Is this the text you are referring to from his site?
"Here is a set of very dark AKM furniture, early 60's Russian laminates for the stamped receiver AKM rifle. The pistol grip is a very dark maroon color bakelite. Notice the buttstock has a bottom sling swivel location (the sling swivel is missing). Also, the bottom odf the buttstock has a slightly rounded edge. Original Russian finishes are not completely smooth, the grain of the brush sanded wood, and the miniature brush strokes of the finishers tools, will show in the top coat. "
It's not clear to me whether he is saying that the particular grip in the photo is dark or that all early grips are dark.
Further down the page he states:
"Earlier grips had less raised checkering blocks and felt smoother to the hand."
I was looking for an early bakelite grip for an early AKM project rifle and got into a somewhat lengthy discussion with Tantal. Really wasn't a discussion, he was schooling me. :smile:
I have bakelite grips that are marked 1-1 & 1-2. They look identical to others that I have that are marked 50/2 & 48/2. I thought that the mold numbers gave an indication of relative age. I sent them to Tantal and he said my low mold number grips were just newer grips with low mold numbers.
From what I gathered, the mold numbers aren't a positive indicator of age, but can be used as general indication of age sometimes, but not always.
The early Russian bakelite grip that I got from him has a low grip number (1-2 that happens to be backwards) but it looks slightly different from the newer grips. The color isn't particularly dark and Tantal never mentioned color as a defining characteristic. The checkering isn't as deep on the newer grips that I have and doesn't cover quite as large an area the newer grips. The finish isn't as shiny as the newer grips either.
I thought Red*Dawn posted that the bakelite grips started on AKMs in 1963.
I'd be interested to see a photo of your grip and I will try to post a photo of the one Tantal sold to me as an early grip.
Mike#6