Custom Canik Rival
A short time ago, my wife and I attended the IV8888 shoot down in Georgia. One of the vendor booths set up was Century Arms. Of course they had a nice selection of Canik pistols among other firearms they either manufacture or import. My wife at the time was only a few weeks past major shoulder surgery on her left arm. She is right handed, so at least she still had use of her good arm. She is also a huge Canik fan. She’s owned a TP9SF pistol in FDE for quite a few years now. I wanted to see her reaction on the Canik Rival pistol since it ws their newest model and had quite a number of physical as well as appearance changes when compared to her TP9SF. She was shooting everything that day one handed and when she took some shots with the new Canik Rival, she was hitting a steel plate half way across the range with very little ease.
After that event was over and with a very special birthday coming up in December, I saw an opportunity to do something special for her. I went over to Brownells and they happened to have Canik Rival pistols in black, in stock. I quickly ordered one up to my local FFL. Upon picking it up, I marveled at it’s beauty, but wanted it to be extra special for her. My wife’s favorite color is purple, but a solid purple pistol might be too much. I reached out to a company, fairly local to me, Weapon Works. I contracted them to do a black Multicam cerekote pattern with some purple accents added in. They quoted me 8 weeks to complete the project. About 4-5 week after I dropped it off, they were finished. Wow, what a quick turn around. M wife’s birthday was still 4-5 weeks away. So I took some really nice photos and put together a before/after video for my YouTube channel, then tucked it away until the big day.
Finally the day had come…it had been so hard keeping this pistol under wraps for such a long amount of time. I wrapped the pistol up in some foam, then placed it into the case. Put the case into a box and gift wrapped it. When she went to open the box, she saw that it was a pistol case and undoubtedly saw the Canik logo on the box. Once she pulled the foam off of the pistol…her first response was priceless… “Oh sh**” she exclaimed when she first put her eyes onto her new pistol. She was so surprised at what it looked like. I told her it was a one of a kind…no 2 Canik Rival pistols have that particular finish on it. I’m hoping that this doesn’t deter her from enjoying it and shooting it at the range. She is a very good shot…much better than I am at shooting handguns.
A huge thanks to my good friends over at Brownells… always great selection of parts, accessories and firearms like this Canik Rival. Hats off to the folks over at Weapon Works as well…I’m looking forward to having them do some more work for me in the future. If you’re looking for custom cerekote work or builder sets, definitely check them out.
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