Last month at our OAC collector gun show I gave the stocks for my engraved Hepburn to my gunsmith friend so he could pass them along to an older gentleman to checker. A little back story on this gun, and the checkerer are in order.
This was the first Hepburn I ever owned, and it came to me as a barreled action in .45-70, with two blocks of wood to make stocks from. All the metal was in the white, and needed final polishing, and barrel needed to be cut and crowned. I sent the two blanks of stock wood to Dave Crossno, and had the stocks cut to a long-range pattern with cheekpiece and shotgun butttplate inletted. When the stocks came back I did the final fitting, and applied 16 coats of Wipe On Poly, and hand rubbed them with rottenstone when done.
I polished out all the metal, and had Dale Woody engrave the rifle, and color case, rust blue it also. Once it all was finished, I figured someday I'd get the stocks checkered, but someday took over 20 years to get around to!
My gunsmith friend kept showing me work his checkerer was doing, and he told me the guy was an old retired logger, who was self taught, and at 85 yrs. old was still going strong! I figured now was my chance, and if I didn't get him to do the work I might never get around to it!
So I passed the stocks to Gordy last month and this morning I saw him walk into the show with a couple packages under his arm, and knew what they were!
Not only did he do a wonderful job, with zero over runs, but once he'd finished the checkering he stained and sealed the raw checkering and when I got them back they were ready to install! First time I've ever seen a checkerer take the extra step of finishing his checkering, and I couldn't be happier! And when I asked what I owed, the price was half of what I expected to pay for such nice work! All around just a great experience!