About me - Custom Checkering by Sherry Abraham

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About me

ABOUT ME

Hello! My name is Sherry. I have been a checkerer for over 30 years now. Back in 1988, I married my high school sweetheart, moved to Colton Oregon from Portland, and began my checkering career. I actually began my training at Kimber of Oregon in the fall of 1987. It was something that I took to right away.

Living in such a small town, there aren't too many jobs here. I had originally gone to Kimber to apply for any production job I could get, but ended up being asked to try checkering. I was trained by Pat Taylor in the Kimber shop and spent the next 30 days working side by side with her. When my training period was over, I purchased my own equipment and began working from home doing Kimbers exclusively. Those early days were not easy.... working 12 to 16 hours per day, seven days a week for months on end...but I was hooked!

After working from home for a while I began checkering for friends and family. I now checker one to two stocks per week as opposed to the three to six stocks per day for Kimber. Production work is grueling work and one cannot possibly do a truly quality piece of work under such pressure.

Kimber took many twists and turns, left, returned, and eventually sent their wooodshop to Costa Rica. During their last year here in Colton, I was their only checkerer. I checkered somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 to 5,000 stocks for them during my 8 years there. The owner of Kimber, Greg Warne, gave me a Super America on my departure from Kimber, that I will keep and treasure always!

I also do some checkering for many other manufactures from time to time. I worked for Cooper Arms and helped get them going until they could hire and train their own checkerers when they first started up, as well as working on Chipmunk Rifles, a dozen at a time, for several years. I have done custom work for Remington, Winchester, Browning, Ithaca Classic Doubles and the Great American Gunstock Company. I even checkered the face and neck of a guitar for Fender several years ago, that is now on display at Abbey Road Studios. They called it "The Remington" guitar, made from a beautiful piece of Claro Walnut.

I am not a hunter or a shooter, but I have become familiar with some firearms knowledge through my experiences in checkering. I also come from a large family with a strong military background. My dad was in the Air Force for 20 years, so we moved around the USA many times. Oregon has always been home for me and my husband of 32 years & Colton is such a beautiful place to live. We live in the country and enjoy spending time at home with our three cats, Blue heeler Bella and a group of chickens. We also love to camp and take trips to the Oregon Coast as well as the occasional trip to Mazatlan Mexico.

I have always been interested in art. Drawing and painting are on my list of favorite hobbies. I also enjoy working on the computer and learning all I can about building my own web sites. This is my third web page over the years, I hope you enjoy it!

Sherry