Matting on two Alois Schneider rifles. How do you suppose he did them. At first glance they look machine made. The camera picks up more detail.

Wes,
The first one is done by stippling, it's by hand, the craftsman that did that was patient and talented.  I've butchered a few samples not getting them near as pleasing to the eye as that.  The second one appears like Frank mentioned, a double cut file or maybe a checkering file similar to mine.
GT

have lee at a.g. russell in connecticut to make a roll stamp.  they're work is great.   tony<><

This is an interesting thread.  Been thinking about this for the Singer rifle I will be building soon.   

Greg, are you using a clamp-on guide to cut each row?   

Thought about what Tony brought up also, a roll stamp.  Greg, have you tried one?
Bob

As far as a machine to roll on a barrel I would use a mill table with the roll stamp mounted in the quill.

About 15 years ago at a Lodi match, a bunch of us were sitting in a motel room and sharing a few beverages. Glenn Fewless brought out a rifle he and Doug Mann had built on a Steve Earle Fraser action. He had matted  the entire length of the barrel by machining it and it was really nice. It used to be on Steve's website but I can no longer find it. Maybe somebody here has a picture of it.

Lynn, cool beans rifle. A high wall with a rare matted barrel and in a rare caliber.

The first pic of the matting on the Schneider rifle is done by hand stippling. But the punch used for this kind of work is a larger faced punch than the normally thought about single point punch used for matting small parts and areas.

The face of the punch can be 3/16 or even 1/4" square. The face is criss cross cut to make the pattern.

In use the punch is rotated slightly from strike to strike so as not to leave a noticeable track behind during the work. Still with close examination you can see the outline of the size of the punch face itself.
The same type of stippling punch was used when stippling the breech areas on some SxS's. The Ithaca and some Fox designs come to mind.

You can cover a very large area with a stippling punch like that even though 3/16 sq doesn't sound very big.
Try it with a single point punch of any style (sharp round point, small  square) and you will seemingly work for eternity to cover a bbl surface end to end.

Another technique used at times was to use a simple file and lay it flat onto the surface and strike the other side with a hammer.

The files teeth are slightly angled but they will put a very pleasing matted finish onto the surface. Again, the file must be slightly repositioned betw strikes so as to scatter any repetitive 'track' on the surface from the teeth being in the same position each time struck.
This goes quite fast as a technique. Different cut of file and a different appearance to the work.

This second technique using a flat file was used by at least one well known Pistol 'Smith Jim Clark on the top of the slides of his Bullseye target pistol builds.
Old techniques are not necessarily reserved for the old.


Winchester and Parker rib matting was done by a cutting action, not roll die.
The relatively thin ribs on shotguns will curl up as they are elongated by the full length impression rolling. 
Some rib markings were roll die marked, but the short walk of the die for a bbl address is vastly different from a full length roll.

The orig Parker and Winchester rib matting machines are around. They seem to exchange owners every once in a while.
One of the Parker machines I saw was a wooden frame thing and at first glance you'd have to wonder about its capabilities.
With a good operator, they did nice work indeed.

Conn Shotgun Mfg Co. was orig going to use one of the Win machines to mat the ribs on their Win21  guns. But instead they do it by a programmed mill. 
I believe their Fox SxS top ribs recv the same.