Restock of a Trojan

[B. Dudley]

Thanks guys.
John, I am working on the G grade. I need to post more pics of that soon. Coming along nicely. I am just 28.

[Toothsmith]

Beautiful work Brian. I too have a G grade to restock, a 0 frame 16. Been thinking about it for about 10 years, going to start it any day now. Did you cut the flat top checkering with a "V" cutter or a square groove cutter?

[B. Dudley]

Spaced with 16 lpi spacer and Used a 60 degree V Fine toothed cutter to finish the lines. Using the 60 degree allows for deeper lines but still keeps the flat tops. I think the use of a square cutter would be more of an english thing.

[Toothsmith]

Yeah that's my problem. I'm rebuilding this nice W & C Scott hammer gun, thought the checkering was worn until I stripped the stock revealing nice 20 lpi square groove, flat top checkering. Repaired the crack and can just refinish, except for what some chimp with a checkering tool did to the forend. Thought you might have a source for square groove cutters, can't seem to find them at the usual sources. Might have to go the route you did with the Trojan, very nicely executed and not many could tell the difference. Besides square groove checkering kinda scares me, zero margin for error.

[Toothsmith]

Sorry, W.C. Scott & Sons, shouldn't try typing after midnight.

[Dan May]

There aren't any commercial square cutters unfortunately, they have to be bench made. Cutting proper flattop checkering is hair raising as you said, zero room for error. One slip and you're refinishing.

I don't think your forend can be saved unfortunately, doesn't appear to be enough wood to sand that mess out and start over. What a shame!

Best, Dan

[B. Dudley]

Yeah, that forend might be toast to repair it correctly. It is so buggard up that getting a clean flat top job will be impossible. If it was an isolated pattern with full borders, you could maybe spot sand it down enough to do something with it, but the pattern goes all the way to the metal, so you can't. Personally, if you wanted to make it look better, I would just recut a fully pointed pattern on it. That would cover up all the mistakes, provided the bad lines don't steer you off course. Doing that would at least look better than what you have now, even if it is not correct.

And honestly, even though a square cutter is proper for that english style flat top checkering, if you us a 60 degree V cutter and do not go too deep. Not many will know the difference.

[Toothsmith]

Thanks for the input gentlemen. I agree the forend is probably too far gone but I've used several methods to "grow" old wood to cover proud metal in the past and there's one I haven't tried yet that might work on this one. I'll keep you posted. I prefer to use the original wood if at all possible. Old english guns are usually stocked very close to the metal with no proud wood at all. Here's one in a little better condition, check out the contour of the transition from the forend to the forend iron to the receiver. How'd you like to have to restock this one Brian?

[B. Dudley]

Those old "Bar in Wood" guns are neat for sure. I wouldn't want to stock one of them anytime soon.

[Robert Delk]

I've had good luck using veneer to patch and then have the checkering recut over it. Kind of tricky to get the patch and undamaged checkering to match up sometimes but worth it.You might need to cut your own veneer to get some thick enough and of the correct wood to match.