doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Unusual treatment for wooden butt

One thing is for sure; It wasn't as difficult, nor take as long a time to accomplish as it might appear. British gunmakers didn't do much experimenting with stockmaking nor did they fuss around trying to impress anyone.
Chances are it was a relatively simple process taken from another trade such as cabinetry.

The verticle lines are cut w/ standard checkering tools. Don't go to full depth, just let the tool shave the sides of the taper off a bit. A 60* tool works better than a 90* as you get line depth w/o tapering the rectangle sides too much.
Then cut the horizontal wider spaced lines. A flat bottom tool w/ straight sides,,like that used for real English style flat top checkering.
A wider width to the line is helpful in the final step to form the 'beads'.

Right now you have tiny rectangles neatly stacked. The long sides of which are ever so slightly tapered. That taper is just helpful removal of extra wood that not needed.

To form the 'beads',,the entire area is gone over with anything from a carding wheel, to fine steel wool, to fine steel or even brass wire brushes. Abrasive paper doesn't work too well here as it just glides over the tops generally on these tightly packed blocks.
The idea is to burnish and wear the corners, edges and ends of the rectangles down and round them over leaving the appearance of a bead instead.
End grain stands up well on the right piece of wood and straight grain, Open grain and fancy grain wood usually give poor results.

Then to a loose sewn cloth or other mat'l wheel at slooow speed so as not to burn the wood. Burnish the wood and wearing down the edges is what you're after,,no heavy handed buffing to cause burning.
It can be done by hand alone if you have the time & like the work-out.
Burlap, sisil (sp), cloth, jute,soft leather, any number of natural materials can be used to wear and burnish the surface. The wheel just makes quicker work of it and it's one place where polishing & rounding the edges off something is the goal.


If you go too far with your efforts to bring out the desired effect, you can recut the lines carefully and blend the area back in. But as with checkering, it can show if not done carefully.

AFAIK, it is a wood carvers technique and can be found more often in the cabinet trade. It was a wood carver that showed it to me. His main trade was decoys and decorative bird carvings but he also did furniture, large picture frames and the like. A few odd checkering toolson his bench got the conversation headed into the direction of guns , gunstocks & checkering. He didn't do any gun work but then showed me a couple applications he did use them for and this was one.

Thats what I know of it. Probably other ways to accomplish the same look,,there usually is.
This one is pretty fast and ends up nice and uniform in appearance w/the right piece of wood..

That is to me a very attractive butt treatment & it doesn't seem to show dents , nicks & mistreatment as badly as a checkered butt does.

I'm not sure how it's accomplished but I would bet a few $ it's not done by pressing or stamping & that Kutter is close to the correct track as to how it's done.

I'd go with the roll on guess also. Just based on a very rough count, if that were cut, it looks fifty-plus lines per inch. Those small ridges might stand up to the compression of a roll tool, I'd think with a cutter there would be more signs of chip out.

Whoever did it had some nerves! Those tiny beads would be saw toothed with lots of chip outs if I were attempting it.

Cut lines horizontal and used a roll stamp to finish perhaps. But I think it was cut in both directions first and a roll stamp used to finish. The horizontal lines look deeper to me. Perhaps they guided the roll stamp. Do the edges look compressed like the 70's Remington pressed checkering? I think the lines were cut because they line up exactly in the vertical direction. If just roll applied the die would have to start exactly the same point in every line to keep them lined up like they were cut. It is a interesting and functional decoration of the butt stock.

KY Jon, the horizontal lines are much deeper than the vertical and they appear to be square and flat bottomed. That is, there is no visible taper to them. The vertical lines can't be half the depth of the other.