It does not seem to be a great art but I have thetime and know I need a Tool harder than the steel I am goint to use it on, and I have a good repetative strike if that helps.


Any Ideas?



Cal30

That is some thing I would like to learn as well. I have one reciever that was previously d&t, and the filled holes still show through the blueing slightly. Thought it would be nice to do the stippled effect to conceal the blemish.

Von Gruff.

I hired a guy that would be a great stippler. He hammers nails like lighting........he never hits the same spot twice.

start with a block of hardwood and a 10p nail .. and see how it plays out ... no, really, try that first. You'll have to hit evenly in power, randomly in pattern

dempsey;
That is freaking priceless!
Raff

a long time ago I watched a gunsmith do some stippling.

What he did was ever so slightly bend a small very dull dental burr and then place it in a dremel tool. Because it was bent (ever so slightly) it obviously wobbled ever so slightly and made a very nice stipple effect.

Brownell's used to have them, but I don't see them now. Try engraving tools or dot punches. I know some of the tool steel center punches will work as well.

ForrestB's 416 Rigby actually.

See it here!

One way to stipple
Say you are starting out on a front sight ramp.

Use a set of soft jaws to hold the work piece in a solid vice.
Position the ramp about 1/8"-1/4" below the top of the soft jaws.
This will let the vice jaws act as a border to keep the punch from skiding off the side of the ramp.
Next get a sharp prick punch(not a center punch, a prick punch is ground to a sharper angle than a center punch and will leave a smaller nicer looking punch mark).
With your left hand grasping the prick punch and resting on the vise to steady yourself
Hold the punch 90* to your ramp with the punch tip about 1/8" -1/4" above your work. Now try to keep your hammer blows uniform.
By having the punch tip above your work, once the hammer blow is delivered, your punch will spring back to clear the work, somewhat like a sewing machine effect.
The rest just take practice.
Be sure to post picture of your work.

Hal

Thanks guys


I might try it on a 721 to begin with, I have a gunsmithe that could do a few borders for me and off I go.


also I might even try a engrave that you use to initial tools with.



Cal30
Cal30

Brownell's still has the stipple tools in their catalog from time to time. On their website every day.

Just to clarify terms:

I have always thought that "stippling" was the horrid course pattern that folks use to ruin pistol grips, while "matting" was the fine texture that Duane and Scrollcutter use on rifles to reduce glare and enhance engraving.

Are the terms interchangeable?

To make the random "stipples" you can use an inexpensive electric pencil engraver. Crisp borders need to be cut with a graver.

An engraver I used to work with used to do what he call "Florentine" matting that was a very fine, non-random cross hatch.

G&A had a pretty good article 10 years ago. Here is the link: http://www.gunsandammo.com/con...our-guns-appearance-

Dall85


Thank you very much that is a good article and was my thoughts exactly with the file idea.



Thank you for posting this.




cal30

I have had occasion to stipple the front strap of several M1911A1 National Match pistols as part of an upgrade program. For a short period of time, the specifications for modifying the front strap of the frame to increase the roughness of the front strap (and thus enhance the ability of the shooter to maintain a good grip on the pistol) allowed stippling or checkering to be used. Since my supervisor was lazy, he opted to use the following stippling method.

The method I was taught (and eventually modified) was to take an air hammer/chisel used for automotive work and modify the tool by grinding the tip to a point, making protective plates that physically limited the stippling to the area desired, placing the frame in a vise, and then going at it with the air hammer. I thought the results were effective but hideous since it was hard to accurately control the movement of the tool and the intensity of the strike.

I eventually developed a fixture to hold the air hammer in a milling machine and another fixture to hold the tool in a tighter pattern as well as to allow for adjustment of the tension it was held against the piston of the air hammer. This showed a huge improvement in the evenness of the pattern and the controllability of the tool but was a pain to use. Several years later, I saw a gentleman modify a sewing machine to do the same thing. He also incorporated a spring into the punch shaft so as to not hammer the sewing machine as hard. He was a model maker that specialized in dioramas and the patterns he punched into brass and plastic would turn out looking like a miniature gravel path or stucco on a building. Looking back, I wonder if an electric etching machine would have done the job better for my purposes. Better yet, I would have liked to learn how to do it by hand! Good luck, remember; the key to success is the same across the board, practice, practice, practice!