bookmatching mirrored effect will disappear as the wood is removed. Even if the two grip panels might not look mirrored when finished, it will still be evident that the wood was bookmatched and also ensures that the color and grain will match on both grip panels.
Bookmatched Walnut
Quartersawn Wood
Quarter sawing is a method of sawing logs to make boards. This method produces more waste and is therefore not as common as flat or plain-sawing. It does however produce more stable wood with straighter grain lines and beautiful ray and fleck figure.
Hardware
Hardware such as medallions, escutcheons (panel ferrules) and grip screws are new factory hardware.
