Are you talking about wood or metal ? I've used flat top often on pistols .The old S&W M39 was notorious for wearing out clothing because of the backstrap checkering !.Flat Top eliminates that. Most shooters never heard of it . I've never heard of FT tool.I Just stop maybe half way down ! Never used FT on wood.
Brownell's sells metal checkering tools, cheap. And they work great. Just go slow and easy and don't try to do it all in one pass. (And at first stick to flat surfaces to checker until you've got a feel for the work.)
Posts: 9685 | Location: Cave Creek 85331, USA | Registered: 17 August 2001
Made a flat top tool out of 32 TPI hacksaw blade. Needed wide lines to duplicate old SXS shotgun checkering. Two blade pieces doing cutting were cut from the ends of the blade(without the wavy teeth). Ground side edges of teeth lightly, so lines were not too wide, then soldered two strips of blade with teeth ground off for spacing between the cutters, with old x-acto blade sandwiched in. Used x-acto handle. Made it to cut on pull stroke. You can also use a border tool, just don't cut too deep.
