Grips for TOZ 35M Morini, Rink, or Vitarbo?

[John Ciccone]

I've purchased a TOZ 35M. I need a medium left hand grip for it. Of the 3 different brands of grip, which one woud you recommend, and WHY?

My intitial thouoght is that the Vitarbo may be good because it is made from an outline of my hand, which should help save having to do a lot of trimming.

Rink also offers a fore-end with an adjustable weight, which can be made in either the in-line format or in the V formation such as the new Hammerli pistol.

BUT I'm interested in your experience and opinions, please share them. Thank you
John Ciccone

[sparky]

Rink offers a lot of variety if you're willing to measure your hand. I was very impressed with the one I saw on a Pardini. If you have short fingers (as I do) they even offer with a grip rotated 7 degrees about its axis to allow shorter fingers to reach the trigger easier. Narrower or thicker front to back and convex or flat palm area are two other options that are nice.
If you like a rougher/sharper stippling in the palm area (as I do), Rink also seems the best for it. Check out their website:

http://www.formgriffe.de/english/index.htm

Based on what I've seen of Rink, Morini, and Vitarbo, my next grips will be coming from Rink.

[Fred Mannis]

I have a set of Vitarbo grips on my IZH46. The grips are well made, but did require some trimming in spite of the hand drawing I sent. Main draw back is the lack of an adjustable palm shelf which allows the grip to be adjusted as your hand size changes with changes in temperature and humidty

[Mark Briggs]

John,

I'll make a statement here that might ruffle more than a few feathers. If you're going to shoot a Toz, or any other free pistol for that matter, I have to think that Cesare Morini's grips represent the first generation of ortho grips for pistols. They are very good, but their design is 20 years old. In my way of thinking, Rink grips represent the second generation of grip-making. I'll try not to be too long-winded in describing why I feel this to be the case.

It's been a while since I shot the Toz very much. My last one came to me with a highly modified factory grip. It was almost as good as a Morini, but wasn't adjustable. I'm one of those people whose hands change size quite dramatically with changes in temperature or blood pressure. As a result, I ended up buying a new Morini adjustable grip for the Toz. This made a huge improvement in my shooting, but something still wasn't right. You see, as your hand changes dimensions, it changes dimension in width (measured across the face of your hand, from the pinky side to the thumb side). The Morini-style adjustable palmshelf accomodates this kind of dimensional change quite readily. The real hitch is that ones hand also changes thickness (dimension measured between the palm and the back of the hand). The Morini adjustable palmshelf does absolutely nothing to compensate for this change. In fact, we tend to compensate for this by raising the palm shelf even further to get what feels like the same amount of "squeeze" on our hands. The net result is that our whole hand is shifted upward on the grip, completely altering our hand position relative to the boreline or axis of recoil. This has the potential to produce quite a significant shift in point of impact of our shots.

Now enter the Rink grip. Because the lower portion of the wrap-around is adjustable, it allows one to adjust for changes in hand thickness completely independantly from changes in hand width. The result is a very noticeable improvement in ones ability to produce consistant point of impact. Add to this the benefit of being able to adjust wrap-around and palmshelf positions using jackscrews instead of the Morini "trial and error and hope it holds" method and you now have two very significant innovations which I believe justify denoting the Rink grip as a "second generation" design.

One other important point to note... With Morini FP grips, you have your choice of small, medium and large sizes. That's about it. With Rink you can specify other details like throat thickness, offset angle and one or two I probably don't even know about. This makes for a grip much better adapted to the individual shooter.

The Toz currently riding around in my gunbox wears a Rink grip, and I have to say that I admire it so much that I've adapted my Morini grip on the CM84 to provide the same adjustments as the Rink.

So now I've said my piece, and I'm sure there are many TargetTalkers who will disagree with my opinion - that's ok as it's the interchange of ideas formed by varying points of view which make this discussion forum as interesting and useful as it is. I hope these few tidbits of information help you make an informed decision. Happy FP shooting!

[Guest]

Where did you get your TOZ from?
How much did you pay for it?

[tseuG]

Mark, I think you are right.
Cesare brought a new way of thinking to pistolgrips, especially grips for air and free pistols. We will homor him for that.

His then radical grip comfigurations appeared in the low 80s, and has become kind of a standard for ortho grips. Even the conservative folks at FWB eventually offered a Morini grip for the M34, and abandoned the ill-fitting FWB style grips!
Cesares design has obviously changed some during this decades too.
And we have seen other grip manufacturers come and pass, like Bowler and others.

I have seen and handled guns with Rink grips, but I do not own any yet. I realized that these grips probably was even better configurated for human hands than the Morini grips.

I was not aware of the "semicustom" options for personal grip configuration for the FPs that you are describing. But thanks to your post, I will make efforts in the near future to have one made to fit my hand.

Rgds,
tseuG

[lwy.todd.lu]

Does anyone know where to buy morini grip for TOZ? Looking for small right handed. Thanks.