Hi all,
I wanted to let everyone know about an outstanding gun fitter and gun maker near the Bay Area, California.
Dale Tate used to work at Purdey in London and has since moved his craft to California. He's located in Ione, California at the
Camanche Hills Hunting Preserve.
He's the only gun fitter that I trust. His method is from English low-gun shooting, which works well for sporting clays and live game. He also works with skeet and trap shooters for a perfect gun fit. His method is as follows:
1) Makes sure your gun mount is the way it should be and repeatable
2) Goes to the patterning board to see the point of impact of the barrels
3) Still at the patterning board and you shoot low gun as if you were shooting sporting clays
4) Goes to his workshop with you to make the changes required, one at a time. Changes can range from length of pull, comb height, pitch, and cast.
5) Go back to patterning board to check where the gun is shooting after each adjustment.
6) Repeat step 4 and 5 until the gun is shooting a perfectly centered pattern from a low gun mount and shoot.
7) Shoot approximately 50-100 clays with the newly fitted gun across various stations such as incomers, crossers, quartering, and chandelle targets. Includes instruction as well.
All of the above can be done within a day. It takes him about 6-7 hours working with you 1:1 to get it just right.
Dale Tate can be reached at
http://www.daletategunmaker.com and 1-209-763-9040.
I recently acquired a new Beretta 486 side-by-side and had Dale Tate fit it to me so that it matches my Krieghoff K80 dimensions perfectly. Dale had to add about 1/2" of cast, shorten the length of pull, and slightly change the pitch. Dale doesn't install adjustable combs, but recommended me to someone else. As a simple fix, he installs a simple cheek pad which lifts the point of impact (if required) to get a perfectly centered pattern from shooting low gun on the pattern board.
Dale's real expertise comes in adding cast to the gun. The Beretta 486 has a curved receiver, and requires a lot of woodwork to take off 1/8" from the right-hand side of the stock where it meets the receiver, which offsets the stock to provide more cast-off. It took Dale about 1.5 hours just to do the woodwork where it meets the receiver. You can't even tell the stock has been modified when he was done. Dale also uses the traditional Purdey method of removing wood "one layer of smoke at a time" using soot from his oil lamp. He also beads the receiver into the stock once the right amount of cast is adjusted. Finally Dale installed a nice Kick-Eez pad after setting the correct amount of length of pull.
