doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Laser Cut Checkering

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.