A beautiful piece--whatever it is.....What is the drop at nose & heal by the way....Really fine work. Range report coming ? ...Tom
Hi Tom,
I used to do the gun fittings at the Orvis San Francisco store in the 90's. We sold custom fit shotguns and anyone on the West Coast who needed to be measured came to our store for that. We had a try-gun which is a gun that is almost infinitely adjustable for drop at heel, drop at comb, length of pull, offset or onset, and pitch. Drop at heel is how far below the level of the barrel the top of the butt stock measures. Drop at comb is the distance measurement where the stock starts after the wrist. An easy way to check your gun(s) is to rest them upside down on the barrel on a glass counter-top and pull out a ruler to measure it.
When I did the gun fittings, the goal was to adjust the gun so that your eye was centered over and directly above the barrel. If you have a shotgun fit like that and you mount the gun correctly consistently, it will shoot where you are looking and you don't have to make any adjustments with your head to get the correct sight picture.
Problem with a large drop at heel and comb is that it magnifies the recoil of the rifle or shotgun. It really pounds down on your shoulder. I had one gentleman who had a 4¼" drop at heel. He didn't want to move his head forward and down to the stock as you normally do when mounting a gun, so we did what was known as a "high-hat" fitting. He was a big fellow so he wasn't concerned about the increased recoil. His wife 's measurement, if I recall correctly, was a 2¼" drop at heel and 1¼" at comb, which was much more common in a normal gun fitting.
It was not uncommon to find large drop at heel with Lehigh and Buck's county rifles, but both of those styles had a very highly curved butt stock and the stock on this gun is so straight you could put a ruler along the bottom of this gun and their would be no gaps between it and the stock. Like everyone else here though, I wouldn't be too concerned whether it fits into a particular school of gun building or another. It's a beautiful piece and I'd just shoot it and enjoy it.
Twisted_1in66
Topic: A Niel Fields Flintlock (Read 3402 times)