Gun stock question

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Wow ! Neil,

It sounds like you have spent a considerable amount of time and money having numerous stocks made or modified in America .

Keep the faith you still have Portugal , Spain & Italy to explore. 

 
OK, Davy, you now have a choice. Modify your own stock (and render it unsalable) or get a custom stock.

I have had custom stocks made by K (1), D (1), L (1), A (2), P (any number), and Wenig (several) here in the US.

The K, L, and A (!) stocks were unshootable. The A's for example, had "double montecarlos" and had my ears ringing (really) in three shot, and face bloodied in 25. The L was just all wrong, an inch longer then the one we settled on in in Y and a rollover rather than the conventional one I had paid an extra $800 for to get nice wood, The P's set up at the factory were not any good but the ones made at the Grand American (when they did it there) were about right. The D might have been OK had the gun been other than utterly unreliable, never (really) finishing a round of 25 without a disqualifying problem.

The Wenig New Americans have been quite good and only needed to be replaced by ones with more offset to right and some rasping, sanding, and finishing to make them useful. They have since been able to make some that were almost OK, if not perfect, And "perfect" is all that is acceptable, and so they too needed some work to match them to my-  lets say- "fleshy" physiogmony. 

I have also had a "fitting' done at a famous UK shooting ground and it was as slapdash as you can imagine, being based on the use of a try-stock that must have been 100 years old and was so loose and worn out that it had to be twisted back into shape after every shot and was thereafter measured with Vernier calipers, if you can believe it.

I have concluded that only the shooter can make a stock that really, really fits.

It's up to you, but I have spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars with stockmakers and generally come up empty, with the exception of P (sometimes) and Wenig in the US (usually). I also have read most of the "fitting" pieces Clayshooting UK and am not impressed. 

It is all too easy (and likely) to get matched up with someone who will make a stock for you based on his or her beliefs, not your needs. Eventually, you are going to need to have to a stock that fits you and only you, and I think you are the only one that can do that.

Jezek
Amen to the latter points, I've said that for a very long time now, yes of course there are knowledgeable fitters out there not to mention top shots who happen to understand the subtleties of stock fit but on the whole only YOU can write down and TELL the "master stocker" at Perazzi what you need and make sure they do it. 

Having said this I do think you may have taken this a tad too seriously yourself, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that "perfection" is non existent, just think of the 1mm extra puffiness you might carry in your face from an early morning shoot to the third one when you're tired and maybe even dehydrated a little or the differences in the thickness of clothes materials one might happen to wear from week to week. Close enough is good enough and once you reach AAA (and care enough still) you can spend a bit more time and money and arrive at the "ideal" - perfection will always be elusive I'm afraid. 

 
Personally I find gun fit is almost solely about comfort. It's all about allowing your head, arms and torso to be in a comfortable position / at comfortable angles, so that you can see, move and not have the gun react when you shoot. I've shot some ill fitting guns and I would never miss a straight going away with them (so it will always shoot where I want) but it was just awkward. So I agree, it's not a mega science for POI etc as the trade loves to sell it, but about forming an easy bond with the gun in use. And a huge factor is the shooter just not holding it or standing properly when things are wrong (particularly beginners). 

 
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Using a Browning/Miroku I find A would work well and shoot where I'm looking . However, I need to set My perazzi up as B to shoot where I'm looking. I've come to this conclusion after lots of experimenting  with both makes. Initially I  struggled with the Perazzi as it was set up as my Browning. It only came together with more height on the stock. Putting the additional height on the Browning made it worse to the same degree.   I did have a ZOLI for a short time and it seemed to shoot similar to the perazzi. Still working out the Beretta but it does seem to need more height than the Miroku. 
I think I'm correct in saying in the latest Browning bumph, it says they are set up to shoot to point of aim, looking directly down the rib? which is how l like to shoot, so suits me. (That would be 'D' in the diagram)

 
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Will, as Jeff Meloy explains in his excellent book "Understanding Shotgun Stocks For Better Shooting" there are two aspects of stock fitting that have to treated individually yet combined in the final product. First is getting the point of impact where you want it; second is making it comfortable to shoot which is the message of your post. But Davy's problem is the first and that has to be mostly-fixed before the second can be taken on. The problem is that making it comfortable often ends up changing the POI, at least some. 

That means that steps toward either must be small and numerous so you don't end up with a stock that reaches one goal but not the other.

