Smooth. My hands are too soft and have no callouses - someone with a real job might like checkered grips.

I do have a set of smooth cocobolo grips for my Bisley in 45 colt - they work our very well. I just thought I might try some checkered, but your point about LPI is well-taken. I like to shoot bare-handed - its a "feel" thing. Long-live the Bisley grip frame - genius I say!

This is a good question. But you should be more concerned with what type or size of checkering (20 lpi, 16 lpi, etc...)

Lett Grips offers extremely nice checkering that has to be about 20 lines per inch or 22 lines per inch. These are just right!

Eagle has good checkering but is more like 16 lines per inch and is too much for my hands with heavy loads!! It eats my hands with out gloves.

Seeing as how you have the Bisley grip frame I would suggest avoid checkering all together.

I have found you do not need checkering on a Bisley. My 45 Bisley shoots much better without Checkering. The superbalckhawkk however needs a litlle checkering to be perfect with heavy 44's.


I will try to upload a picture of my Lett grips to Hunt101 to post here.

I'm looking to put some nice wood grips on a 41 and 44 mag. Can't decide if I want to try a pair of checkered grips or not. Checkering would seem to offer a better grip, especially in adverse hunting conditions, but may make range time a bit les pleasant. Anyone have any thoughts. TIA.

P.S. I'll stop asking so many questions pretty soon...

9.3 - I think you can have the best of both worlds if you go with rubber grips. My .41 Smith has a set of Hogue rubber grips. They are "checkered" but since everything is rubber, they don't dig into your hand and try to twist off your palms under heavy recoil.

No doubt the checkered grips illustrated by the other poster are GOOD LOOKING and I suspect he's right about getting the small checkering. If you want to go wood, I think I'd take his tip.

Only disadvantage to rubber grips is they aren't very sexy. But they are plenty snug, secure, positive and don't scratch. Also cheaper.