Question on stock geometry

[northmn]

I also think that we get carried away on "fit" without understanding the aspect of balance.  LIke when  the Holland and Holland shotgun was mentioned  H&H does not make a shotgun that does not have great balance.  Jack O'Connor one time stated that you "haven't been conned till you have been conned by an Englishman"  in reference to their shotgun fitting process.  O'Connors point was that we can adapt to at least minor variations of fit and still hit.  I do not believe with a rifle that there is that perfect combination of measurements in itself that will make it shoot.  In shotguns, high combs were used by the English for overhead driven bird shooting as they make one shoot high. Trap shooters use that principle also.  But for general shooting a more dead on traditional fit is needed.  In a rifle you want a comfortable hold, but you still need a weight and balance that is suited to your needs.  Individuals vary.  Most like a slight muzzle heavy balance for offhand work.

DP

[Artificer]

Ronward,

Thanks for the explanation of the 90 degree stock to the body hold. 

I don't mean to be argumentative, but that seems just downright unnatural and contrary to the comfortable way to raise and shoot a rifle or a shotgun for that matter.  With a 90 degree hold, you are twisting your body and head to align on the stock uncomfortably.  If you have your feet in a normal position facing forward, it throws you off balance.  The natural, more comfortable and steadier way is for a right hand person to angle between 30 degrees to 45 degrees to the left - depending on the size of their chest, arms and neck. 

I was never trained in formal offhand rifle shooting until I joined the Marine Corps but I grew up hunting pheasants, ducks, pigeons, quail, rabbits, squirrels, geese and raccoon in Iowa - though raccoon is a different kind of shooting.  We hunted a LOT as Dad and we kids really enjoyed it and it helped put meat on the table.  Iowa had really strict deer seasons in those years where you had to draw on a state wide lottery.  We couldn't afford to hunt outside Muscatine county, so we never hunted deer.  When I learned to plant my left foot correctly before shooting and even when a covey of quail busted all around you or a cock pheasant busted out cackling and scaring you - that's when I became a pretty good wing shot and running game shot.  By planting that left foot, it put me in a more natural position to raise and steady the gun even for very fast shooting and that was because the gun was angled in front of my chest rather than a 90 degree hold. 

Human physiology hasn't changed that much in 200 years.  Why would they hold the rifle in more uncomfortable and unstable position? 

Though I realize we can only draw so much from paintings and engravings of the 18th century, due to how accurate the artist was with the subject and how much he knew about the subject (besides how good or bad of and artist he was) - Many if not most shooting prints shows the left foot forward and that would make the hold angling across the chest.  Here's a link that shows two engravings.  Even the poorer quality engraving at the bottom on "shooting at a mark" shows the left foot forward.

http://www.ballindalloch-press.com/society/shooting.html

Now, I may be missing something her or misunderstanding something, but I truly don't see how a 90 degree hold of the stock to the body could ever have become popular or widespread. 

[Artificer]

I have to say I'm very much in agreement with James Rogers and Northmn in wanting to put as much as we have learned about stock fit from modern guns into the "proper" shape for longrifles.  Maybe I'm way off base, but I think we can marry both worlds.

Northmn's comments about not getting hit with a piece or a section of the wood come to mind especially.  If a stock hurts you when you shoot, you aren't going to want to shoot that rifle very much.  While muzzleloaders don't recoil as drastically as many modern guns, poor stock design will still hurt you in medium to larger calibers. 

I learned this in my years with the North South Skirmish Association, reenacting and actually shooting full charge "government" loads.  Most NSSA shooters much prefer the stock of the Springfield or Zouave style rifles over the British Enfields.  They find it more comfortable to hold and shoot, even with the "half powder charge" accuracy loads they use.   

I decided that to do a more accurate reenactment portrayal, that I should fire a full issue of 40 rounds, 60 grain powder charges with original style minie balls from an 1858 2 band Enfield Rifle to see what it was relay like.  I wore an authentic uniform and no shoulder pad.  It took me about two hours as it REALLY hurt my shoulder and I wound up with a huge black and blue spot for days.  The pain slightly crippled me in the right shoulder for about two days as well.  I kept a written log of what it felt like after firing each round.  I can't print some of the words I wrote down there.  I decided I should award myself a Purple Heart for Stupidity.  Grin.  I repeated the experiment (though I only fired 20 shots with that rifle) with an original Amoskeag 2 Band Rifle to keep the size of the guns in a more direct comparison.  That gun didn't hurt NEAR as bad as the Enfield.    Both stocks were historically correct, but one clearly felt a whole lot better to shoot.

[James Rogers]

I also think that we get carried away on "fit" without understanding the aspect of balance. 

    ....... 

True. Balance (or dynamics for swinging guns) should be a part of the big picture. Most people today try to obtain their choice of balance from the ends instead of between the hands going out. Some of the swamp profiles still allow for a forward balance put place the bulk between the hands for better control.

we  can adapt to at least minor variations of fit and still hit.   ..... In a rifle you want a comfortable hold, but you still need a weight and balance that is suited to your needs.  Individuals vary.  Most like a slight muzzle heavy balance for offhand work.

