Stippling vs Checkering

[Tnfalconer]

Well, I would say John was charging me the same as he always has. I know Gene at Kilimanjaro was paying the same..

You stated that I was paying too much and that I should come to the flathead valley where the prices were more reasonable. You quotes two places both of those places have a listed prices double to three times more than you attributed. Now I can only take this to mean a few things. You have gone senile and just can't remember, you intentionally mislead or you want to flaunt the fact that you can get a better deal than anyone else. All are fairly reprehensible. You choose which you want to be.

[Tnfalconer]

[QUOTE=waksupi;3751983] I know you just called me a liar. QUOTE]

I never made the implication but I am guessing by this quote you feel like you may have been misrepresented. I made an accusation that what you said was inaccurate. You can call it a lie if you want to I guess.

[Tnfalconer]

Not appreciated coming from a jack leg amateur.

This is the quote where you lose all credibility. Any ounce of respect that you ever had, is now gone. If you are making reference to my post count here, I'm sorry I don't have the time to play internet cowboy. I have to actually work for a living. If you would like to discuss the level of my knowledge in a pm I would be glad to discuss it anytime. I think you'll find you're not as high and mighty as you might think. Calling someone a "jack leg amateur" in an internet post is easy enough to do. It's almost as easy as calling someone an old and forgotten has been? See how easy that was?

[Hamish]

You pooped on your pop tart way faster than I thought you would. meh.

[Tnfalconer]

OH please continue.

[Rick Hodges]

Look, I have a friend who runs a race car/custom car fabrication shop. I have steered business his way, helped out with sweat equity when he was crunched for time and helped carry him over during hard times. I can assure you I can get a better price for work he does for me than a guy off the street can...especially a guy off the street who thinks he knows it all, has an attitude and believed he can do the job better than the shop can. What usually happens is Mike (my friend) will quote him a price to chase him away...and if he doesn't run, he will at least make a lot of money for the trouble.
You see some people have to pay the jerk tax. That doesn't make me a liar if I tell you what I paid...you just earned the right to pay the "tax".

I've seen the work Waksupi has done, listened to his advice and learned a thing or two. You come on here and ask a question about Checkering v. Stippling and get all bent because many don't agree with your premise that they are of equal aesthetic/utility value and then insult the man because you can't get the same price he does for work you say you don't want done. I see someone who is asking to pay that "tax".

[Tnfalconer]

There is no "Tax" he stated that it was cheaper, it wasn't and isn't. Those are listed prices they were not quoted to me. You can go there to their websites and look them up.

As far as attitude, I give what I get. I don't bow down to some nameless person on the internet. Period, sorry if it hurt someone's fragile sensibilities but I never insulted anyone who didn't insult ME FIRST. Please go back and read the previous posts.

On the topic of being bent out of shape. I'm not and have not been bent out of shape about anyone's opinion varying from mine. I think insulting someone else's varying opinion is insulting. Mileage may vary. ON that note, I never asked a question. I posted I was considering both.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Time passes,,,, and we all return to civility?

And here I thought someone would comment on how nice my Shotgun looks?

Randy

[Tnfalconer]

Time passes,,,, and we all return to civility?

And here I thought someone would comment on how nice my Shotgun looks?

Randy

It is a pretty gun Randy...

[Hamish]

I like many others can't do the checkering,,, Yet. So when I had my Ithaca M37 rebuilt buy Ithaca the wood I had bought for it in 1986 got sent to a local guy I know who does high end shot guns.

He took the Fajen Wood which is nice and converted the Fore end with wings to Corn cob style with Win M12 pattern on it and the Buttstock got changed from Pistol grip to English style strait grip with a standard point patter on both sides . $600 and one week to finish and it was worth every cent. I might add that it is not perfect and I can find every single flaw however the level of craftsmanship is commensurate with the quality of the gun, and the gun as a whole looks damn nice.

It would not have been appropriate to stipple this gun.

Randy

As a matter 'o fact,,,,,,,. I had meant to comment about that beautiful stock set. I've owned one M37 and kicked myself regularly for trading it for a nicer BPS.

The English stock is visually what a shotgun should look like!

[W.R.Buchanan]

Hamish: Thanks! The pics really don't do the gun justice. Ithaca charged me $550 to completely refinish and rework that gun which included rebluing the complete set of Cutt's Compensator Choke Tubes I have for the gun. All I need is the little wooden box they came in to complete the set.

I have Spreader, Imp Cyl, Modified, Full, Extra Full and Extra/Extra Full and the Wrench.

I have about $1300 in that gun over the course of about 43 years ,,, I bought it in 1973 from a friend for $100 the wood was about $50 back then, and the gun sat in my safe for 40 years before I finally got the urge to finish it.

