I had been contemplating getting new grips for my 51 Conversion for a while. I wasn't too sure what I wanted to get.
Then one day I was looking through the Packing Iron book and seen a pair of grips on an original gun from the period and it had checkered ivory grips.
I really liked them but knowing how pricy ivory is I started thinking about alternatives. I contacted a grip maker and proposed the idea of doing a bone grip checkered like that one and then aged to look similar minus the shrinkage.
We decided on Giraffe Bone with the checkering.
After giving it some more thought I decided since the gun was like new that I did not want them aged and would just let them age naturally with the gun itself.
The grips did not turn out perfect. There were some difficulties in checkering the dense bone and he went through one set and ended up having to order a new set.
This is the end result as far as the grip goes. I have also included the photo that was in the packing iron book. I have some other plans for this one also so maybe those will come to light also.