Cheekpieces On Rifle Stocks - Light Gunsmithing

Wood gunstocks are just like wood furniture. All manner of bumps, bulges, grooves, swells and inlays have been tried in an attempt to make stocks more attractive to potential customers.

- Gil Sengel

However, while distinctive features on furniture are admitted to be “just for looks,” on stocks they are justified as serving some purpose. Nowhere is this more evident than that strange growth on the buttstocks of longarms called a cheekpiece.

Just where and when the idea of the cheekpiece originated is unknown. It is found on guns having ignition systems prior to the flintlock, and even on crossbow stocks. Most non-military flintlock and percussion muskets and rifles in both Europe and America used cheekpiece stocks. This began to change when doublebarrel percussion shotguns and wingshooting came on the scene. Gun fit suddenly became important. It was quickly learned a cheekpiece on a shotgun added nothing that couldn’t be done just as well by a conventional stock or one with a Monte Carlo comb – and at far less labor cost.

On rifles, cheekpieces come in three varieties: (1) The so-called rollover, which looks like a thick pancake flopped over the comb of the stock. A nearby illustration comes from an undated catalog of the long defunct Reinhart Fajen Company. Several gunwriters of 40 years ago thought stocks thus equipped did everything for everybody and constantly said so in popular magazines. I believe it was writer Jack O’Connor who said the mere sight of the things “gave him the vapors!” (2) This is much the same as the first type, except it thins and stops at the top of the comb, which always has a Monte Carlo rise at the rear. (3) The European-style cheekpiece is thin, low on the stock and of questionable use, but adds greatly to the appearance of otherwise plain, unfigured wood.