The left barrel of a new to me double throws the pattern right so far that at 21 yards my aim point wasn't in the spread. If you have run across it, have you been able to bring back to center by honing the chokes?

New to you....were there owners before you that could’ve possibly had a choke cut off center? The only times I’ve ever seen 1 barrel that badly regulated the choke was cut eccentric/irregularly. Cant say I’ve ever seen a factory untouched gun with one barrel that badly regulated.
Barrel smiths can correct a badly cut choke in a barrel, Briley did this for a friends guns a decade or so ago.

New double
What is it?
Screw in chokes?
Barrel length?
Chamber length?
etc?

1906 Scot sxs with 29" damascus barrels. It has slightly more drop and cast than my favorite but I hit cosnsistently with right barrel and miss too often with left. I took it to patterning board and took steady aim. I suspect someone altered choke without having alignment tool to center cutter.

I had a Remington FE trap that had the right choke badly gouged sometime in it's past. It was 1/2 pattern to the right. It looked like the tool got sideways.

Dean at Skeet's brought the pattern completely center while maintaining plenty of choke.
The FE is a damn sure doubles gun now.

I've patterned S X Ss that were not regulated. One barrel, both barrels, but never just one barrel that was off that much. I talked with Dean at Skeet's about this just this year. He told me it was extremely doubtful that he could move a pattern that much (8" at 20 yds.) by his method of honing by hand.

SRH

Friends had this problem with Kolar o/u shot guns. A young lady was AA in three gauges and C in 410. Kolar argued like a CPA protecting the balance sheet but they ultamatly fixed it. A fellow at our club had the same problem. LP'S dad must have shot our pattern plate 100 times befor they replaced it. It is worth checking.

bill

Friends had this problem with Kolar o/u shot guns. A young lady was AA in three gauges and C in 410. Kolar argued like a CPA protecting the balance sheet but they ultamatly fixed it. A fellow at our club had the same problem. LP'S dad must have shot our pattern plate 100 times before they replaced it. It is worth checking.

bill

Decades ago I had a flat of the Eley Hawk subsonic loads that I thought would be good for my 4-weight barrel B-Grade Ansley H. Fox. Not so. While the right barrel shot fine, the left barrel threw the sub-sonic load way off. Switching to my 1200 fps reloads both barrels shot fine.

I'd try an ammo change.

When this is the case I wonder if it has something to do with a person being left or right-handed. Might sound far-fetched, but I recently read about a right-handed man who had ordered his doubles choked so that he could shoot the left barrel first, being convinced that his being right-handed prevented the gun from recoiling left as much, and giving him a fraction of a second quicker recovery time to the second shot. Probably read that on here, but cannot remember where.

Wouldn't be the first crazy thing posted here...

Thanks all. I was using a very light load, 2 1/2 dram 7/8 oz 12 ga load. I plan to try patterning again using a rest and will try different loads.

For what it's worth, if you spend enough time at the rifle range you will see right handed shooters consistently pulling to the right, and the lefties consistently pulling to the left.

I see no reason that shotgun operators would suddenly behave differently.

Are you right handed?

The gun could be crossfiring with those light loads, and the right barrel not showing it on the paper, or plate, because of the way you're holding it. Crossfiring is common with light loads in vintage S X Ss, but all I ever saw did it with both barrels, to varying degrees.

Try a heavier load in that barrel at about 1165 fps and see what it does to the pattern placement. If you determine it truly is just that barrel crossfiring you may have to use different loadings in each one to regulate it.

I have a Janssen 3" 12ga with 32" barrels I use for pass shooting. When I first got it I didn't pattern before it's first trip. I sometimes hit withe right, never with the left.
After patterning I saw the right was slightly off, the left was way off. The chokes had been opened, a bad job was done. I sent it to Mike Orlen who was able to correct them with some careful honing. Both barrels now shoot to POI and a bit less choke is fine with steel.

My first "real gun" was a 20ga Rem model 31. My mother had taken a fall quail hunting and bent the barrel. I learned to shoot with it. I can't remember which way it was bent but I know it was no lead one way and a double lead going the other way. Local gunsmith fixed it with the help of a forked tree in his front yard...Geo

they say confession is good for the soul. I was blaming the gun and it was me all along. The gun is a 1906 Dickson Round action with beautiful damascus barrels. It is close to my other gun dimensions but more drop and more cast off. I asked numerous people and eventually shot it from a rest as in rifle shooting to take out the variable and after a few trials did it again closing my left eye to insure I was looking down the rib. The patterns are fine. I believe I was getting more into the gun with the left barrel and the added cast off ended up with me shooting to the right. On the plus side the gun came with a sprare buttstock that is higher.

