Party Leader Walther PPK Grip Restore
My Dilemma
Hey guys, today I have a party leader grip that has a bad crack in it, what should I do?
Let's start with this one
Okay, I feel like I'm playing a shell game here. But let's talk about this one first, I had a rusty gun come in with some pitting and a party leader grip on it. It was hard to tell right away because it's kind of dulled down, it is cracked, but it is original. See how dirty it is inside. Down here, you can see it's kind of rusted, where that insert is. And normally, this is a party leader grip that I have on a good gun. And you can see the difference. It's got a nice shine on it. It's nice and clean. So obviously, we would like to have this grip look like this grip.
Here's the problem
The problem is, it's really hard to repair these and not have it show. In fact, that shows signs of glue, somebody tried to repair it. And here's an example of just the standard PPK grip. And one of the most common places that it gets cracked is right here in the back. And you can kind of see, I'm going to say this is a little bit amateurish but better than I can do, I have not tried to fix any of these grips. I'm not that handy. I did show you in on how to help with the warping.
Using bakelite to repair
Basically, I'm told, you can take the Bakelite, take a broken-up piece, grind it up, so it's powdered, mix it with epoxy, and fill it in. I don't know why this turned white. But this is just an example of a very amateurish fix. And it's certainly worth it, it's better than what I could do. But if you have a party leader, I don't want to screw it up with that.
Not faking grip, only repairing them
So I do know of a guy who does a lot of work with bakelite. He's going to try to fix this for us. So what I want to do is send this out and see what he can do, see what it looks like when he comes back. Now I already know that it's not going to look perfect and I'm always a little cautious about doing this because people were going to say, oh, Tom's faking grips. It's basically I'm trying to repair a broken grip. And of course, when we sell it, we will say it's been repaired.
Repairing does not destroy the history
Whenever I see a repaired grip, I can always tell especially if you point it out, and you say right there, it's been repaired, I think that's perfectly fine. We're not destroying history by doing that repair. So stay tuned with me, this is going to take a couple of weeks. I'm going to send this out and see if I can get it back looking more like this. Let's show the other side just so you get the whole look. That's the party leader's grip.
Is the repair worth it?
Now by the way, if some of you have badly broken grips, and you say, can you get this repaired, it's not worth it. A professional job on something like this could be anywhere from $300 - $500. Well, if you're talking about a $8000 - $10,000 grip, it's worth it to spend 500 bucks to get it repaired. But when you have a grip like this, you're not going to spend $300 - $500, because you can just go out and buy a new one for $300 - $400. So it's not worth it to professionally repair these, this amateur repair is fine. And there's a bunch of guys out there that can do that. In this case, a $500 repair on a $10,000 grip is well worth it. Let's see what happens.
Can you spot the repair?
Okay, so this is back and which one was repaired? We'll do our shell game again. This was the broken grip and this was the one I used as an example. If we take a look at the video, let's see this little line right here is the most distinct part. There it is again. I gave that as an example of a near-perfect grip. And then this was my broken grip. And we're going to take a closer look. But obviously, he did a phenomenal job.
Time for a close-up
Let's take a close-up of the repaired grip. Now I mentioned early on that when I sell this, obviously, I did a video on it. But if I ever have a repaired grip, I'll say it's been repaired right there. Because we know from the video that crack went right through the wing, all the way down almost to the 04:18 discussion. And here, you don't see anything here. You could definitely tell that there has been a repair but to me, it's well worth it. First of all, if I was buying this grip, I would probably pay about half because nobody wants a broken grip. If you only have one party leader, you can afford one party leader in your life, you don't want one that looks like that. So that cuts the price in about half. But for most of you, you're looking at this right now and you say that doesn't bother me a bit and it doesn't bother me a bit either. Let's get to the other side. There's the back strap. There was nothing wrong with it before I don't think and then there's the other side.
Two beautiful PPK Grips
So now we have two beautiful party leader PPK grips. I wonder what this is going to look like on a gun. Let's check it out. Okay, here it is. This is the repaired party leader grip right through there, and this is on a gun. Now, this actually doesn't work as a party leader, I just happen to have it and it was a beautiful gun. So I actually wouldn't put this on here, unless somebody really wanted me to. But the 776 serial number dates back, that's probably about 1932. And the grip was made in probably 1938. So this grip actually doesn't belong on this gun. Although some people would theorize that you could buy the grip and put it on any gun you want. I just thought this is a beautiful gun. And some of you who are looking at this right now, even if you're married, you're thinking to yourself, I've fallen in love all over again. Because that's exactly how I feel.
Did you like the tutorial?
I hoped you liked this little tutorial. And again, I want to make it perfectly clear that if somebody gets a grip repaired, I think it's really important that you disclose where the repair is. But for me, we're restoring history. Just like documents; there are people who take tattered documents and restore them as part of history. I personally am fine with that but of course, it has to be disclosed.
One final look
Hey, thanks for watching. Here's the outro just take another look. Thanks for watching. Make sure you like and subscribe to our channel because there's always something new to learn on Legacy Collectibles YouTube.