How I added silicone carbide to my 2011 grip

[nheiny13]

Just wanted to share my experience with adding silicone carbide to by 2011 grip. It was pretty easy and I think it came out looking and feeling really good.
This is one of my favorite guns to shoot and I even shoot it in minor in LTD with it at my local USPSA matches because its so much fun. If anyone is looking to have a gun built, get a hold of Glenn Rasch at Lone Star Innovations and he can take care of you. He's a great guy to deal with and builds some of the best guns

1. I ground down all the checkering on the grip with a dremel. I ground it until all of the lines from the checkering were gone or just barely visible. Once the lines were gone, I stopped.
2. I got a small block of wood with sandpaper and went over the grip to get rid of any high spots to make it more level. (Probably didn't need to do this step).
3. I taped off a few sections of the grip and mainspring housing area and underneath the trigger guard to get a clean line, but other places I was just careful where I applied the adhesive.
4. I used standard JB Weld as the adhesive and a plastic knife to apply it. I did it in my garage in January and the JB Weld was pretty thick so I hit it with a blow dryer to make it easier to work with and get it smoother. When it was cold, the JB Weld would have different spread marks (It looked like spreading frosting on a cake and not very even). I would recommend doing it somewhere slightly warm... just not a cold garage in January.
5. Once it was coated evenly with JB Weld I sprinkled with grip with silicone carbide (and lots of it). I caught the excess in a pan to use again. It doesn't take much to coat a grip but you want to have a lot to pour over it to make sure it's completely coated.
6. I waited about 24 hours and removed the tape, then waited another day before reinstalling it to my gun.

[v1911]

Looks great!

[Chills1994]

JB Weld, as in:

The reason I ask is because I have plenty of 3M epoxy and hardener from when I was fiddling around with making 1911 grips:

That was just shredded paper epoxied together, pressed into a channel iron mould overnight, cut to shape on the tablesaw, and rounded on the stationary disc sander. As far as grip panels go, they were tough as nails...pretty amazing actually for just shredded paper.

I might just try making generic 1911 grip panels out of poplar, and applying the silicon carbide grit as per your instructions above. Maybe the JB Weld stuff isn't as "hot" as 3M epoxy. The 3M stuff would fill the house with fumes...bleh.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Chills1994

[msg73]

Looks nice. What grit silicone carbide did you use?

[Dr Mitch]

Looks good. What grit did you use? How much of it crumbles off when you first handle it? I assume there must be a tiny percentage that barely adheres and comes off during the first handling after application.

[Climbhard]

Looks great!

[Darqusoull13]

Followed a similar procedure to the post above to do my M&P grip. Thank you very much for the motivation to stop wondering and just do it! I ended up using a 60 grit silicon carbide that I ordered from Edge Pro on Amazon. They even included a hand written thank you note with the order, nice touch. I would definitely use 60 grit again, the grip turned out perfect. Not too aggressive like a PT aggressive cheese grater, more like a finer, grippier 3M deck tape. I didn't have much silicon carbide come off at the end, just a couple of sparkles during the first dry fire session, none after that. My procedure, similar to the above, is outlined below:

• Cleaned disassembled grip with 90% isopropanol.
• Used painter's tape to outline my grip area.
• Cleaned the exposed grip area with IPA again.
• Spread thin layer of standard JB Weld on the grip using an old gift card. I aimed for a layer just thick enough to not see the grip under the JB Weld.
• Poured silicon carbide over the grip until I could not see the JB Weld layer.
• Let the grip sit for 4 h undisturbed, then peeled off painter's tape. I used a hobby knife to clean any edges at this point which were not perfectly straight.
• Let the grip sit for 48 h undisturbed.
• Used a tooth brush to lightly brush off any non-adherent silicon carbide and remove silicon carbide that had gotten into small crevices.

[nheiny13]

I don't know what grit it wss that I used. I had a polishing kit that had 3 different compounds/grits. I used the one labeled aggressive