doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com To Pitch or not ??? What about your gun???

FWIW, I deal with pitch exactly as Jim Legg does. Whether it's a 26" SxS for grouse or a 32" O/U for targets, I cut the butt at 90 deg to the comb. In conjuction with 7/8" drop from nose to heel, I end up with a gun that makes full contact with the shoulder pocket and has little tendency to pivot in recoil. It's this pivoting that I'm trying to avoid as it results in muzzle flip and face slap and , in extreme cases with guns that have virtually no pitch, causes the butt to slip down between shots.

When you guys talk about "zero" pich, I'm not sure I understand how you measure that. What I would call "zero" pitch is a gun, typical of the oldies with excessive drop, that when stood on the floor and slid against the wall will allow the muzzle to touch the wall as the top of the receiever does. THAT'S the gun that won't stay in my shoulder pocket between shots, and that's what I want to correct by adding "some" pitch. Seems "degrees" of pitch would be most quantitative if you laid a straightedge from the heel across the top of the receiver and measured the angle the barrels deflected downward (or stood the gun on the floor and slid it against the wall), but measuring that angle would be a pain for me. Far easier to measure the distance of the barrels from the wall, but then you have to specify a certain distance from the floor. Using the muzzle as a reference would give variable results depending on the barrel length, action length and even the length of pull.

Personally, I don't consider gun fit prescription numbers worth the paper they're written on. I can supply an expensive blank to a duplicator and order a stock made with 1 & 3/8 x 2 & 1/8 drop, 3/8 cast off, and specify the butt be 90 degrees to the comb and KNOW I'll have enough wood to remove 50-100 thou from the comb during sight-in. When I'm done, the gun will pattern 50/50 as I like it.The final dimensions will vary 1/16" here and there from gun to gun, and the sight picture, due to rib configuration and possibly barrel regulation, will differ too.....but they all shoot to point of aim. Nowadays, rather than provide numbers, I prefer to make a perfect pattern stock using Bondo and rasps and give that to the duplicator. It has many advantages, including less chance for miscommunication.

The point to all my rambling , as it pertains to the original question, is that I have a "formula" that guarantees the "right" pitch for me regardless of the gun I'm stocking. I don't measure it in inches or degrees, except to say that I cut the butt 90 degrees to the comb. It's simple, it works every time and I've found no better way to guarantee the right pitch.

Thank you, Mike. Neither of us are saying that this is necessarily the best way for everybody. However, if the comb is of a height that I can shoot well, it works for me. I like to keep things simple. Full contact between the butt pad and my shoulder pocket is what's important for me.
Thanks again,

Hi guys. Although I don't understand it, I agree with the comment that some guns just seem to fit right and others don't. After shooting dozens of side-by-sides of varying dimensions, though I've never been measured for a shotgun, I've found that in general I prefer about 14.5 inches of pull and 2.5 of drop at heel, but that I can make many other dimensions work for me. Oddly, I've had some guns with stock measurements that aren't close to what I think mine should be, yet I shoot the gun really well, and others that should fit just right that I can't shoot worth a darn. I don't pay much attention to pitch, but know that it can make a difference.

I am still confused on this pitch issue, though. You guys keep talking about cutting the butt at 90 degrees to the comb, but it seems to me the relation between the butt surface and the sighting plane is at least as important, if not more so, than its relation to the line of the comb, and that unless the comb line and the line of the top rib are identical on every shotgun you own, then using your method of basing the angle of the butt on the comb line will cause the relation between the butt and the sighting plane (the "pitch," as I understand it) to vary on every gun you so modify. Does that make sense? Thanks. TT

Don't mean to stink up the place, But... I pulled from the rack a recent purchase[LC Ideal] that doesn't have an original buttplate[now pachmyer] and has the pitch cut at 90 degrees to the comb. Using the wall method, I placed it against the wall the fences never touch the wall, the lever hits first and the barrels are 5 1/2" from the wall. Mounting the gun, I can feel only about an inch or so of the heal actually touching the top of the pocket. Again, I'm not up to speed on all the pitch theory, but the Ideal is going to to meet Mr. Dewalt. No intention of stepping on any toes, just an observation. Randy

