Paintball

[RealtorTommy]

Ok this is my informal review of MaD's first run of wood grips.



Intro from MaD....

Woods:
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Red sides with the white in the middle are made from padauk (the red wood) and holly (white)

Thin white stripes on R and L with the burl in the middle are made from redwood (top and bottom) and maple (middle layer)

The solid set is redwood burl.

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Finishes:
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Padauk and holly grips are finished with 4-5 coats of a tung oil.

The redwood and maple grips were as well but received about 8 coats as redwood is softer and sucked it up like no tomorrow.

The solid redwood burl ones are first treated (several times) with wood hardener. The finish on them is ~2 coats of diamondcoat poly. I wanted a good, solid finish but didn't want to do more than 2 coats of poly as it can get thick and crack and also makes them feel more like plastic.

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Process:
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I do everything by hand. I use a template set of grips and mark the cut and holes. Drill out the holes, hand cut the grips... then to the sanders for forming and finishing. Then a bit of TLC and hand sanding and off for about 1/2 dozen coats of finish over the next few days.

Some pics by Tommy....
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Fit:

I took the grips outside in the sunlight to get a real good look.

The wood joinery is excellent. No gaps or fillers seen between the pieces of joined wood. No excess glue showing on the front or back sides.

These are matched sets. Which means they mirror each other in shape, size, thickness and hole location. Nice to see it correctly done.

Three sets were sent to me and they consisted of two sets thin style and one set of a thicker more rounder grip or one set was thicker. Those who carry firearms know that the thin grip is mostly used for carry and the rounder is used for shooting.
I prefer the rounder style but that has nothing to do with the review.
On some grip frames the grips just cover the openings on the frame.

Finish:

Now to the down and dirty. I will say I am impressed with the quailty of the grips but the finish is lacking for me. I will add I didn't pay for these grips and really didn't know the prices until I seen the second run prices go up. For the price you are getting an excellent deal. I would like to see a different finish on them or maybe some sanding/buffing between coats and would be willing to pay for this to be done. The satin finish on the joined wood grips left the wood grain showing or "felt". I can tell that many coats of finish was put on but still left imperfections. The burl set was the best in finish and only would take a light buffing or wet sand to finish it off.

Conclusion:

I would buy a set in a heart beat. The fit and finish is great. Yes some improvement is always encouraged. I see that MaD is grading his grips now and setting the prices accordingly. You can't beat that. MaD's skill level is very high up on the ladder.
Pat yourself on the back as this is a job well done...
As far as rating..well it's to the eye of the beholder. Each grip is to it's ownself and I would rate all between 7 to 8.5 with the burl rating the highest, with only the finish needing some attention. I have talked to MaD about this and I believe he's working on it.
I did pass the grips around to players at two different fields to get their comments.

Suggestion:

For paintball. I would like to see a wider grip that fills the frame and alittle more rounder.

Maybe some interest in CMM 86* grips out there?

Thanks for taking your time to read this. I hope MaD follows up in here.

[MaD]

Hey, I appreciate the feedback. I did get some of your prior suggestions as well as those from a few other folks. That's really what the "first run" was about. I did also do ratings on those except for your sets which bypassed any sort of selling process.

Strangely, I feel a bit different on the finish. The straight burl grips were poly which is a somewhat easy and forgiving finish to apply and very durable. I personally hate taking a beautiful piece of wood and coating it with a thick layer of "plastic". That's primarily why I leaned toward harder woods and more natural finishes. But yeah... some of the "run one" finishes could have had bit more TLC. I think your ratings one the ones you have are pretty close to what I would rate them. Finishes in run 2 are quite a bit nicer. The ratings I put on them reflect the quality of the finish and I believe they're pretty accurate.

There were some other deviations in run 1 such as slight variances in size, thickness, hole alignment...etc. For "run 2" I did finalize some exact templates and even though they're still all hand cut and formed, they are all almost exact replicas to their model grips. ("standard" 45 or rounded 45).

While I obviously made a bunch of grips and bought a bit of exotic woods (run 2) to make some more, I really never intended this to be a long term "product". Honestly, spending my free time making cookie cutter copies of grips for $3 / hour isn't a business I plan to be in long term. 45 grips are probably moving way down my project list as there are just so many people making them (not just here but in general).

Future plans, depending on the feedback and interest... is that I might do some more sheridans and I also plan on custom fitting some oddball designs on my own guns. If I do I'll probably spit out a few extras and see if folks want them. I also want to do this because as you said, the normal 45 panels commonly used on paintball guns leave a lot to be desired... and in most cases don't even fit that well.