The better shots can aways shoot good, even with a pig on a shovel. All can shoot better with a decent fit but I have never gone for the super small adjustments. Just has to be reasonable to allow a good comfortable stance, cheekbone on the comb. Individuals do vary but I have found that the majority who shoot paper or targets, be it with rifle or shotgun like a little more weight to the front.

[ronward]

atificer,
    no argument, just good discussion!.
    i understand that what fore clarities sake we will call, "todays hold", is allot more comfortable with today's guns, where length of pull and drop is adjusted to accomidate a more or less straight forward facing or "open stance" and gun weight, even with a bit of front weight is manageable.....try "today's hold" with a 12-14 lb gun, with all of that 1-1/8 inch barrel hanging entirely out in front of you. even the hawkens we see built today are weight concious facsimiles of what was normal back then. my point is that we all consider what we know to be normal as comfortable because of the architecture of todays guns. if a shooter from 1830 showed up today, our "normal", open off-hand stance would be foriegn to him....untill he was given one of our guns to try.   what i see is people trying to build as correct a representaion of guns from 150 yrs. ago and then trying to shoot them like we shoot our model 70's. guns weren't shot that way 150 yrs. ago. there can be no other conclusion to this when you see 12-1/2 inch pulls, 3-3/4 inch drops and deep crescented buttplates. they were ment to be shot off the forearm with your body between butt and forestock so that your forestock grip was achored at the elbow against your ribs making a (somewhat) steady brace to hold up a long weighty barrel. my contention is that this method of aiming is not so bad with these guns and if made properly (read historicly correct). it actually works pretty well. granted the gun has to have a shorter pull and lots of drop in the butt, just as they had, but it was done that way to accomidate the then current style of shooting, which brings us full circle to the fact that the then current style of shooting was because the guns were long and heavily barreled because the qualities of steel  used in the barrels and thier methods of manufacture required the barrels to be so heavy walled, not just because some popular builder thought that was the way a gun is supposed to be. you can't be historicly correct by  trying to adapt our current stock arcitecture into a gun built 150 yrs ago and it is uncomfortable shoot a historicly correct gun in our modern stance for any length of time. the evidence that supports this is in every original gun that still exhists today, so if one wants to call it speculation, it may be, but it is also evidenced by exhisting samples.   
         

[James Rogers]

I think it's important to keep in mind that any disagreement in this great discussion is found mainly in the use of only certain types of guns in a certain time frame. Those mainly being in the 19th century , heavily dropped in the butt, crescent bp's and many with straight barrels later on.  Although I have only found a rare couple to have a high enough comb at the nose to allow me to cheek it good, these guns work best being shot across the body with the butt off the shoulder and on the arm as ronward has stated. This however is not an across the board historical way of shooting but only for those types of guns. I believe these types of guns were in the majority during the resurgence of the muzzleloading guns and their profile is imprinted in most all who hear the words "Kentucky rifle" and rightly so. Their style of shooting is still often considered the only appropriate historical way to shoot anything that loads from the muzzle which is simply not the case.

[Artificer]

Ronward,

If you are talking about "all the originals" being what James Rogers' posted above,"Those mainly being in the 19th century , heavily dropped in the butt, crescent bp's and many with straight barrels later on."  - then I definitely agree you can't use the "modern style" of shooting because you put the buttplate out on the arm.  Many of the really heavy barrels with those stock features were actually meant to be shot off a bench - as in many of the target rifles prior to the Civil War.

However, if you look at many earlier rifles with flat or slightly arched buttplates (especially English or Continental influenced) and you look at period engravings of the 18th century, we see the "modern style" of shooting goes back to that period as well.  So does that make the deep crescent, heavy drop rifles actually used "the modern style" shooting and what we do today as the "post modern" or "historic and current modern?" Grin.

U.S Military Rifles from 1792 through 1865 did not use such heavy drop, deep crescent buttplates, either.  So perhaps the "modern style" of shooting is actually the "military style" of the 18th through the Mid 19th century.   In all the drill manuals and even in volley firing in the 18th and early to mid 19th century, one always stepped back with the right foot when in the "Aim" position - thereby supporting the musket or rifled musket in what we would call the modern style today. 

[northmn]

Rifles built before about 1800 and especially before and during the Revolution appear to be built to shoot as we shoot.  A J.P. Beck or a Dickert for instance, and some in other schools.  The real oddballs are those built during the "Golden Age" with slim stocks.  Many of these were said to have very heavy straighter barrels as well a the slim curved buttplates.  In building rifles, over time I have seen a lot of 13/16 45 barrels used on "Golden Age" copies because these barrels balance better.  We used to use the heavier early type stocks with large buttplates for the heavier barrels like the 7/8 or 15/16.  Some even then filled buttstocks with lead to get the balance they wanted.  I cannot help but wonder if some of the surviving Golden Age firearms did not survive because they may have been more "special purpose" as in shooting off a bench or so.  Plains rifles like the Hawken could be shot off the shoulder and in later years Hawkens were offered with shotgun buttplates as I understand it.  Also Hawkens had tapered barrels.  The less expensive trade rifles like the Derringers, Lancasters etc were made with straighter barrels and quite heavy.  The Henry was popular but in English pattern.  Plains rifles may have been made to shoot off the arm for horseback purposes   Looking at pictures of some of the 1820-1840 rifles in my KRA book, I would think that you would have to be a contortionist to shoot one, unless off some sort of rest.  Also our current modern shooting style and method of hold is almost natural.  To develop another style just to accommodate an awkward rifle really does not appeal to me.


