Grips recut
 

I need some checkering freshened up, who does that? Thor had them done on my AE, but I don't remember who did them.

That would be Hugh Clark I expect, he does a great job and has done a lot of grips for forum members. hhclark@wildblue.net

regards,

Vince

Yup! Hugh's the one you want...Does an excellent job. Fairly priced too.
Jerry Burney

thank you very much

Yes, you will be pleased with Hugh's work.

What is the typical checkering LPIâ??s for Luger grips?

According to the 1913 Luger blueprints, the checkering is 1.3mm apart and is accomplished at an angle of 19 degrees...

http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/page24extract.jpg

1.3 millimeters = 0.0511811024 inches

so ROUGHLY 19.538461524033136105329376414526 lines per inch. :)

You can answer so many of these types of questions if you have your own set of these blueprints... they are a fascinating study...

See my ad in the FOR SALE forum... (Yes, another shameless commercial!) :)

Thank you very much John

I have always told folks that the checkering is 20 lines per inch, which is an easily available checkering tool, and I bet no one will notice that it is not 19.538461524033136105329376414526 lines per inch.;)

But Ron,

Does that mean that you have a 0.461538475966863894670623585474 inch checkering overrun? That would be unsightly! :roflmao:

I use a 20LPI, 75 Degree tool for Luger grips. Checkering tools come in 60 deg, 75 deg, and 90 deg angles to the sides of the cutter. Most American checkering is 90 deg, most European is supposed to be 60 deg, but 75 deg is the closest to that found on 95 % of Luger grips.

I occasionally run across Luger grips that are 18 LPI.

It seems that most Luger grips, except for early ones, are not uniform in the line spacing, and tend to widen as they near the edges of the grips.

In your opnion Hugh, were they originally hand checkered, machine pressed or cut?



Ed

I don't know about Hugh's opinion, but while we are waiting for it, let me add mine.

Pressed checkering, such as that found on older Remington and Winchester rifles, causes the pattern to be pressed into the wood, not outward...

The result is more like diamond shaped holes...which form the pattern.

Pressing checkering on curved surfaces like Luger grips, would be a risky proposition which would likely result in a lot of cracking during the manufacturing process... I think it is highly unlikely that Luger grips used pressed checkering.

I have never seen an original Luger with wood grips that looked like it had anything but cut checkering... which results in diamond shaped bumps instead of holes...much better for a gripping surface.

I think that the early DWM grips were hand checkered as they show a much better attention to the spacing and overall pattern. It is possible that later wartime grips may have been done with some type of hand held power tool. An awful lot of them show a widening of the spacing at the edge of the grips which would be a lot more easy to do with a power tool than with a hand cutter. On the other hand, however, if workers were hard pressed to produce quantity rather than quality under war time conditions, it would be easy to get careless as you neared the edge of the grip and let the tool wander.

I don't remember if this subject was mentioned in Datig's book or not.