Jezek

 
personally I think pitch will have an effect on whether a gun shoots high or low. Pitch is used to ensure the entire face of the pad is in contact with the shoulder ensuring reduced perceived recoil and increasing comfort, that is the point of pitch. However, if pitch is altered in an extreme way so that only the heel of the pad is in proper contact with the shoulder the gun will have a tendency to pivot at the heel and consequently shoot low. If the pitch is altered so that only the toe is in proper contact the gun will have a tendency to pivot about this point and shoot high. This argument assumes the gun is mounted from a low gun position, if it is rammed into the shoulder as per trap shooting pitch won't make any difference to whether it shoots high or low but will increase perceived recoil and reduce comfort. 

 
I don't want to name them more specifically than that, Davy. I just used them as examples of what I got, not infer that any particular named one can't make good stocks; they just didn't make a good one for me. I named Wenig because they did and do.

Neil

 
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gib, while your view of the effect of of extremes of stock pitch is common enough, I ask you to consider this.

When the shot leaves the barrel (at firing-time plus 0.003 seconds), the gun has moved only about 1/3 inch. The force on the shoulder which would lead to those different POI's is no more than what the the shoulder can produce by being compressed that 1/3 inch. Push on you own shoulder with your gun and move it back 1/3 inch and gauge how much force it takes. My bet is that it isn't much. 

I made some movies at 1200 frames a second and there was no apparent difference in muzzle-rise between adding a half-inch of pitch either at the top or the bottom of the pad before the shot left with its puff of smoke. 

I'll get the videos posted if I can talk Photobucket into working as I have paid for.

Jezek

 
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Yes the pitch POI theory is nonsense.. sorry.. When they teach you to fire a pistol, they warn against the idea of aiming low to "counteract" the muzzle flip, as it happens WAY after the bullet leaves the barrel. Same thing with a shotgun. Obviously muzzle flip is bad with a shotgun, but only because it leaves the shooter disturbed for a quick second shot.

 
Slomo film of even recoilless pre-charged air guns show that their barrels flex when fired but of course it makes no difference or odds as to POI because 1) it is a consistent flip/phenomenon and 2) the pellets have left the barrel already. 

 
Wow ! Neil,

It sounds like you have spent a considerable amount of time and money having numerous stocks made or modified in America .

Keep the faith you still have Portugal , Spain & Italy to explore. 
That's because he's been doing it about a jillion years.  For me the Wenig experience was one I will avoid like the plague having again.  To tell the truth I've never had the $ to get a custom stock and to tell the truth I've little faith in the ability of others to decide what is right for me.  So Perazzi adjustable comb stocks, factory or aftermarket adjusto, have served me well.  I've also tried/used TSK/Ergosign/PFS things and have not had any real difficulty making them work just fine either.  

I go about the fitting process differently than what I've read and been told and it works for me.  AFAIC finding a happy gun mount is the absolute beginning.  Everything else is relative to that and changing the mount changes everything else in my experience.  And setting the POI is the absolute last thing I do.  And like was said above pitch is not a POI tool.  For me it can affect perceived recoil and that's it.

all JMO of course

 
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If you got a PFS stock to work for you, Wanko, I take my hat off to you. The one I had sported a puny smooth grip with some kind of equally-smooth snake-like tracks or something on it. It'd jump right out of my hand every shot. And jump back; that's where it was going, after all. 

The result was a slam-contact between the trigger guard of my Perazzi and my middle finger. A few of them and I'd had not just enough but too much.

Beside, it doesn't offer the cast off it claims, though it does give you offset which is better anyway. 

Mine? I couldn't stand to shoot it. 

Jezek

 
As I have insisted all along, Davy B can get exactly stock configuration he wants at a cost of a few well-spaced evenings with a rasp, sandpaper, and finish of some kind, I recommend Birchwood Casey's Tru-oil ®. The idea that only a stockmaker can can build you the stock you need is to me absurd. I've been there over and over again and it's never been done for me - usually not close and there's no "money back" on custom wood whether it is almost right or pretty-much wrong, and the latter has been for me far more common that the former. 

A colleague on another forum reminded me of something I wrote a year ago.  Here's the link:

http://www.trapshooters.com/threads/that-cheek-slap-stuff.351281/#post-3356769

Mine is the eighth post, but on your way down pause to read post 3 by Techwriter Jeff who wrote the book on stock-fitting I referred to earlier in this thread.

And as you have already guessed, my answer to Kay Ohye's question is "No, I am not shooting this gun for resale."

Jezek

 
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