doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com how does Pitch affect gun fit?

A lot of old rules of thumb and expediency (gauged balls to the lb)seem somewhat unusual in this day of precision mensuration. Sticking the old smoke pole up agin the house (the try square of architectural rectilinearity) is like that and words that imply value judgment don't help much either. Probably up and down pitch are more fitting in that they imply a slight depressing or raising effect on elevation of shot. Can someone explain the severe pitch on a Win 73?

jack

You mean your house isn't perfectly plumb? (**GASP**)

Yeh, I guess Ollie Winchester probably lived in a flood plain.

jack

The fact that they called it "pitch" pretty much explains what it does to your shot pattern...pitches it up or down.

I've always heard negative pitch was pitch down at the muzzle. Bottom line is I have found that about 1 1/2 inches negative pitch (using 28 inch barrels and a 14 inch lop with normal drops) fits me best. Parkers with DHBP's seem to have this. LC Smiths and SSBP Parkers seem to have much less, usually 1/2 inch to 0 in my experience. A gunsmith/gunfitter helped me with a Smith once by loosening the buttplate screws, putting a 1/4" thick piece of folded cardboard under the heel, retightening the screws and having me mount the gun while he faced me head on (I know, made me nervous too). It made all the difference in the world. Before, I was having to compensate for the shallow pitch in order to line my eye up. After, the gun just seemed to drop into place. Its an easy experiment, try it for yourself. FWIW

I have read the that down pitch tends to push the stock up into the face on recoil. I guess that up pitch would tend to let the stock move down on on recoil. If so, that could be good for trap shooters, as they fire a lot of shells in a short time span at rising targets. Requirements might be different for trap doubles and bunker shooters, as they need to stay in the gun for the second shot.

If the targets were always high, as in driven incoming, then up pitch could be more comfortable than neutral or down. Shooter would not have to band back as far to keep full contact on shoulder.

Yup, it is a fine line between minimizing face slap and keeping the gun on your shoulder for the second shot. Those with backgrounds in competitive shooting find the second shot with the gun firmly planted is extremely important. Many competitive shooters in two shot games treat the butts of their shotguns with all manner of sticky materials. Field shooters and poor shooters seem unconcerned about such details.

Jack O'Connor, who was an acknowledged authority and respected shotgun expert when Michael Yardley was born, said this, on page 160, of The Shotgun Book: "Actually the function of pitch is to keep the gun comfortably at the shoulder. If the stock has zero pitch or even up pitch, the butt tends to slip down under the armpit and the gun tends to shoot high. If there's too much down pitch, the butt tends to slip up and throw the shot low". IMO, he could have stopped after the first sentence as the last two are suggesting extreme pitch conditions, I believe. The first sentence is the relevant one. My best shooting buddy, who is a much better shot than I ever was, or will be, claims an instance where adding the thickness of one piece of cardboard between the pad and the wood, at the heel, fixed a high-shooting gun. I don't believe that, for a minute, but if it worked for him, it's OK by me.

Jim, I can't claim the knowlege that I initially tried to find when I posted this--which is how to DETERMINE the correct pitch for something more than just comfort--but I will say that when I was doing patterning with a pattern-stock in preparation for duplicating it I tried cutting the butt perpendicular to the comb. However, I never got the results I was looking for, as my results tended to be somewhat erratic and it made it quite difficult to make adjustments to the stock and correlate them to the pattern board. I went back and re-measured some guns that I shot well, and based on that I finally got more CONSISTENT results when I adjusted the pitch so my stock was a bit longer in the toe. I still find this element of fit to be one that perplexes me more than the rest since I really just stumbled onto what works for me, but I have come to believe that pitch DOES play a role in determining correct fit more than just comfort, albeit it seems to be a variable that merely aids in consistency of mount or in "allowing the other variables of fit to do their job", rather than DIRECTLY affecting POI. I believe cast at the toe to be of similar importance, just for example--it doesn't affect where my head sits on the stock, but it does allow me to get the most out of the rest of my fitting work and based on the improved consistency that results it does have an effect on where the gun hits. I'm pretty tall and have found that I shoot much better and more consistently with a stock that's quite a bit longer than normal--perhaps this makes me at one extreme and possibly more likely to see a difference than others?

This is my very rudimentary understanding of it, at least for today--in short that the correct pitch affects comfort but also is an aid to a consistent mount. I remain very unschooled in this, but that's my story thus far and I'm sticking to it. (for now)

I'm surely not suggesting that the simple 90 degree butt cutoff that works for me applies to anyone/everyone else. If you're one of those way forward leaners, surely you'd want to toe a bit longer(less than 90 degrees from the comb). If you're a straight up or worse yet, backward leaning, rifle shooter, you'd likely be happier with more than 90 degrees from the comb. However, in all cases, the most significant thing you are accomplishing is to achieve maximum contact between the butt and your shoulder pocket, IMO.