It's been mentioned here that the RBL and some other guns have laser cut checkering. Is this checkering just straight cut lines with square tops or are they using a stair step cut to get more of a V shaped look? A laser also cuts deeper in soft grain than in hard; is that noticeable?

Thanks!

When I was there with Builder, back in May, Tony had one of the guys checker a RBL forend while we were there. I didn't see a stairstep type of burn. It looked like, and I think Tony said, it burned on an angle by rotating the part to the diamond angle. It looked fairly uniform in depth.

here's a pic of the machine. The blue part in the middle is a forend (RBL) with blue masking tape on it. According to Tony, the machine burns more uniformly with this tape on it. The laser head(s) is in the middle at the top of the picture (black thing). There is another laser head on the left upper corner of the pic. This is a two position machine. I believe it's a 4 axis machine; the head moves x,y, and z (l/r, fore/aft, and up/down. and the part rotates.

So..... this is a gun that you wouldn't say was hand made?

Hand fitted and wood finish is about the only hand work I can recall.

Lasers do what they do by burning, not cutting. Guns are not hand made, they are made by very sophisticated, wonderful machines, with the least amount of hand work possible. "Hand made guns" are the same load of BS as "low recoil" powder.

I'd say the RBL is the state of the art of what Eli Whitney started when he sold guns to the military that had interchangable parts.

As for hand made, the saying goes "all hand made, no two alike"

Thanks, Chuck. As they say: "A picture's worth a thousand words". I have some experience with a fairly simple laser engraver which does have a rotating fixture, but it can only be programmed for cylindrical shapes. This machine was obviously designed for it's intended purpose.

With all that hi tech machinery and programming, why aren't they using a more sophisticated resist/mask instead of what appears to be 3M's blue painter's tape? With the volume of RBL's they should be building, it would seem that some sort of preformed sleeve would speed the process and provide more uniformity in the laser burning, because you would not have to worry about gaps or overlaps in the tape wrapping.

I just looked at my RBL's chekering under a magnifing glass. The point's are angled and most come to a sharp point with few flat topped ones and appear to be similar to conventional cut chekering. The biggest difference I see is there is some darkness of burnt wood and you can smell it. The borders are very straight lined with no over-run and angled similar to the points. The depth at which it is cut seems to be much deeper than hand cut.

Chuck mentioned the dark background in an earlier thread on the RBL. I now see what he was talking about even though I don't think mine is as dark as the one he saw.

The one thing I am thinking about on my RBL is to have the chekering hand chased to clean out the darkness left by the lazer.

dogon have at it !
My RBL had the black burnt look checkering Chuck mentioned.Couldn't stand it anymore,out came the Dembarts.

Here you can see an area with junk between the diamonds on the right, looked more like beads than diamonds.


The forend after a few passes.Made a nice weekend project and greatly improved appearance. Can't see it in the pic, but also allows the wood grain to show through. :>) Ragards Bob

Certainly looks like an improvement. How many LPI cutter did you use?

Just used a single 60 degree blade and chased out the pattern. The diamonds are there, just hidden by the burnt residue.Takes very little pressure with the cutter to remove the junk, very simple to do, nothing like cutting a new pattern. Bob

Weatherby used this on their Mk Vs made in the USA and it looks horrible. Esp if the wood has any kind of fancy grain.

Why on earth are they doing this? A professional checkering job costs $350. I can understand engraving, that costs about $1k or more on a shotgun for full coverage, English scroll.

If I had an RBL on order, I would get it UNCHECKERED and then do it myself, or have a professional checker it.

I think they took the automation thing a bit too far.

I tried to get mine without engraving or checkering. In short in the white. Told a year ago that they would not sell it to me in that state. Muttered something about metal needs hardening and liability issues. Might have been that they were not interested in thinking outside the box. I wanted to have one engraved in a pattern of my choice and with a custom fitted stock. Might wait until they sell off the last ones in kit form to do it. Ha. Ha.

Mr. Legg,
You are flat out wrong. I have toured the Bruchet and Granger shops in St. Etienne France. The are NO machines in the Granger shop, just three guys with well organized benches of hand tools, mostly files. The Bruchets have a few machines that see regular use, a lathe with a fixture that drills a through bolt hole in the stock, a saw that is used to set LOP for guns with checkered butts, and an internal barrel profiler that is perhaps 75-80 years old. The rest of the work is by hand, with the hand scraping easily seen on the ways and breech. The parts do not interchange from gun to gun. Quite a few of the hand tools these guys use, they built themselves-I have a photo of the float that Paul Bruchet built from a section of truck spring, that is used to rough shape the monobloc to the contour of the barrels. It makes rapid work of this chore, but, it is still rapid hand work.
There are a few companies that hand build guns left in the world. Not many, but that is not the same as none.
Best,
Ted

Ted,
Have you ever seen anyone make a barrel w/o a machine? I don't know what your definition of a machine is, but I'd count even a brace and bit as a machine and I bet the Granger boys don't use one of those to bore those barrels.

Brent

Whittling a reciever from a block of steel with only hand powered tools can certainly be done. The question is; why would someone do it today. Economics? Certainly not using machines at all doesn't increase the quality. And hand filing a hingepin round to fit in a hand drilled hole in the reciever seems to be a difficult, if not a method of questionable quality, way of doing a job like that since the industrial revolution.

Now if these guys have little hand powered lathes and jigboring machines, that aint exactly purely "handmade".