Did Keyes make the grips for Singer 45's? The grips on Singers look the same like the Keyes grips which don't have the escutcheon rings (I think they were the earlier Keyes grips) seen on Ithica, US&S, and Remingten Rand. Were the grips on Singers any different?

Keyes Fibre made the grips for the Singer pistols. The Singer grips differ from the early Keyes used by Ithaca, Remington Rand and US&S in that they are hollowback. The grips used by the others have reinforcing ribs. Both grips do not have the ring around the screw holes. Singer grips also do not have the K inside the 5-pointed star as the other Keyes grips do.

I see, so they the Singer keyes grips are alike except for having the hollow backs. So just say if someone hollowed out the back sides for the early keyes grips used by Ithaca, Rand, US&S they will look just like Singer's, right?

No, there's apparently a subtle difference in the checkering that an experienced collector should be able to notice. But it's like faking anything, it doesn't have to be an identical match to fool the inexperienced. Fortunately most people with the money to afford a genuine Singer are also smart enough to do the research first.

Really a lot of interest in Singer grips on several of the forums as of late. I would imagine that a lot of interesting dialog is just waiting to come out, wouldn't you think?
I know people that have bought the altered Keyes grips for nice Singers that did not have original grips. I really don't think these people considered them fakes as they knew the grips weren't original when they bought them. Maybe if the discussion gets deep enough we can ask these people if they consider the altered grips fakes or reproductions in light of the fact that no effort was used by the seller to represent the grips as being original. If pictures of the Singer with altered grips are posted, does the owner owe it to the public to identify the grips as "not original" in case the pistol is later sold? Are all the reproduction diamond checkered 1911 style grips considered fakes, or does it boil down to how they are represented when they are installed on a pistol?
Reproduction or fake sort of blends into each other at times depending on the owners intent, but we will probably get a clearer picture when we see which direction the discussion is going after a few basic facts are brought out.

dsk can you explain what is this difference in checkering looks like? Is it the number of rows that is different. Then I would think an experienced collector could tell the difference by looking just at the checkering patterns, right?

I don't know if Dana's got a Singer handy or not to look at. But I just compared the checkering on Singer grips and the early no-ring Keyes grips. If there is a difference, it is subtle enough I don't see it. Both seem to have the same number of rows and style of checkering (about 31).
I only looked at one set of each grips, and I assume there may have been different molds used, and theoretically I suppose there could be some small difference in some of them. I just don't see it on the ones I looked at.
Based on that, I'd disagree it would be easy to tell the difference in the grips.

If you follow the posts on the other forum Joel Babcock had this to say:

"The early keyes had re-enforcing ribs in the back. Singer were hollowback. Just check up the mag well and see if the ribs are there or not. Then, on to the fact that there are some folk making hollow back from the old keyes to look like Singer grips. Then when you really want to check close, the checkering is slightly different."

Scott, if you can't see any difference in the checkering I won't argue.

Dana: I would not argue about something Joel may have seen either. He was clearly looking at different sets of grips than I looked at. Maybe there is a difference on the ones he looked at.