Checkering old military stocks

That looks like a beautifully done job to me. As a perfectionist, myself, I understand the tendency to be hypercritical of your own work. Too my untrained eye, it looks great.

Looks very nice to me.

Checkering must require an incredible amount of patience and focus. I have neither. Your work looks very good.

Looks a helluva lot better than my attempts at checkering. Well done sir!

Don't know much about checkering other than you do darn good work.

Do know a little about Swedish Mausers and general woodworking though and the Swedes used Walnut and Beech for their Mausers (during WWI, other woods were used but your stock does not appear to be elm, maple, or birch). I suspect that it is walnut but it could be French walnut or even American black walnut if WWI vintage. There is a chance that the stock could be stained beech though but I doubt it given the depth of the stain. Have no idea how beech would affect checkering. Bing image searches or google image searches can show you the difference in the two regarding wood grain which you can compare with the whole stock. There is normally a reddish tint to beech that I don't see normally in walnut absent stain (although do have a blondish atypical walnut stock on a 1917 U.S. Rifle).

Now, certain petrochemicals can affect and soften the surface of any wood--something derived from natural plant sources like BLO or Tung Oil actually strengthens the wood's surface while certain synthetic petro oil based stains or finishes can soften it. If your sporter stock was treated with some of the commonly used hardware store stuff in the past, then that could be softening the wood's surface enough to cause what you are seeing.

There is other thing about Scandinavian military stocks, a THR poster named DeanDallas or something like that, swore that the Finns and maybe the Swedes used pine tar in their finishes for military stocks. He refinished stocks using that process and turned out some very pretty ones. GunnyUSMC is in this exchange and still is a member who has extensive experience in wood stocks. You might try sending him a shoutout or PM. If pine tar was used at one time, I am not sure what effect that pine tar would have on the wood surface and subsequent checkering.

Here is one of the old threads talking about pine tar finishes and few other things, https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/the-original-pine-tar-finish.756161/

Thats looks great. I've never checkered but have read threads about it. IIRC to stop tearing out the wood when pointing you should put a thin coat of finish on and let it dry. Then finish up. Please double check my suggestion and post some pics when your finished.

Alaskan Ironworker, that is an excellent job of checkering. I have done a few revolver grips, and can tell you that patience is the watchword here. You've done well in not taking too deep a cut. One trick I use to prevent splintering:

I buy shellac in the aerosol can. It is different from standard shellac in that it is de-waxed. Seal-Coat is also a de-waxed shellac. I apply a fairly heavy coat and let it dry for a half hour. The shellac wicks into the grain and stabilizes the wood so that the fibers get cut cleanly. Shellac has a low solids content, so you won't get a film buildup. You can cut all the way to sharp points. Any shellac left on the wood is easily removed using denatured alcohol.

I'd like to see some pix of the finished job.

I wanna see the finished product, so I'm subscribing, 'cause that looks fantastic. Can't tell you anything about wood though.

Nice!!!

Looks very nice. I have to say that, for me, as much as I like and appreciate checkering, bad or mediocre checkering is way worse than no checkering.

Wow ! Great job! I did metal checkering for 21 years and I always thought working with wood was far harder. Many more variables with wood. Is it properly dried, is it hardwood or soft, is it open grained or close grained. ? What about knots or hard spots? On and on. With metal it is easy. Start your lines and go for it.

Again, that looks great to me.

I worked for Les Baer for 21 years and all of my checkering experiences involved checkering the convex surfaces of 1911 pistols. The front strap of the frame and trigger guards. I checkered the gun in the picture next to my name.

I have never tried to checker a concave surface. Not sure how it could be done.

To metal checker you need a checkering file (Sold by Brownell's and others) and a 60 degree triangular single point needle file. The checkering files come in four common sizes, 20 lines per inch, 25,30 and 40. I have seen 75 LPI files but I never used one. These files are expensive...$75 for one back in 2014. The process is rather long and time consuming so I wont try to detail it here. Just Google "metal checkering on pistols" and you will see tons of videos on how to do.

I consider metal checkering much easier to do than wood checkering for one main reason; I never broke off a point on one of my diamonds. (I should say "pyramids". Metal checkering usually involves lines that run 90 degrees to each other, leaving nice little four sided pyramids.

Anyhoo I don't think metal checkering was all that difficult. Wood checkering scares me.

Alaskan Ironworker said:

I recently started checkering my old swedish mauser 96. This was sporterized a long time ago, so no collector value, but a lot of sentimental value as it was my first rifle at age 12. .....

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My first reaction at reading the title, was "oh no". That's some first rate work! Excellently done!

That's beautiful work. Thanks for keeping us posted.

Great job, you can be proud of that.

As others have said, that looks like a checkering job I'd be proud of...

I've wanted to learn how to checker for years, even saved a couple broken stocks to practice on... Your post may have given me the shove I needed to finally get started. Any suggestions on how to get started and the basic tools I'd need?