Walnut Grip Panels for Ruger SP101 #010

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber. The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality. Upgrade your SP101 with my custom walnut panels. The price is $20.00. This price includes hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. SOLD!!

If you are interested in more walnut grip panels please click the link below: http://timsworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/05/walnut-sp101compact-grip-panels.html

Spalted Cherry Grip Panels for Ruger SP101 #006

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber. The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality. Upgrade your SP101 with my custom spalted cherry panels. The price is $20.00. This price includes hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. SOLD!

Spalted Cherry Grip Panels for Ruger SP101 #007

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber. The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality. Upgrade your SP101 with my custom spalted cherry panels. The price is $20.00. This price includes hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. SOLD!!

Aluminum Grip Panels for Ruger SP101

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber. The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality. Upgrade your SP101 with my custom aluminum panels. These panels are hand shapped and bead blasted. They were then finished with a coat of laquer for durability. The price is $30.00. This price includes hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. SOLD!!

Spalted Cherry Grip Panels for Ruger SP101

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber. The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality. Upgrade your SP101 with my custom spalted cherry panels. The price is $35.00 each. This price includes hardware and shipping.   SOLD !!

Purple Heart Grip Panels for Ruger SP101

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber. The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality. Upgrade your SP101 with my custom purple heart panels. The price is $20.00. This price includes hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. SOLD!!

Curly Oak Grip Panels for Ruger SP101

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber. The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality. Upgrade your SP101 with my custom curly oak panels. The price is $20.00.  This price includes hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. SOLD!

Lignum Vitae grip panels for Ruger SP101 #001

Ruger's SP101 is a great little gun that really packs a punch especially in .357 magnum caliber.  The factory rubber grip does a great job managing the recoil of magnum loads in such a small package but the black plastic panels lack personality.  Upgrade your SP101 with my custom Lignum Vitae panels.  The price is $30.00.  This price includes hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. SOLD!!

Ipe Grips for Ruger Bisley

This pair of grips is hand crafted out of ipe wood.  Ipe wood is very hard and dense and has a nice dark brown color with green and orange undertones.  Price is $65.00 including hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. (Add $10.00 for Ruger medallions installed) SOLD!!

Curly maple grips for Ruger Bisley #007

Very nice set of grips for the Ruger Bisley revolver. These grips are oversize for larger hands and hand sculpted for superior recoil management and handling characteristics. Price is $65.00 which includes shipping.    SOLD!

Curly maple grips for Ruger bisley #009

These grips are slighly different from most of the other grips I have posted. Most of my other grips have flat chamfers on the butt and at the top, these are rounded over. It's not a big difference but it does give these grips a unique character. Like most of my other grips these are made a bit larger than factory grips for a more hand filling fit and to help tame the recoil of magnum rounds. These grips are $75.00 with medallions and including screw and shipping. SOLD!!

Walnut Ruger Bisley grips #010

These grips are nothing fancy. I had some walnut kicking around and decided to see how it turned out. I think it would look pretty on a stainless or nickle gun. The price is $55.00 including hardware and shipping. Add $15.00 for international shipping. (add $10.00 for Ruger medallions installed) SOLD!!

Spalted Cherry Grips for Ruger Bisley

It took awhile but I finally finished another pair of spalted cherry grips.  Unfortunately, I am nearly out of spalted cherry in big enough pieces to make grips for the bisley.  I might be able to find some more but it will take awhile. The price is $65.00 including shipping. SOLD !!

Name Plate with Mother of Pearl inlay

I made this name plaque as a graduation gift for my brother. He recently graduated from Chiropractic school and is now a Doctor.  The plaque is made from chechen wood with hand cut aluminum letters.  The inlay of the vertebrae on the right side is cut from mother of pearl, brass and copper.  I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out.  Some of the letters are a little rougher than I realized, unfortunately, the flaws show up more after the parts are glued down and sanded flush.  But all-in-all not bad.

Scarab Beetle Plane

Here is a small plane I made some time ago.  I had this idea to make a plane in the shape of an Egyptian scarab beetle.  The plane is about 4 inches long and the body is walnut with an ebony wedge.  The 1 inch wide iron is from a small stanley trimming plane.  The mouth is a bit wide and the blade is a little flimsy but the plane will take a small shaving and is actually not bad for putting chamfers on edges.

Cribbage Board with Inlay

I made this cribbage board as a wedding present for a friend. The board is made from a piece of cherry that I have been hanging onto for a while. The inlay is a Celtic wedding knot. I wanted the inlay to be three different colors to highlight the design of the knot. The darkest part of the inlay is walnut. The reddish wood is lyptus and the light wood is olive. In one end of the board there is a spot for storing the pegs. The mechanism is quite simple and consists of a spring loaded oak rod with a hole drilled cross ways through the middle. A brass rod fits in a slot cut into the oak rod and limit the amount of travel in or out. I got quite an education from this project. If there is a next time, I will use a different kind of glue to glue the inlay to the base block. The clear epoxy I used didn't do me any favors hiding the inevitable gaps between the inlay and the base wood. Also the spring I got out of a used ink pen is a little under powered for the mechanism. I already have some better springs that I might use. Also, when I was done I wished the inlay and the holes for the cribbage pegs where more in harmony with each other and not just mashed together. Next time I'll take the placement of the holes into consideration.

