hand cut checkering

True
hand cut!

Just a few pics of an old muzzle loader whose checkering was just washed out from wear and nearly gone in spots.
We aren't sure when it was made, but it had TRUE hand cut checkering as I discovered when I started the job.
Each line was spaced slightly different from the rest, some lines ran at an angle into another to make up space in the frame as it was all just "eyeballed" back when it was done!

Here are the fore stock on the left and the wrist of the stock on the right as they came into the shop.
As you can see, the lines are nearly gone.
The customer wants the same flat check that was original.

Here they are again n the same relative position.
On the fore stock you can more clearly see some of the angled joined lines I mentioned.
On the wrist, where the border line continues into the checking from the point, you can see that the lines are narrower than the rest as well.