The thing balanced across my wall thickness guage is a homebrewed pitch gauge. I'd just as soon measure (in degrees of angle) and layout pitch with this as stand the gun in the doorway such that the breech touches the casing and the muzzle is X distance away and then attempt to scribe a line on a piece of masking tape on the butt by sliding a chunk of plywd and pencil around the stock face. To each his own. One useful thing about zero pitch guns is that they are huge framing squares and can be used to "try" rectilinearity. Now if you had a house which had flooded and wracked, you'd want to check your house against your gun, not vice versa. But as a gun, for me the protruding toe does make the butt slip down at the shot.

jack


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Randy, my vague sense of geometry tells me that the LC must have a good bit of drop. If you are saying that the whack it at 90 to the comb rule of thumb might produce some strange anomalies. I agree.

jack

And the Brits have pitch described by two measurements: from trigger to heel and trigger to toe. Quite different conventions of "trying" and recording. Jim is right that solid butt contact in the shoulder pocket is the goal; how you say potato and tomato is custom and on-site expediency.

jack

Gentlemen, carry on the debate, get your protractors and levels out, take the saw to stock and whittle away contentedly. I'm going shooting.
Tomorrow we will discuss the splitting of the atom and whether Adolf Hitler had a bad Agent ( maybe the same one as Brittany?)

Anybody remember "Roland" who hung around the Shotgun Sports board and had a pamphlet on gunfit which he hawked around the internet? If I remember correctly, the thinking of said gent was that pitch effected POI in that a long-toed gun would slip down in the shoulder pocket and shoot high of POA and a long-heeled gun low. I think his unstated premise was that recoil and slippage on shoulder was taking place before the charge exited the bore. This has never made much sense to me as "equal and opposite reaction" certainly doesn't mean that the gun will recoil at 1200fps or even that it will get underway simultaneously with movement of the shot charge. However, to cloud the picture further, old Gough Thomas Garwood thought that flexure in the hand of very thin stocks also made guns shoot low and you'd certainly have to premise that kind of speculation on the idea that all sorts of recoil effects occur damn skippy as it were. Thoughts? Off to shoot skeet right now. Sal is probably home and dry after his "day" of shooting.

jack

Rabbit-

How firearm recoils can have a dramatic influence on point of impact. I used to compete in police revolver matches years ago. When I first started shooting all the old timers were very well versed in this. If my .357 was sighted in for the high velocity .357 rounds and I forgot to adjust the sights for the 38 wad cutter, contrary to what common sense dictated, the revolver shot high with the slower moving target round. The reason? Even in my 4" barreled revolver, the slower moving projectile was under the influence of recoil. Now whether this actually carries over to shotguns, I do not know, 1,200fps is considerably faster than the .38 target loads, on the other hand 28" of tube is considerably longer than 4".

With that said, like you, however, I am not totally sold on the recoil/point of impact theory. When your eye is your rear sight, how the gun is angled (the pitch) should, in theory have a great influence on where the shotgun shoots.

The photo below is of the stock of one of my shotguns. Before adding the pitch spacer, the shotgun was very uncomfortable for me to shoot and I was shooting it badly. I allowed a friend to shoot it and without being prompted, he said, "this thing recoils funny," and it did. The gun slipped* off the shoulder under recoil and I had a hard time hitting anything with it.

When I compared the shotgun to one I shot well (my Fox SW), I noticed the pitch was very different. So using the Fox as a rough guide, I calculated the pitch and installed a pitch spacer on the offending shotgun. Measuring the 30" barreled shotgun from the wall now gives me 1 1/2".

On the general issue of pitch, I am just a regular guy without any great mechanical skills or contraptions, so my approach was not exactly scientific, mind you. but it worked for me (“if it is stupid and it works, it isn’t stupid”). My approach was to find a shotgun I shoot well and make the other one as much like it as possible.

Doug
*edit by "slipped" I mean to say the pad was slipping down toward the arm pit and the barrels "bouncing" up.