I well remember the day I bought the first brand-new gun I ever owned. I was 16 years old and a man of independent means. I had a job baggin' groceries at the local Winn-Dixie and had amassed what to me was a virtual fortune to "invest" in a shotgun. After much deliberation and countless hours studying gun catalogs, I bought a new Remington 870 12 gauge. It had a plain 30-inch Full choke barrel, and as I recall, it cost me the princely sum of $90. It has been a great old shotgun and has traveled with me many a mile. The only thing I don't like--and never really cared for--is the checkering.

Impressed checkering (T) is not very attractive or functional, but it can be easily converted (B) using only a few select tools.

Back when I bought it Remington had just started producing the guns with impressed checkering. In this process a heated metal die in the shape of the checkering pattern was pressed into the finished stock. The result was a stamping of the checkering pattern. Unfortunately, the points of the individual diamonds were reversed. Instead of the diamond sticking up, there was a diamond-shaped hole pressed into the stock. It was fast and cheap, but it was less than effective as a gripping surface, and in my opinion, it looked awful. Fortunately, Remington got away from this and now has machine-cut checkering that is both attractive and functional.

Over the years I considered replacing the stock with a newer one with cut checkering and better wood, but that old stock is like an old friend. It stuck with me for years, and I just didn't feel comfortable discarding it. Besides, I'm a tightwad and just couldn't bring myself to spend money on a new stock.

Fortunately, there's a way of converting most negative impressed checkering to positive cut checkering. Very few tools are required, and it's a project well within the capabilities of most hobbyists. Heck, you don't even have to know how to checker! And for all my fellow tightwads, it's a darn cheap way to upgrade your old stock.

A beneficial but little known feature of impressed checkering is that the process actually compresses the fibers of the wood. Regular open-grained walnut as was used on my Remington stock would normally not be suitable for anything but coarse checkering of about 18 lines to the inch. Now that the wood has been compressed and made denser, it'll take finer checkering with more lines per inch. In this case, it's about 20 lines per inch.