Question re checkering on a gun stock for Leo

Rob Keeble

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Leo , did not want to hi jack Darren's post on checkering on gun stocks, but Darren mentioned in his post that the hand carving of rifle stock may be a dying art.
I was wondering surely this could be done on your rotating axis with cnc router. With stock mounted between centers.

Surely that would explain the dying art part.

What do you think Darren?. Using a rotary axis one could engrave complex patterns in half the time of the hand engraver @ least that what i am thinking.

But i guess it would be part of the same process of milling out the rifle stock otherwise how would any software know where the surface of the stock is to do the engraving.
 
Both could definitely be done, carving the stock as well as making it in general, a lot are made that way now. As a matter of fact I'd probably do that if I had the 4th axis, but I also wanted to give hand checkering and carving a try. Worst case I'll be using the tools to clean up the job that the cnc did. :)
 
So Darren do you think the hand done version would have any edge over the automated version. Because if not, that would explain it as a dying art.The speed and precision at which cnc could do it would kill off the hand version for sure .

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So Darren do you think the hand done version would have any edge over the automated version. Because if not, that would explain it as a dying art.The speed and precision at which cnc could do it would kill off the hand version for sure .

Oh yeah, I don't disagree with that, and the fact that it's a cost/time issue for the manufacturers that once did the checkering by hand. Many did the pressed checkering as an alternative, using plates to press the designs into the stock. The real artist has moved from the one doing the checkering/carving to the one that is doing the design for the cnc to run from.

As I heard from others here when I was doing some of the pistol grips on my cnc, they noted that the checkering on the cnc wasn't as crisp and clean as the cnc versions they've seen, but all that could be in the cnc process. As we both know a cnc can be pretty accurate if the processes are done right, but it takes a lot of programming to get a round cutter to cut a squared off hole in some cases.
 
Just thinking out loud here, as I haven't done any checkering. I'm thinking one could produce the desired checkering pattern in VCarve (or like) and use the "Project onto 3D Surface" function to create the toolpath. Right? Wrong? Depends??
 
Yeah you could do a project to model surface.


When I worked at Winchester there were still people doing the checkering by hand.

Some of my observations about hand work vs CNC work is the slight imperfections in hand work vs the ultra precision of CNC. Also, the gouge slices and leaves a much nicer cut vs the rotary cutting tool of the CNC.

Even to me - the cuts of hand work are more attractive than the CNC cuts.

I have not done any checkering, but have done plenty of "V" groove engraving, really the same thing.

I think I was on the Vectric forum recently with someone posting about making a gun stock on a rotary axis. The general conclusion was that the rotary axis does not really do much to aid the cutting of the gun stock. INDEXING, which is different than rotary would index to position then the toolpath would be 2D. The reciever and the barrel pockets need some level of precision that you would not get with rotary cutting.
 
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