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.

A while ago I did some full ribs and a couple of quarter ribs with a knurling process, it stresses the part immensely not something I want to do to a barrel.  I made a couple of knurls, added wavy lines and all.  With what I saw it do to the quarter ribs, the matting on a barrel needs to be cut.  I have a full length tapered ovate barrel I'm making for an English configuration, time added for cutting the matte will be miniscule in comparison.   

I made a couple of stippling punches using a tap with a couple of flutes ground off as my mill, the punch set up in a dividing head to get a diagonal pattern on the face, they still need hardened and tempered - it's a time thing.   Made them while the idea was a fresh thought quite a while ago, just haven't got back to them yet, maybe next month?  2152, you may have motivated me a little bit.  In another case, I filed a few lines in a smaller punch once and used it on a gun stock, with patience it produces an interesting pattern on wood.

Bob,
No I'm not using a guide of any sort.  I did practice a little on the bottom side of this barrel, first with a coarse checkering file, a 12 lpi, then a 16, and I've settled on a 20LPI.  The first few strokes are critical to get things going - a guide there may help some.  A lot of this is you need to pay attention to body motion and alignment of the file.  Stroke is only in one direction and I advance the file about one line with each stroke with pressure focused on the trailing line.  I've been checkering some hammer spurs and lower tangs so this practice is good.  I'm my worst critic and with some experience, I see flaws quickly, both with mine and that done by others.  With a few more miles of checkering I'll get better or I'll care less  - not unlike my woodwork.
GT

I often wondered if they used some tool similar to those used to roll knurling on knobs and similar steel pieces? Just with a different pattern to do so? Seems like using a tool like a knurling tool mounted in a mill with the barrel on the deck would make the process somewhat easier than any other method.

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bobw wrote on Apr 24^th, 2026 at 12:04pm:


I'm waiting patiently to see the Singer build! Another great SF gunsmith whose not well known to most.

Take a piece of flat, mount a bump knurl in your Bridgeport quill and roll the knurl into the flat and it will be bent when you take it out. Every one of those divots is inducing stress, that is what Greg is talking about. 
I was going to try a barrel once, but never did. My plan was to use a fence at an angle on my shaper and a cutter like a threading tool. Never got it done before the urge faded so it's still a hypothetical concept. With my 16" shaper it would take 2 set-ups per side and another 2 for the opposite angle.

Could give a cutoff piece of barrel a try to test this by checking bore diameter with a pin gauge before and after to see the difference. That should tell you it gets crushed or bent with pressure.

Otto, 
Cutting those at 30 lines per inch does sound tedious. That's an advance each move of .033"?  It looks good, I'm surprised no one has gigged you yet about the  torx screws.   
What's the barrel for?
I sweated my full ribs on and screwed the quarter ribs on, caught grief from my peers about not timing the slots.  Then when I timed the screw heads I timed them crossways and caught grief that they would've looked better lengthwise... Couldn't win tough crowd I used to hang with...
GT

Gregg, I once had a near-identical looking pair of Colt Single Actions and one always was my favorite. Couldn't quite put my finger one why until I noticed that the screws on the side were aligned on one and catywampus on the other. Not custom, though, just coincidence. No, they weren't a matched pair- different caliber, but visual twins. Other than the one thing.

GT
Cutting the approximate 800 cross lines on the 28" barrel is only tedious, if you do them manually. 
I think that the CNC program took several hours to complete but was easy to do.
The 28" barrel was a very heavy, 28", tapered round barrel, marked "Old Reliable" and intended for a Borchardt. It's now a medium weight 32-40 tapered octagonal barrel
Otto

After seeing the various examples in this thread, any idea how the fine squiggly lines on some English rifles were done?

The english squiggly lines were done with a pattern tracer type of milling machine.  Think in terms of an offset cam/gear running in a parallel track groove, moving the cutter back and forth in a repeating eliptical pattern.  Someone mentioned Glenn Fewless, he did his matting with his CNC milling machine and single point mill cutter.  Similar process to the english milling, just CNC powered instead of tracer pattern.

ssdave wrote on Apr 27^th, 2026 at 1:29pm:

I believe the machines principals are called "rose engine lathes" or similar to them. The machine term of cutting is referred to as "guilloché". Whether the cutting is a fine decorative pattern cut on the face of a watch or a 26" long rib the principals would be the same.

I wonder if you could combine Greg's method with beeswax and the pattern rolled in with a knurling deep enough to penetrate the wax and then acid etched?  Also could it be done with a shaper and a fine engraving tool??  Neither method would stress the barrell.