One Hand Clapping

Customizing a shotgun for target shooting
Reducing recoil and enhancing aiming

After I returned from The Matrix I decided to install the shotgun customization accessories that arrived via UPS yesterday. I obtained them from Gamaliel Shooting Supply. It was the first time I had bought from Gamaliel, and I was very pleased with their customer service and speed. I'll definitely be a repeat customer.

My hobby is trapshooting. Trap is a target shotgun sport. An an excellent guide to trap shooting is on Remington's web site. Briefly, a trap shoot consists of 100 targets, fired in four orders of 25 each. Shooters in each order fire five targets each from five stations, arranged in a semi-circle 16 yards behind the trap machine, which throws the targets away from the shooter in random directions.

I bought a hunting shotgun for my son in 2001. Until I save up enough to buy myself a target-model gun (hint! hint!), I am using his to compete. A la Kim du Toit, I will post a gratuitous gun pic of the gun. It is a 12-gauge Beretta AL 391:

What I did last night was -

unscrew the standard brass front sight bead and replace it with a Tru-Glo long bead fiber optic sight. This kind of sight collects ambient light into a red fiber optic tube and diverts it out each end (see pic at the link). One end is pointed toward the rear of the gun. It makes a very observable aiming point so that you aim the gun quicker, reducing the chance of missing. In trap, you have only about one second to find the target, aim and shoot, so every eyeblink of time is important.

I replaced the standard fore-end cap with an eight-ounce, mercury filled cap. The fore-end cap is what hold the forestock onto the gun. In the picture, it is the black knob sticking out to the right from the wood, under the barrel. If you can imagine a two-inch tube projecting forward from that cap, then you can imagine what the mercury cap looks like. A picture is here, at the bottom of the page.

This kind of cap is a recoil reducer. As the gun moves rearward from recoil, the mercury is displaced relatively forward and slaps against the front of the cap, consuming some of the recoil energy. You get the energy back as the gun moves back forward after it punches your shoulder, but overall the effect is to reduce the perceived recoil. While the total recoil energy does not change, the mercury cap lengthens the time over which it is felt, helping to break the recoil up into a series of jolts rather than just one big jolt. Hence the energy of the fired shell is dissipated over three to five milliseconds in several spikes. Semi-automatic guns already do this because of the way the mechanism is designed, but the mercury cap improves the recoil curve.

Adding the mercury cap threw the gun off balance, so I added weight to the rear. I could have bought a counterweight designed for the purpose that fits inside the stock, or even another mercury tube for the stock, but I decided to economize. I weighed eight ounces of BBs on a kitchen scale, put them into a Ziplock snack bag, and duct taped the bag inside the bottom interior of the stock. Voila! For pennies I made a recoil-reducing, stock-mounted counterweight. The BBs give the same kind of effect as the mercury when the gun is fired; they displace relatively forward.

The mercury cap and the BB bag together add one pound to the gun's weight. This improves the guns inertial resistance to recoil displacement, thus slowing its recoil-driven movement into my shoulder (good) and also adds heft to the gun so I can swing it more smoothly (also good).

I added a palm swell to the right side of the grip. This is a shaped, self-adhesive sorbothane pad that improves the angle of my trigger finer onto the trigger, reducing muscle fatigue and allowing for smoother trigger pull.

Finally, I upgraded the buttstock's recoil pad to a Gel-Tek pad, made by Beretta. The pad is a "polymer shell and recoil absorbing silicone gel core. The unique gel core distributes the recoil effect over the entire pad surface, reducing the felt recoil to shooter."

What's the big deal about recoil? It becomes a big deal after you have shot about 150 shells or so in one day or shoot fewer targets on successive days. I have a tournament next month in which I will shoot three events in three days, totaling 400 shells, 200 on day three. So recoil management is important.

A lot of shooters tell you that their accuracy is not affected by recoil, that they get used to it and learn to ignore the shoulder pain from repeated shooting. In truth, the pain is not very great unless the gun fits poorly, in which case you're missing anyway. Those guys may be right, but I personally believe that nearly everyone comes to flinch, however slightly, just as he pulls the trigger in anticipation of recoil. In a tournament one unbroken target can make the difference between winning and losing. The 200-target shoot next month is the Tennessee state championship. If you shoot 197 you probably will place no higher than fourth. So every legal thing you can do to stay on target is desirable.

by Donald Sensing, 5/16/2003 07:31:20 AM. Permalink |

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