McFarland or equivalent. Brownell's has been out of stock for some time now.

That's too bad, Brownell's would have been my recommendation.

Charity Littleton. boltcheckering.com

Thanks Metal. Sent Charity an email yesterday. No reply yet.

Thanks again metal. Talked to Charity today.

You’re welcome.

Although the jury is still out on my overall opinion of the internet I must confess that finding things in general + specifics like this service sure beats the way I used to have to hunt through all my catalogs trying to find a specific part or service. I hope you found what you want Ray.

quote:

Originally posted by NormanConquest:
Although the jury is still out on my overall opinion of the internet I must confess that finding things in general + specifics like this service sure beats the way I used to have to hunt through all my catalogs trying to find a specific part or service. I hope you found what you want Ray.

The great thing about the internet is that everyone gets their say and the worst thing about the internet is that everyone gets their say.

quote:

Originally posted by custombolt:
McFarland or equivalent. Brownell's has been out of stock for some time now.

Brownell's now panders to the 1911/AR crowd...guess that's where the money is...

No surprise there. They just bumped the back in stock estimate from October-ish to December-ish.
Settled on a 2 panel McFarland.
Thanks to all.

Being cheap out of necessity and an admitted bubba I once bought a checkering file and tried it for myself. By no means an easy task. I had trouble keeping the file straight, an consequently the lines strait.

Although I never went further with it, I thought of a simple tool design that might work.
If you make a frame that looks like an X to guide the file in, and put a hole in the bottom at the middle of the X for the bolt knob, you could control the file to cut the exact same all of the time, thereby making straight lines. You'd have to do some touch up near the border of your panel, but at least you'd get the bulk of the panel cut straight. You could make your X frame any degree that you wanted depending on what shape you wanted the diamonds to be.

Maybe some enterprising hobbyist might try it and see if it works.

Not worth the time due to the learning curve. Some things are best left to the pro.

Checkering knobs is not that hard to do. I explain how I have made my own bolts and checkered with tools made in my own shop.

another try to add pic's on checkering ng knobs

After the spacing is started with a metal checkering I follow up using a 90 degree graver tool and the Ngraver tool to finish the lines to the edge of the pattern. I take a little time to learn to finish the spacer lines to the edge and not run over.

templates formed to fit bolt knob

Les

That second photo looks pretty much like what I was doing when I made a go of it. I notice that you have your angle lines penned in there to follow. But I just could not get that file to go straight. So again, if there was a trough of sorts on top of the bolt, just the exact width of the checkering file so that the file could only go one way, then the lines would be straight, and you could even tip the file to get close to the edge.

I am probably not saying it right, but what I am saying is that there needs to be some sort of a guide there to keep the file straight.

You need to learn to eye ball the lines and file edge before trying to cut. After the very light spacing with the file you need to engrave the lines just like checkering on wood. I understand some people use the carbide wood checkering spacer to do this type of work, but I don't like to have steel chips coming back into my face.

A beginner is wise to keep his panels on the small side.

Lay out the pattern as much as possible with a checkering file..at some point, you just have to use engraving tools to get up next to the border.

Some have used an electric checkering tool as Less mentioned...I tried it, found it was not for me

I hope some of you will try my methods as it is based upon making most of your tools to engrave. The basic of cutting metal is to have a sharpener that you can control the engraving tools angles which are critical in keeping the tool to run straight. All of this info in written upon my DVD.

That's where I failed. I didn't use any engraving tools. Just the checkering file.