A new one like it is about $1400 but they aren't nearly as nice as this well broken in one that has been completely refurbished. The trigger on mine is perfect and the only parts they replaced were the springs. The bluing is perfect and exactly like the new guns,,, The wood is far in excess of anything in that price range.

It will be one of the last guns I sell.

Randy

[joatmon]

Tnfalconer You've got me to wondering now about the high end stipping, have any pic's of good examples?
Or sites to explore? I would love to see pic's of your progress as you move forward on your build.
Aaron

[mtnman31]

I find both stippling and checkering appealing. Like many things, it more or less depends on the gun. Heck, it's all personal preference when it comes to aesthetics. Both can be done to look and function great and both can be done in a way that isn't all that functional and looks tacky. In my personal experience (albeit limited), both require skill and detail in execution while checkering definitely requires a great deal more prep work/layout and is less forgiving of mistakes. It all boils down to the skill of the craftsman and the quality of the wood you have to start with.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Craftsmanship of any kind is composed of two primary components.

Attention to Detail,,, and

Personal Responsibility.

Attention to detail is self explanatory ,,, The Personal Responsibility part is about not letting the bad things you find in the "attention to detail part,,," go out the door unaddressed.

Doesn't matter if you are Flippin' Burgers or building the Space Shuttle, the end result is the same.

If your work sucks,,, You suck! Too bad they don't tech this in school.

Randy

[Blackwater]

Amen, Randy! It's so rare to hear that today! Thanks.

[country gent]

The idea or definition of craftsmanship has been lowered over the years. Remeber when on furniture and most goods somewhere was the makers name or mark Identifying Him personally? When a job wasnt done until you were willing to sighn your Name to it? When out of pride and craftsmanship all the sharp edges were broken and burrs removed? Now with the mentality its good enough is sufficent. Checkering, Stippling, even the fit and finish is falling under this. Truly Good checkering is becoming a thing of the past as is stippling. It takes time and most smiths stockmakers want to put that time elsewhere, along with most clients dont want to pay for it either. The truly fine (24-26 lines per inch) checkering patterns are hard to find. Take time to cut and are hard to not have over runs and mistakes show. Now most standard grade woods grain is to open to support good checkering with out the points coming off from use. The standards have been slowly being lowered for years.

[NoAngel]

Country Gent, ain't that the truth! I have seen sporters built in the late 40's early 50's that would embarrass most top shelf rifles made today. Even companies that 'hand build' rifles to customer specs don't compare. It's a shame. What's worse is what some gunschmitts are passing off as high end work...and they are truly proud of it.

[cainttype]

... The truly fine (24-26 lines per inch) checkering patterns are hard to find. Take time to cut and are hard to not have over runs and mistakes show. Now most standard grade woods grain is to open to support good checkering with out the points coming off from use. The standards have been slowly being lowered for years.

That's the truth. Quality wood worthy of fine checkering is becoming a real rarity, and the cost reflects it. Rough-cut blanks can easily cost more than what many people consider "high-priced" rifles.
Adding the cost of a skilled craftsman to fit and finish such wood to it's potential puts those firearms into an area that most shooters today simply aren't familiar with. It's similar to fine art being displayed in limited venues, not mantelpieces over-hanging every shooter's fireplace.

[country gent]

The crying shame is shooters and consumers have accepted it. Stained birch, poor grade wood, and cookie cutter work of a pantograph. One theing that really affected wood quality was WW1 and WW2. the artillery and bombings destryed most of the old growth forests in england and europe, where the high end wood was coming from. Along with the veneer mills being able to offer more for the trees than stock makers can. A English walnut of suitable size can bring thousands of dollars on the market and will normally be bought by a veneer mill. Ive seen old turn of the century hard wood floors with nicer grain work than todays factory stocks. Finding the fine tight grain that supports good fine line checkering is getting harder and harder.

[Blackwater]

I remember Jack O'Connor writing many years ago now that if he knew then what he couldn't have suspected earlier, he'd have put a LOT more money into "Ma Bell" and good, solidly figured walnut blanks. He'd have made a real killing financially had he done so, because even back then, really great walnut was rare and getting rarer. We harvested so much of it and never replanted what we took. Not a recipe for a "renewable" supply. And it takes the really nice trees at least 100 years to grow, too! Will we see the walnut tree extincted in our time? Probably not, but there's surely going to be an ever increasing scarcity of it, I believe. It's probably still not too late to lay in a good supply (or what serves for a "good supply" these days) and just sit and watch its value grow and grow! But with the dwindling talent to make wood and steel look like they grew together, really great rifles are going to become rarer and rarer, I think. It's just an outgrowth of the ethic that seems to be driving the nation today, IMO.