I know pitch is a measured thing but I just recently picked up a Garbi and someone had installed a pad and it looks like the pitch is off a ways.
Is there a standard measurement for pitch on a double gun stock?

There is a standard measure for you, not so much for the gun. I like 1 1/2-2", measured from the end of the muzzle, when the butt is flat against the floor.
I've owned a few that had 5" or more, and the recoil is fearsome to me when they are set up like that. I had both those guns changed. Much better now.


Best,
Ted

Does it have positive or negative pitch? Measure it against the wall. Take two of your guns which fit well and measure them. Pitch is not super critical like lop, cast or drop at comb but you need it to be close. If your pitch is off easy way to alter it for fitting is to back off the screw in the recoil pad and place a spacer, I use quarters under the pad. Check to see if it feels/fits better. Quick, easy and reversible.

I suspect your new gun has less pitch than you're use to, if you feel the gun slide down the shoulder and the poi is higher than expected it should be too negative. If your poi is low it slides up your shoulder you have too much positive pitch. Perfect for you is the pitch which gives you recoil directly back towards the shoulder. Most of us seem to do better with a little positive pitch but now that I've said that there will be twenty guys who swear that negative pitch is the only way to go. And for live birds it might be better.

Unless way off norm I look at poi to see if I can shoot a gun with its current amount of pitch. But a 1/8 change in the recoil pad may be nearly an inch pitch change.

Pitch should be set at an angle that gives the most butt surface area contact with the muscles of your shoulder notch. This will change when you shoot down, horizontal or up & therefore cannot fit perfectly.
The best pitch angle for you is a feel thing from shooting the gun & how it feels & best suits you.
There is no standard measurement & guns for different purposes will have differing pitch. e.g. A live pigeon gun set up for rising & high targets may have a neutral to up pitch while a field gun may be more neutral to down.
Put the guns butt flat on the floor & the barrels against the wall.
If the barrels go straight up the wall then pitch is neutral. Muzzle end of barrels come away from wall while chambers touch wall is down pitch.
Muzzle end of barrels touch the wall & the chambers come away from the wall is up pitch.

Down pitch is more common & generally in the area of 1" to 2 1/2" down on factory guns. Measured from muzzles to wall. Note that length of barrels accentuates the pitch measurement. On 26" barrel set the measurement will be less than a 30" but the angle is actually the same. So another way to measure angle is with the barrels laying rib down on a table & then use a protractor to measure the butt angle. Compare this to another of your guns that suits you in its pitch angle.
Hope this helps.
O.M

If the drop at comb and heel is appropriate for you (the gun fits you) could you then measure with a protractor the angle of the butt taken from the comb?

Moses has it correct - you have to measure the angle, not how far the muzzles are from a wall. Different length barrels give different distances from the wall. Basic geometry. I built a tool that I can put on the rib which extends backwards over the stock. A plate extends down at a 90 degree angle and I can measure the pitch in degrees with a protractor. This plate is clear and I can also use it to measure cast at toe and heel. Putting the gun upside down on a level table and measuring the pitch works just as well.
For most men 4 degrees of negative (down) pitch is about right. Women usually need more negative pitch - 6 to 7 degrees. The Brits figured this stuff out over 100 years ago. The subtle points of stock fitting are not for everyone, but it's part of the hobby that I enjoy. Making my guns fit me makes them easier to shoot well and more comfortable.
Regards,
Jeff

Builder,
Yes, that will work if you are comparing guns that have the same DAC and DAH.

I also pay a lot of attention to fitting stocks to me. I have a lot of guns and rarely shoot the same gun twice in a row so I built a hot lamp bender to adjust for drop and cast. One gun may cause bruising of my cheek bone while a similar one may not. I would guess from this discussion that it may be stock pitch. Thoughts?

Problem with field guns is that they have a lot of drop a comb, stocks are not parrel to the barrels so the angle may differ from gun to gun. If all your stocks were the same they would have the same angle. I'd rather check poi and fit of stock against shoulder when mounted and shot. The wall trick just gets me into a close range I'd what works for me.

Trap and live bird guns are often setup to pattern high and changing the pitch can help. I have a Fox 20 ga. with 26" i/c and lt. mod that I shoot well on quail and low gun Skeet which is setup like a trap gun. Most of my shots are on rising or just leveling out birds so high poi is no handicap. Our quail shots tend to be very close and fast with long range shots almost a rare thing. If birds were all level or dropping I'd shoot over more than a few of them. But if I shoot it high gun at Skeet my scores go down. Since it works for its intended use, even though it is not setup like I would normally set such a gun up I just shoot it.

