Recutting and Restoring Worn Or Damaged Stock Checkering

"m I not a stockmaker. I don’t have the patience. But I’ll take on the repair of any dings, dents, and small chips that come my way. And I’ll do a limited amount of inletting’ as in stock bedding. But carve a stock? From a wooden blank? Not me. The other job I won’t tackle is cutting checkering in anew stock blank.

But now, however, thanks to a kit offered by the folk at Brownells, I feel quite comfortable recutting the original checkering on an existing stock, and I’ve been able to expand my list of services to include "checkering restoration." With the project detailed here, I learned to recut the checkering on handgun grips, and after a little more practice, I’m sure I’ll be able to handle rifle and shotgun stocks as well.

What Brownells did was to put together a handy Checkering Restoration Kit (item #080-000-363AA; $59.95), with all the tools needed for the job, including a very helpful set of instructions. Underscore the word "restoration," because you’d probably need a few more tools if you wanted to lay out a pattern, transfer it, and cut it into a smooth piece of expensive walnut. This kit is for recutting original checkering, or what’s left of it, and returning it to pristine condition.

Well, almost pristine in some cases’d epending on the degree of damage you’re trying to repair. Used for illustration here area set of grips from a treasured Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver. Which model is not important; the grip panels are the subject. The story of how these grips came to need recheckering was one I’m sure I’ll never hear again if I live to be a thousand years old.

The story is a "beaut." The gun owner said: "I’ve had this gun for years in the nightstand drawer right next to my bed’just in case, y’know. My nephew was repainting the bedroom for us. Somehow, he tipped over the stand, the drawer slid open, and the gun flipped into his paint-roller tray. He didn’t say anything to me about it. He just wiped off the metal with soapy water, put on a spare set of grips that I kept in the same drawer, and wrapped up the originals in a Kleenex. Can you fix up the original grips?

I told him I’d get back to him after I’d had a chance to take a closer look. The closer look told me those panels had been wrapped in the tissue for at least a week. The paint had dried solid. The gun owner had tried to remove the tissue, but only succeeded in leaving the grips covered with fuzzy patches that were still pasted firmly into the checkering pattern. The good news was the checkering itself wasn’t obliterated. I called and told him I’d do the job.

Except as noted, the tools required for the reconstruction are included in the Brownells kit. I started by soaking the grips in boiled linseed oil (not included in the kit). I weighed the grips down with an old wrench to keep them submerged in the oil. After a full day of soaking, I scrubbed each panel with the nylon gunsmith’s brush. This removed some but not all

Fortunately, the original checkering underneath was still well enough defined to make the restoration a fairly simple if exacting process. the tissue fuzz and paint. Back in the pan they went for more soaking, interrupted hourly by more scrubbing. Eventually, there were mere traces of paint and paper embedded in the checkering. I then used the singleline cutting tool to clean out and sharpen the lines in the checkering.

Multiline spacers are commonly used to cut new checkering, but the single-line cutter is the tool of choice for recheckering. That’s because it’s important to match the spacing exactly, which is virtually impossible with checkering that was hand cut originally. (In this case, it didn’t look like pressed-in checkering.) In other words, what appears to be a 20-lineper-inch (LPI) pattern could actually be 19.5 or 20.5 LPI.

You don’t want to start on one side of the pattern and then discover when you get to the other side that the lines you’re cutting aren’t matching up with the original lines. Before any cutting took place, I wiped down the grips and set them aside to dry for two days.

The time could have been shortened considerably with a couple of hours at 200 degrees in the kitchen oven. (Get permission first.) The boiled linseed oil will not warp, darken, or otherwise damage the grips, and what remained on the wood after 48 hours served to lightly lubricate the cutter. I placed the grips on a firm surface to keep them from moving. This is important, of course, to avoid errors. I used a square of indoor/outdoor carpet turned carpet-side down on the soft rubber pad already on my work bench.

You’ll want to position the piece so that each line can be started with the cutting tool moving away from you. I used a 100-watt mini spotlight placed to cast a shadow across the existing checkering to make the line being cut easier to see. As per the instructions, I aligned my forearm with that line and the tool.

This particular checkering was still Then the author added the words "checkering restoration" to his list of gunsmithing services. well defined so I could start in the middle of a line and work towards the ends. I put the cutter on the line with its curved edge at the lines’ bottom and drew it back toward me, stopping an instant before it reached the border. I then began to work the cutter back and forth, like a file, until it almost reached the opposite border.

These grips didn’t have lines as checkering borders but instead had deep cuts into the wood. Still, I had to begin and end my cuts short before reaching either side. It’s human nature to tend to tip the cutter head forward when moving in that direction and backward when pulling it back toward you. You need to try to avoid that, and be especially careful to stop precisely at the border. All I wanted to do here was to clean up an existing line and slightly deepen it.

If I went too deep, I’d lose the cross lines when the time came to start in on them. And if I lost control of the cutter, I’d end up with a sawtoothed border. This obviously requires some care and attention to detail. Even with a good tool set like this, there’s still no shortcut to recutting checkering. It’s a matter of cutting one line, then moving on to the next until (continued on page 21)

all the lines in one direction have been completed. Then change the position of the grip and cut all the lines in the other direction one at a time. The nylon brush came into play constantly to keep the lines cleaned out and easy to see as the lines were deepened and the "diamonds" became sharply pointed and well defined. At times during the process, my fingers would tire. If I felt I was losing control of the cutter and in danger of overcutting a border, I would switch to the 90-degree Dem-Bart veiner.

By placing it in the bottom of the line being cut and moving it forward to touch the border, the risk of damage was eliminated. Once I had the diamonds looking really clean and sharp, I took the bottle of checkering oil that came with the kit and worked it into the fresh wood with the nylon brush, then wiped off the excess and let the grips dry. The checkering oil penetrated the wood and hardened the surface. A second application can be applied if desired after 24 hours.

That’s basically all that’s involved with recutting lines that are easily seen. If the lines are well-worn and faint, the restoration becomes more demanding and time-consuming. In that case, I would select the single most visible line in the existing pattern, and use the small carving knife and the Gun Line ruler to score anew line from border to border. Then use the ruler and knife repeatedly until the entire pattern is reestablished.

After the knife has been used to make the lines deep enough for the cutter to follow, you can use the cutter as described above to deepen and define the lines. As you can see from the photo, the grips of this revolver had deep grooves rather than border lines. This served to substitute one problem for another: There were no double border lines to cut, but these borders still had to be rid of the solidified paint and paper that was trapped in them.

For that I used Q-Tips, dental picks, and a couple of little scrapers I made from apiece of drill rod. Sometimes, even with all the right gunsmithing tools, it helps to be resourceful. I