Hand checkering is an art that is indeed on its last breath. Why? Because its slow and tedious work that doesn't pay well for a gunsmith. Today, some very good custom smiths use electric checkering tools like the MMC tool mentioned below. The copied text from a "Gun Tests" article gives a pretty good description of what they use.
"Miniature Machine Co. markets an MMC-brand checkering outfit through Brownells, but even with your shop discount, it is quite pricey. I had one for about 18 months, but just never took the time to master it.
The folks who checker the stocks on Ruger rifles use this setup to finish the factory stocks from Ruger.
The outfit comes with a Foredom motor, flexible shaft, handpiece, and foot-operated speed control. The handpiece has a rotary carbide cutting wheel with an adjustable guide to set the line-per-inch spacing you want. Thus, since the cutter guide is on the right side of the cutter, you can only cut from right to left. Replacement cutters will set you back about $90 each, so if you only checker a few stocks a year, payback will take many moons."
Tools like the MMC do an excellent job in the hands of a trained person and they are far quicker in completing a checkering job than hand tools are capable of. And the quality of the checkering is generally much more uniform in depth by tool design and hence diamond sizes are more uniform than hand cutting provides. Instead of the hand cutting tools and heads like you find at Midway USA for example, think a spinning cutter with a built in adjustable spacer that can be adjust for LPI. The spacer rides the original trace line and the small rotating cutter cuts the next line and the process repeats itself moving right to left across the pattern. Once 1/2 of the pattern is completed, the stock is turned over and the process completes the other 1/2 of the pattern. Tough to reach places in intricate designs are finished up with hand tools. Maybe not surprisingly, women generally master tools like the MMC much quicker and with more precision than most men do.
Even faster, today many gun manufacturers use CNC controlled checkering machines that quickly cut a programmed pattern with extremely close precision. Some custom smith use their own CNC machines or farm the work out. Once again computers replace the hand and generally they do a better job in a much shorter time frame.
