Re: Glock grip stippling
Gunsmiths and home do-it-yourselfers have been stippling metal guns before the polymers came on the market. People have used all manner of implements to do it. Brownells sells "stippling punches" that can be purchased but a lot of guys just make their own and harden the tip. You can make assorted shapes on the punch to change the type of texture you make. Basically just put a magwell filler in the stripped frame, mask the sides and surrounding areas to help prevent marring from errant strikes, clamp it in a vise, place your punch, tap it with a hammer, move the tip and repeat for a couple of hours. If you are concerned with missed strikes you can flank the sides of the frontstrap with metal plates. If you are careful it's not a concern but everyone has a different comfort level. Varying tip size & shape and strength of the hammer strike will change the size, style, appearance and aggressiveness of the stippling. Clark Custom (IIRC) used to offer a type of "tiger something" stippling where the punch is angled towards the trigger guard and the metal is displaced upwards creating a raised texture and down with move of a spaced pattern to created raisedmetal that really bites into the hand.
It's a good idea to practice this on some scrap round stock to check your texture, look, etc. before you go to town on your gun. A lot of Browing Hi Powers were stippled versus checkered because many Hi Power front straps were not thick enough to cut checkering without making the front strap too thin at the depths of the checkering. You can also do a grip texturing on metal frames called "matting" that is far less aggressive than stippling & checkering. It is done by placing a "bastard mill" file on the metal to be textured and giving it a good whack with a hammer or mallet. Overlapping, cross-hatching, etc. will change the pattern/feel of the texturing.