8uck5nort Posted August 5, 2009 Report Share Posted August 5, 2009 Long story short. My Dad had a laser engraving business in the Late 90's and early 00's. He had a Epilouge engraver that got stroked by lightining about 4 years ago and has not worked since. Shortly after the Epilouge got zapped my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. Fast forward to today and Dad has no desire to start up the business after two rounds of full blown CHOP. Just wants to spend what time he has left while he is feeling good riding his motorcycle. He contacted company he originally bought engraver from and they had us send in the motherboard and controller. They contacted us and said it is fixed and are sending back the parts. Should have them later this week and will be determining Saturday if the engraver can be resurrected. If the engraver is a go Dad is going to let me have it and I was wanting to engrave gunstocks. Anyone know of, or have heard of laser engraving for this purpose? I believe if I can get it to print on a laser printer the engraver uses that as emulation and can reproduce on just about any surface. How about checkering? Difficult to do by hand, but has anyone heard of it being done with a laser engraver? Not sure of where this will take me, but I may start up my own engraving business on the side. Netowrk engineer by trade, but business just like everywhere else has been scary slow. What do you guys think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BradD Posted August 5, 2009 Report Share Posted August 5, 2009 Go to Sporterizing and go down about five to"Here's Pics of My 45-70" or something like that. Open and go to the bottom where Roscodoh posted some of my pics. Last or next to last is two of my completed 45-70 Siamese Mausers. The lower one has laser engraving and checkering on it. It was on the stock when I got it so I left it and added pg tip and fe tip. It looks pretty good to me, but you can tell that it is laser engraved, not hand cut. Brad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken98k Posted August 6, 2009 Report Share Posted August 6, 2009 Weatherby has been lazer engraving stocks and gun metal for years. I think it would be great if someone from this board started up an engraving service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8uck5nort Posted August 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 6, 2009 Go to Sporterizing and go down about five to"Here's Pics of My 45-70" or something like that. Open and go to the bottom where Roscodoh posted some of my pics. Last or next to last is two of my completed 45-70 Siamese Mausers. The lower one has laser engraving and checkering on it. It was on the stock when I got it so I left it and added pg tip and fe tip. It looks pretty good to me, but you can tell that it is laser engraved, not hand cut. Brad That is what I kinda figured. The laser engraving will look precise and good, but will lack a certain quality that only a skilled carver can give you. The other drawback is a cookie cutter template on a couple of thousand stocks and everyone looks the same. So much for the "custom" look. On the plus side the turn around time will be a lot faster... Granting we get the thing working when the parts get here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diggerdanh Posted August 6, 2009 Report Share Posted August 6, 2009 So much for the "custom" look. There's always a place for "semi-custom" (reminds me of the semi-homemade show on the Food Network). A lot of us have the same Timney Buehler-style safeties, the same Timney/Bold triggers, the same Boyds/Richards/Hogue, etc. stocks on our "custom" rifles. We have the same Leupold/Redfield/Burris one piece scope mounts. Even a lot of our bolt handles come from the same source(s). I don't know when I'll be able to afford a true custom checkering job and probably will not have one until I learn to do it myself (maybe when I retire in 20 years). Until then I would probably be interested in a semi-custom laser engraving checkering job to add a little something to otherwise plain-jane stocks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8uck5nort Posted August 11, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 11, 2009 Ok, I have the laser engraver. Brought it home last night. I am getting a server set up for it and will post some pics when I get it installed in my basement. I have to figure out how to vent the smoke out of my basement without cutting any additional holes in the house. Wife said... It will take about a month or two before I'll have some samples to show what this thing can do. I'll cut some 2x4 and/or 2x6 into rough gunstocks blanks for show and tell. Then I will actually do a checker job and some image engraving on a milsurp stock and post pics of that before actually doing one for real. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diggerdanh Posted August 12, 2009 Report Share Posted August 12, 2009 Keep us posted. Can't wait to see the results! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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