I'm very glad the gun is regulated. What you have "confessed to" shows again just how hard it is to hold gun the same every shot when patterning. I still prefer to hold it offhand, as opposed to using a rest, but I spent much of my life competing in offhand rifle and pistol, and believe that a gun can shoot a little differently (mostly elevation) off a rest as opposed to offhand.

I have found that the lighter weight a gun is the more susceptible it is to it's pattern placement being affected by minor differences in grip and mounting. At least with a rest you can determine lateral regulation easier.

Well done.

I thought you said it was Scott...

How 'bout some pics, Nitrah. I'd love to see it.

SRH

I don't have a photo hosting acct but can e mail them if you'd like.

Yes, please do. And, I will post them if you'd like me to.

Was it a Scott as your first response claimed or a Dixon as said later ?

The gun is a Dickson, I was being vague calling it a Scot. I meant a Scottish made

I might add that this gun fitting issue is complicated by my right eye not being as dominant as it once was. I noticed it a few years ago shooting an o/u and found my left eye looking down the side

Nitrah's John Dickson ....... just beautiful.





SRH

I have followed this thread with interest and to its conclusions .
It is a phenomenon I have encountered so many times ,that it is in fact the shooter not the gun, though many people still find it hard to admit to it .
It all comes down to mount , stance and gun control by which I mean the actual holding and grip on the gun.
Over the years and having done hundreds of gun fittings it has been my conclusion that 60% plus of shooters problems are they themselves and many problems can be overcome by simple adjustments to the individuals handling of the gun in question .

Amen, gunman. I learned this for myself after building my grease plate. Even how tightly you grip the gun can affect where that pattern goes.

A rifle shoots it's best groups when held exactly the same each shot, and often will group the tightest with the least amount of grip being applied to it by the shooter, thus allowing it to recoil unhindered each shot. Why would a shotgun behave any differently?

Thanks for that post. SRH

Perhaps. I may even tend to agree with you. However, when one gun is egregiously not regulating and yet a similar gun, shot by the same person does regulate - I suspect the gun, not the shooter, and not the load.

It would have to be VERY similar. Same LOP, DAC,DAH, pitch, castoff, weight grip style, etc. Then, the shooter himself would have to hold the gun exactly the same, which we do not always do.

When I find a gun that is not regulating properly I go back and shoot the plate again, maybe even a total of three different days, to ensure that it's not me.
_________________________

That's strange Stan. I have guns with quite different LOPs, DACs, DAHs, Castoffs, weights, grips, and so forth and yet they all tend to regulate very well - save one.

The patterns were essentially tangential and remained so over any distance or load that I wished to try. I'd bet it was the gun, not the shooter.

Finally some common sense and reason...

BrentD I did say 60% . But what you talk about as regulated and what I talk about may well be two different things .
A subject that has been argued about in the past and I do not think there will ever be agreement as to what it is .

Im talking about regulation being the two barrels shoot to the same center (with some room for minor discrepancies). Are you talking about shooting to the point of aim?

Nitrah's original post was with regards to both, one barrel does not shoot with the other and only one barrel shoots to point of aim. I think it was the lack of pattern overlap that was the bigger issue however, and that has always been the definition of regulation as I have known it. I do not think the shooter is a big influence in that factor.

Brent, you seem to be discounting the entire concept of lateral recoil affecting pattern placement according to which shoulder the gun is being fired from.

Nitrah just proved that mount,etc., can affect one barrel more than the other. With proper mounting and gun control his pattern went back to where the other barrel's pattern is.

Stan within some small amount, sure it matters, but remarkably little. Hard to see how mount affects one barrel more than another. If it did, what was the unshot barrel doing? Going the other direction? Nitrah has, as I understand it, nonoverlapping patterns. That's not some small amount.

Keep in mind that no one is fitted for regulation when a gun is built but rather it is regulated at the factory - almost always with no problems - and then shot by unknown owners or at least persons whose mount and shooting shooting styles are unknown to the mechanics doing the regulating.

