Quote from James Warner on September 16, 2021, 4:31 pm

The Pentax KP has a removable grip, and Pentax made three official grips for it. Mostly different sizes, but each size also has a different feel to accommodate what size lenses you may use with it and your preferred shooting style. It's a cool idea. But what if you made your own...

Here's my project so far in making my own new grip for the KP. Or a couple grips. We'll see.

A custom set of KPs were made by a company in Japan that have wooden grips. These were sold exclusively on Japan, and are now starting to show up on eBay for $1,000. A little too much for just wanting a nice grip. It's a little unclear how they did this. Did they use the official mount that the other grips have, or did they make their own to fit under the wooden grip?

When thinking about making my own wooden grip I thought about how to attach it for a strong, reliable, and weather resistant fit.

I took one of the KP grips apart, and it appears to be a hard plastic adhered somehow to the rubber grip that does not detach easily. The only part that comes off is a little metal frame that holds the tension spring for the screw. Not very useful.

I thought about using the smallest grip size and simply adhering my wooden grip on top of it. Advantages are it would retain weather resistance well since it is the same seal Pentax made. It would have a strong fit. Rubber should adhere pretty well to wood. Disadvantage is I use up a small grip, and these things sell for like $30...

Next I thought about 3D printing a strong mount piece and seeing if I could attach my wooden grip to that. A quick search online pulled up a few KP grip 3d models, so that saves me the time from having to model it myself. I would simply have to modify the model to include only the frame I want. I went ahead and printed the full thing to see how it fit, and it's actually pretty nice. I printed using a PLA with sawdust in it, so it looks a little like wood. From a distance, haha. But maybe if I painted it.

So that's my update so far. I'll keep updating this thread as I go on, but it'll probably take me a month or more since this is a side-side-side project right now.

I cut a piece of wood from a branch that fell last year off my oak tree and I stored in the garage. Took the bark off and it looks to be a great size to start carving.

Next I'll print just the frame for the grip, then cut and carve the wood and see where it goes from here...