Bloodwood and Lignum Vitae Shoulder Plane

I made this plane out of necessity,  I "needed" a shoulder plane and there was no way that I would be able to afford a new stanley 92 or Lie Nielson shoulder plane.  So I did the logical thing and made my own. The main body is made out of a piece of bloodwood with a really nice red color.

The sole of the plane is made out of lignum vitae for wear resistance and because this wood is naturally lubricating.  My first choice for the sole was brass chanel as I figured that would last about forever and look cool to boot but I couldn't find anyone selling the size I needed in a small enough quantity. I found some online that would have been perfect but the company had a $500 minimum order.  For that I could a couple of nice metal shoulder planes.  The wedge is made out of ebony.

The hardest part about making this plane was cutting the ramp for the blade.  It took for ever to get it flat and true.  After I got the ramp finished fitting the wedge was actually pretty straight forward.  I ended up putting a slight hollow on the side of the wedge that rests against the iron so that I would get downward pressure right at the end.  This was neccessary since the iron is fairly thin and tended to chatter during my trial cuts.  The iron started its life as a 3/4 spade bit.  I ground the tang down till the whole thing had a uniform thickness and then ground the end square and put an edge on it.

This shoulder plane workes quite well at triming the cheeks of tenons and cleaning up rabbets.  Because the iron is thin and bedded at a 45 degree angle it's not the best for end grain.  But that's ok because I have a low angle block plane for now and plans to get that stanley 92 or Lie Nielson in the future.

Gift giving is a bitter sweet experience for me. Needing a gift for a birthday or other Holiday gives me a great reason to make something new. Plus there is some urgency built in so I have a reasonable excuse for my fanatical devotion to the project and lamentable neglect of other responsibilities. "Sorry honey, I can't take out the garbage this has to be done by Friday". On the other hand giving away my projects is like giving away my children.

This music box was a gift for my niece. The box is made from spalted cherry and Lyptus wood with a mother of pearl, lignum vitae and blood wood inlay. I rescued the cherry from a compose heap and the rest of the materials had to be purchased. Oh, well you can't win them all. You can't tell from the picture but surrounding the heart shaped mirror is some really cool blue velvet.

The design for the inlay was made by my wife who is much more gifted with a pen than I am. The movement plays Greensleeves when wound, which must be the best tune for a music box since all makers of movements for music boxes have it as a option. I was really surprised by how much louder the sound is when the movement is mounted. It's probably twice as loud in the box as in you hand.

I dovetailed the corners of the box and the top and bottom panels float in grooves cut into the sides. When I look at the pictures of the box I think that maybe dovetails look out of place on this piece but at the time I really wanted to give them a try. I guess this way I don't have to worry about it falling apart.

This black powder pistol and case is a wedding present I made for my brother and his wife in 2000. This was my first real fine woodworking project. Before this I had done some whittling and carving and other small projects but this was the first time I made something really worth having and keeping. The case is made of Chechen wood that I got at a local dealer. The pieces were left-overs from a flooring project in some expensive kitchen.

The project took forever as I recall. I had a heck of a time getting the glass to fit in the slots I made for it. It took several trips to the hardware store and finally the purchase of my own glass cutter before I could be satisfied with the results. Probably the single longest part of the project was all of the hand sanding I did. I built the project in my fathers garage using mostly a table saw for all of the cutting and joinery. The table saw was decent but the blade didn't leave nice smooth surfaces. I think I literally spent weeks sanding and re-sanding all the little pieces. This was long before I discovered the magic of the cabinet scraper. Now the same size project would take a few hours to scrape the saw marks out and finish sand.

I originally wanted matching pistols, after all this was a wedding present. However, after I started it became clear that two pistols just wasn't going to happen. Even though I "only" assembled the pistol from a kit it still took quite a while to polish all the metal parts and fit them together. I took all the parts to a local gunsmith for bluing. I envisioned a really deep dark blue like I had seen on a really nice old S & W model 27 once. What I got instead is a jet black finish. I'm not really sure if the color comes from the steel the gun is made out of or the bluing process. It looks pretty good and it was certainly well done but it was not what I had in mind. I think that it is a good thing I gave this to my brother.

If I still had it (believe me I have had moments of givers remorse), I would be tempted to "fix" some of the little imperfections that couldn't be helped considering my skill and experience level and the fact that I absolutely wanted it done close to the wedding. And it's not like it's gone for ever I can visit almost when ever I want. Also, I have noticed that at some point I get sick of looking at a project and I need to be done even if there are a couple of flaws remaining. These pictures were taken a few weeks ago the last time I visited the gun ...I mean my brother and his family.