If regulation was so sensitive to the individual shooting it, we would never get anywhere with these vintage guns without having to take them down to bare barrels and rebuild them.

Well success at last, at the suggestion of JP from Dickson and another friend I put a pad on the stock to compensate for the cast off and lo and behold my Dickson shoots spot on. Now the problem can I bend a stock with way too much cast off back without breaking the stock? It needs maybe 1/2 to 5/8" bend at heel

Well, that sounds like good news. I'm a little surprised, but whatever works.

If it was bent and not carved with that cast off, one would think it should be relatively easily to bend it back.

Have you bent stocks before?

I shot absolutely horribly with a lightweight BLNE that had too much cast off. Sold it to a stouter fellow and the problem was solved.

On that gun, the stock was not bent, but stocked that way from the maker. You can see in this post how the gun was just built that way.

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubb...2198#Post442198

This gun was stocked with the cast off, even the top tang is directed to the right. I suspect it will need restocked to remedy

If you are going to restock then you might try bending, because you have nothing to lose. Might end up with an S-curved gun which would be interesting and might start a new craze in gun fitting.

It is a heck of a gun though. I'd sure do my best to make it work.

He doesn't have the junk guns you're accustomed too...just cant let any jAke leg work on it.

Dicksons are notoriously difficult to bend, most of the time impossible. The fillets on the stock are very fragile and bending can do damage to them. Most gunmakers won’t even attempt to bend a Dickson RA. I said most....there’s some out there that have done it with some success, but usually the successful bends are pretty minute. You’re not going to move that stock 1/4 cast off to 1/4 cast on. You might be able to get to neutral before damage occurs. It’s not uncommon to bend action tangs when bending stocks too. On big bends, it has to be done or you’ll have the tangs “springing” from the wood.
That is one of the big bugaboos with buying a Dickson RA. It has to fit pretty well when you buy it because adjustments are pretty limited, restocking is usually required to make it work well for the new owner. And as you might already know....restocking a Dickson RA is not cheap.

Thanks for the input. I am hesitant to try. I have bent a number of guns but all straight stock and bend for more or less drop. This stock has a pistol grip so I wonder if I could bend it after the pistol grip. I realize that is a lot more wood to bend but then I avoid putting stress on the head of the stock.

Nitrah, clamp the head of the stock - as SKB suggested. That will ensure it does not split.

I bet you can do it at least for a ways. It would be worth a try.

No. Clamping the head will not ensure that it does not spilt. WTF. I already stated the issues with bending a RA. It’d be worth a try huh? Easy to say when it’s not your expensive gun and when you don’t have to pay for either a very expensive repair or an extremely expensive restock.
What terrible advice.

just for those that have followed my struggles. One of the recommendations was a gel teck pad by Beretta, which came to day just as I was leaving to shoot. They don't look half bad and that was all I needed, was 1/4" reduction in the cast off to shoot it well

I'm glad it was that easy for you to get it shooting to p.o.a. with both barrels, Nitrah.

Knowing that it is will likely do much for your shooting as well, because of the confidence you now have in it.

Best, SRH

My friend a 16 gauge Merkel (1620) that shot center of pattern 6" low at 25 yards, both barrels. Maybe ammo, but who knows. He had never fired it and took it dove hunting and was missing everything and went to another gun and started knocking them down. He found out what was going on shooting at a patterning board. Gun went back to Merkel to get both barrels regulated. Yep, they shot to point of impact. Just to the wrong point of impact.

tut, if both barrels were shooting to the same point of impact, they were regulated. When they both don't shoot to point of aim, and they both shoot low the same amount, there is likely nothing wrong with the gun ....it just doesn't fit the shooter.

If they both shot to the same place, and they were just a little low, I'd have handled it myself instead of sending it back to Merkel. Building up the comb with leather or moleskin, bending for a little less drop, either would have raised the POI that much. Shooting too low is not what I usually see, but it's probably because of my build. Shooting high is much more common for me with a new gun.

Best, SRH

Stan, was a brand new gun still in the Box. I freely admit I didn't try to shoot it. I gave him my 28 Gauge Merkel SXS the next time out and he went 3 for 3 on Doves and I had to pry it out of his hands.