Big Al.....calling you out 🔫

[JunkCollector]

I'm trying to figure a shotgun out.
Is it hard to checker so fine.
It would seem hard to engrave so small too ?

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[Big Al1]

About the smallest checkering I ever did was 22 LPI. Smaller than that isn't practical in a gripping area. Maybe smaller inside a skeleton grip cap or butt plate. Some woods take checkering better than others. English walnut and it's variants will take a finer cut then black walnut. The black walnut is a lot softer and will tend to fuzz up if you cut it to fine! Same for Claro.
The picture you posted is a good example of not good checkering. The diamonds were not pointed, basically the pattern was just spaced. You can see where the tool went offline and wandered a little bit, causing diamonds with lines in the middle of the diamond. I always had to wear at least 2X magnifying glass to see my work!!
I never tried metal engraving; I know just enough to not want to do it!
Like I said, checkering is tedious, and causes blurred vision, slurred speech, heart palpitations, headaches, alcoholism, sudden onset Tourette's syndrome and poltergeist because tools start to fly around the room!

[Wambli Ska]

Believe it or not that kind of engraving while time consuming is relatively easy (relative being the key word) and because it’s small you can hide a lot of “mistakes”. Notice the spacing of the lines, small circles etc is not absolutely precise, the line in the centered is not exactly centered, but I believe this all adds to its beauty and charm especially on a period piece from when work like this was a true cottage industry in Europe.

Larger design pieces with engraved animals for example and lines of varying depth and width are not very forgiving especially if they need to mirror the other side of the part or gun, and those types of engraving are/were best done by true masters which are also experts in covering their Ooooops (everyone has those).

[JunkCollector]

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Interesting aspects for sure and looks very time consuming to me.

[Big Al1]

My head hurts looking at it!

[Wambli Ska]

And to be clear, I’m not saying it’s not pretty or putting it down in any way. I love these types of guns!

I’m just saying that it does not reach the level of technical complexity as something like this as an example.

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