Sometimes you run into a gun set up for either a freak of nature or a nut of a shooter. One late hunting partner was 6' 10" with arms and neck twice mine but a fairly small chest. He shot 16 3/4" lop on his duck gun. Just added a slice of 2x4 under the recoil plate. Colored it walnut and shot the gun that ways for years. Or the Skeet shooter who mounted his gun almost in the middle of his chest. He had taken a rasp to the stock and removed almost all of the comb where his face touched. He adjusted the pitch until his poi was where he wanted it. Used both eyes and was a heck of a shot. Point is tha gun fit is a personal thing and what is normal for you is all that matters.

Almost frightening when we agree innit, Ted?

My continuing experience is that less down is more better and almost nothing is just enough. Everyone has their own opinions about the elements of gunfit and they are certainly welcome to them. Body conformation and shooting style may enter into it as well. A professional coach could likely answer those questions. Personally something near zero down and never anything up works on every gun and game I use them for. Barrel arrangement has nothing to do with it.
besta luck

have another day
Dr.WtS

Dr. Sane,
I shoulda' mentioned that I like to see the barrel or barrels roughly parallel to the wall. But, if I don't get that, the 1 1/2 -2" figure works out OK, for me, anyway, regardless of gun type, or barrel length. From the shortest barrel here, to the longest is a difference of about 5".
The other guys need to find out what works for them.
We've agreed on a few other things over the years. Actually happens enough to cause me to wonder if I just might be legit.

Best,
Ted

Pitch is the foundation of the stock on the body. How you perceive recoil and cheek slap depends on pitch. It also influences barrel rise on recoil and recovery for the second shot. For these reasons it seems to be as important as other dimensions.

I have come across three ways to measure pitch: as an angle in degrees of the butt to the line of sight, by the floor and wall method and by measuring from trigger to toe and heel. The last one seems the easiest to do and record.

Have you considered that each time you bend a stock up or down, to increase or decrease the drop, you are changing the pitch as well? That may well be the reason for the bruising you experience with some of those guns.

In my experience, bruising of the cheekbone is much more prevalent when I shoot a gun that does not have enough drop. I am highly conscious of how much rib I see when I mount a gun, and will cheek a high stocked gun harder to try and make it shoot nearer flat for me. I am in the process of putting add on ribs on top of the gun's rib on a Verona 410/28 O/U right now, to cure that issue. I could have bent the stock, but adding more rib is easier and less risky. And since it's a target gun mostly I don't really mind as far as aesthetics. I may take some before and after pics just to show what they actually look like.

SRH

Thank you Stan, your advice is well taken. I will try to measure some of the stocks I have bent to see if I have negative pitch.

OK I got the Garbi out and put the barrels along side a straight plane and measured out to the heel of the stock and got something like 2 1/2". I did the same on my 20 gauge Arrieta and got close to the same maybe a little less. I then measured my Purdey and got approximately 2".
I understand that I did this quickly as I had to leave for work but I would say the maesurements are close.
So would the 2 1/2" measurement be extreme?

PALUNC, I believe you are measuring Drop at Heel (DAH), not pitch. Pitch is related to the angle your buttplate or buttpad forms with the straight plane you lined your barrels up with, and is usually described in terms of how much different from a 90 degree angle that angle is plus or minus. I would hazard a guess that most stocks would display a pitch between 10 degrees plus or minus from that 90 degree angle.

And, in case I have misunderstood the nature of your question, 2.5 inches is not a extreme amount of DAH in my opinion.

Emmett Boylan

I have just this week measured several of my guns to try to figure out why I have such difficulty shooting a couple of them. I measured pitch using the method described by Rollin Oswald in his excellent book on stock fitting. He used the gun against the wall technique but specified that the measurement be taken where the barrels would be 28" long. You can use a straight edge against the barrel if it is less than 28".

I tried 7 guns and got readings that ranged from 4" to 0. Several measured around 2.5", so your 2 guns must have a pitch that is common if you measured them the way described in this thread - butt flat on the floor and receiver against the wall. The gun that I measured at 0 is the one I shoot best. It's probably a long shot, but I've ordered a couple of tapered spaces to use on my problem guns to see if that will help me any.

Emmett, you are correct as what I was measuring. I guess I had a brain malfuncion.
Anyway the Garbi seems to have the most pitch of all my guns. I am taking it in a couple of weeks to a guy to have a leather pad installed and will get his advice.
I did watch some YOU-TUBE videos today on stock pitch.