I got this old shotgun a few months ago and I want to make it a pistol-grip shotgun. The grip is old and I have to make one. I decided to use some 16ga. steel plate to make some sturdy grips, since I dont know how the wood will hold up to the recoil, this should make it very sturdy. I will update as I progress.

I started with the plate and after using some paper to trace the edges of where the grip had to fit I ended up with a pattern. I cut some grooves to make sure I can hang on to the grip, also used an angle similar to the grip that is currently part of the butt-stock. The little beaver-tail thing towards the top of the backstrap serves a purpose. I noticed that while shooting it the grip has a slight tendency to slide back into my hand, with the 12ga. target shells, I experienced some "discomfort" as the recoil caused the break lever to slide back and painfully into my hand, so to alleviate that problem, I added a small beaver-tail.


Taking that pattern to a guy who graciously cut the patter out with a cut-off wheel. He just roughed it in which was all I asked, great member and he refused to accept payment. Thankfully he was also able to tack the pieces together since I had to make 2 identical plates. After it was cut and tacked, here is what I had to work with.


I spent about 3 hours at a bench grinder making sure everything fit well and made sure that I worked my way around to keep the pieces together as long as I could. I got everything ground down and am now at the point where I can begin making the wooden pieces to fill in the gap between the plates, and to make the side grips out of wood. Not going to be too picky about the type of wood, as I have plans to duracoat, and them try my hand at rubberizing the grips, but the plates were the part that had me worried and they turned out great.


After having the grips cut out, I realized that I make them too thick, so I did work them down a little bit to create a slightly slimmer grip. I ended up removing about 3/8" to the backstraps of each grip. I was also required to cut a notch in one of the grips (right) to allow function of the break lever internal parts. Here are the grip plates in their current state. I will be working with the wood this evening or tomorrow and hopefully will update later this weekend.


I will post updates as I finish things and I will try to be brief and descriptive, but if you have any specific questions, I will be glad to help out in any way that I can. Just send me a PM

Hey man, that's pretty interesting. It would never occur to me to do that.

Please post pics of the whole gun (including "before" pics if you have them) when you're done. I'd love to see how it turns out!

Due to the shape of the gun, I had to create a spacer between the metal plates, This is the spacer I created, rough cut. I made sure it was a little bit bigger than the grip plates above, that gives me room to contour the shape of the grip, I also had to cut out where the gun will actuall fit into this piece. The down-side: The wood available is either 1/2" or 3/4", unfortunately this piece needs to be .56", which is kind of in-between. I tried the 1/2" and its just too thin. I would have to add something between the grips to make it fit, and the 3/4" is too big, I need to cut, or sand off almost 1/4" to make it fit. If anyone has a table mounted belt sander in the Lacey/Olympia are let me know, I would really like to borrow it, either that or a band-saw. Thanks

When I am done I will post before and after pics, I refinished this shotgun a few months ago, but its time for a change, plus I found another great condition single shot Ward's Texas Ranger model for cheap. I am a sucker for those single shot, break action shotguns, under $50.