Red,

Here you go.....sorry the pictures are so big......cant show the detail any other way. I dont like the way the forend pic turned out.....it looks better than that in person but you get the general idea.

very nice, I got to lean how to do that

Bill,
nice stock.. nice clean checkering

jeffe

That forend pattern rocks! That is great. Now, do you lay out the points ahead of time? Or do you do the master lines and the top borders and then arbitrarily pick the points as you cut in the pattern? I was watching the video by Joe Balickie, he has you start with a point pattern, which I had read was harder to do, but I figured out why. It is easier to layout! ;-) (curved lines are a bitch for me to lay out, I think I have a good solution, but haven't tried it yet).

Thanks for the pics, not too big, need it to see the details. With the wrist, which of the panels goes first? the sides or the top?

Thanks very much for the sharing this with us.

Red

Red,

The forend points are roughly sketched out. The idea being that if your lines are evenly spaced and straight your rough sketch will be correct. If not....well....adjust those points. That make sense?? Kind of hard to describe but the points are not supposed be an afterthought. Each point is a termination of a line of checkering. Its not a fill in type pattern.

Im probably going to get nailed for this but for the grip I do the side panels first and the saddle panel last. I use a skip line tool to cut my border in the sadle panel following the grip panel border line.

Very very nice checkering Bill.

Bill
When I do a 3 panel grip pattern, I also do the tang panel last and use a skip cutter to make the dividing ribbon. Doing the tang panel first would seem backward to me. I thought that is the way most everyone does a 3 panel grip pattern. Am I missing something by doing it that way?