I'm stocking a "new" rifle and it has a shadowline cheek piece where the underside of the cheek is concave - as normal on a Highwall or probably most bolt rifles.

In keeping my edges sharp and surfaces flat, I now have a cheek that is almost knife-edge sharp along the bottom and back sides. This is perhaps a bit of overkill.

So, do most of you roll that edge ever so slightly in a very small radius?

In looking at a Hughes .22 low wall in his custom rifle book, I thought I could detect a flat bevel to the edge of the cheek. It is a very very thin bevel, if it exists at all, but looks like it might be rather nice. Anyone have any opinions on this?

FWIW, this rifle is a Zischange style Borchardt, but the cheek is fairly generic, if short.

Brent

If you put a small radius on the edge of the cheekpiece it will be less likely to chip. I like to keep the shadow-line edge as sharp as I can.

Brent, Here are a couple of pix that might help. I don't bevel the edge of the cheekpiece, but for ones like this where the edge is so prominent, I do slightly round it over with the final dry sanding with the finest paper. As always, the paper had a firm backing.

This close-up shows the outboard edge.

Hope you find this helpful.
Steve

Just for grins, here's a snapshot of a much damaged original High Wall Special Sporting rifle stock. the outboard edge of the cheekpiece is significantly rounded.

It's easy to see how much I adapted, and how much I copied. My grip is virtually identical, but the rest is my own interpretation.

Steve,
Thanks for the note and the pictures. That second one is the one I was talking about. You must have posted it before, as I have a copy on my harddrive that I used along with a few others that I took of one of your rifles at the MSP Museum of Art a few years ago. I built a .22 low wall that was somewhat similar. It is not quite so well executed though. But, not bad for a guy like me.

Anyway, this photo is the one where I saw the "bevel". I much appreciate your description of how it is made.

Thanks,
Brent

PS. I more or less, follow your 3 article treatise on stock finishing as well. Thanks for writing that. It has served me well.

Steve,
I'll try to get a decent picture of the rifle posted in a few days. In the end, it is a rifle made only for me. With over an inch of cast-off most folks would find it a bit nuts to shoot, but it added 5-10% to my scores offhand. Squirrels just give up and die before I even shoot.

The pictures I took at the museum are all film/prints. they are total crap because of lighting and the glass case prevented the use of a flash.

The sort of interesting thing was that T and I paid our admission and went through the exhibit before I asked if we could take a few pictures. The guy in charge said sure - just no flashs in the tapestry room next door.

No problem, I wasn't looking for art - I already have the book. I just wanted an angle or two that was not in the book. Anyway, we were taking about 5 pictures when we got mugged by another person who was apparently "more in charge" Nasty dude he was too. Finally another patron came by and volunteered that he had overheard us being given permission. But it as not a nice experience.

That aside, the exihibit was a lot of very beautiful rifle, but there was no attempt to explain their signficance and relationship to each other. Your rifle was right next to a .14 caliber miniture Mauser - sort of interesting but no connection I could see. Just sort of a helter-skelter display. I'm sure you could have given them a lot of pointers on how to arrange and explain things. Most of the folks just sort of wandered through w/o really knowing what they were looking at.

Brent

Brent,
Thanks for your reply. Too bad about your experience at the show. I was there for the opening only. It was not well organized, publicised and no one had name tags making it difficult to connect the makers with thier work (many were there.)
The show then traveled to the Houston Fine Art Museum and the only thing I heard about that was when I specifically looked it up on the internet.
In all it was an extraordinary gathering of comtemporary gunmaking as seen in the catalog (book) Three Centuries of Tradition. Unfortunately it was a very small printing, sold out quickly and copies are now going for $125-200.
I guess we were blessed to have had the opportunity to see the show, and to have the book.
Steve

Steve, it was a truly incredible selection of firearms. Really amazing. And while I knew enough coming in to make sense of a lot of it, I can't say I learned much new.

The average person walking around knew nothing other than these were beautiful baubles, and maybe didn't even realize what they were missing in the way of history and evolution. The connected histories and the relationship of form to function was lost on them.

As a guy that teaches for half a living, I thought of it as an opportunity to teach that was mostly lost. Lots of people were, however, persuaded that there might be more to a gun than BANG. That they might even be works of art.

Brent

Steve,
I found this picture of my low wall. Not nearly as sleek as your's but it shoots and it fits, and it makes me happy.

Since the photo was taken, it was checkered by Doug Mann and case colored. I did not have it engraved.

Brent

Brent and Steve,

Great looking rifles, both of yours.
Keep up the good work. I can sit and drool over rifles like those all day long.

Thanks for the pix.

Don