DP

[ronward]

 i have no rebuttal to that, you are absolutely right, there! it very well may be that i am one of those that, as James Roberts suggests,  are new enough to these guns that i just haven't seen enough of them or read  enough about them, yet!
     that's what this great forum is all about....it's nice to get into a good discussion with level headed people who don't turn discussion into  personal attacks over different points of view!
        

[Artificer]

Northman,

Extremely well written  I was thinking of the shotgun style buttplates on some original Hawkens as well. 

One of the USIMLT members had an English flintlock sporting rifle about 1818-20, rather plain, that was a delight to any modern shooter.  I'm also thinking of the British flintlock and percussion rifles made for India and African game.

Your quote of:  "To develop another style just to accommodate an awkward rifle really does not appeal to me." said it better than I could. 

[Jerry V Lape]

This has been a good discussion.  However, there is one aspect not brought up regarding pull length and the other stock dimensions.  The people using the original guns were not our size!  They were generally several inches shorter than our average shooter today.  So the stocks had to be shorter and other dimensions varied accordingly.  And I am still not convinced that any of these guns were intended to be shot off the arm.  Anytime I try that it hurts!  They weren't stupid, if it hurt they wouldn't have done it either. 

[ronward]

 ihave seen many pull lengths in the nieghborhood of 12-1/4 inches, though.....put a 12-1/4 in pull to your shoulder and it feels like you can't bend your elbow enough to hang onto the gun. people were somewhat shorter on average, but i don't think that much shorter!. the short pulls were because the gun was "shouldered" on the forearm. stand erect extend your arm out straight in front of you and bend your arm as if to hold the wrist of a rifle, with your finger on the trigger and you will see that the 13-3/4 to 14 inch pull that your modern gun has becomes about 12 inches with your arm in this position.

[Artificer]

Jerry,

People in the 18th century in colonial America were almost as tall as people today.  The 19th century saw the population average height shrink, but this has often been explained by the vast numbers of shorter immigrants.

Going back to what I wrote earlier, "By the time of the American Revolution, the male colonists averaged 5'8" to almost 5'9".  The average height actually went down for most of the 19Th century until it began rising in the latter part.  Today the average male height is 5'9.1".  Colonial women were an average of 5'3" to 5'3 1/2" and today the average height is 5'4"."

I might suggest that at least some to many of the surviving rifles we have are so short because they didn't fit most people even when they were made. 

[ronward]

why would a noteworthy builder of the time purposely build a gun that will fit no-one?? i doubt it would be built like that on speculation, building one that won't fit anyone for specualtion is a good way to make sure you always have a gun or two in your shop! it is well established that most guns built by the smaller shops were built to order, so i would say it's safe to assume that a good many (by modern standards) normal sized people wanted rifles with, an extra short pull for a reason.

[J.D.]

so i would say it's safe to assume that a good many (by modern standards) normal sized people wanted rifles with, an extra short pull for a reason.

Yeah, but we weren't there, so we don't know the reason.

IMHO,  we are building guns for today's shooters, so why not build a gun that fits today's shooters, who are using a modern shooting style?

God bless

[flehto]

Perhaps the shorter LOP was required because of bulkier clothing...much more had to be worn to keep warm vs today's lighter and thinner insulation? Also thicker clothing was a good recoil  buffer  asre the thin, highly curved BPs? .....Fred

[Artificer]

why would a noteworthy builder of the time purposely build a gun that will fit no-one??

Ron,

I didn't write that some rifles were built that fit no one.  What I wrote was that some to many rifles may still be around because they didn't fit MOST people at the time. (Modified to add: When I talk about shorter or longer rifles, I mean length of pull.)  To clarify, the very short rifles probably only fit a very small number of people at the time they were made.  Rifles that were longer and would fit more people got used more after the original owner and were "used up" over the years.  Shorter guns would still have had use in families as growing children would have been able to shoot the rifles until they outgrew them, so the very short rifles would not have arbitrarily thrown away, they just would not have been used as much by adults.  The guns with really short stocks and long heavy barrels would have been used the least and they most likely would have been shot off a bench or rest.  

There is also the long standing myth that people were "shorter back then."  I was taught that in my early years and I believed that for a long time as well.  Well, newer research has shown people were actually taller back then than we commonly had believed.  The average height of American Males and Females by the time of the Revolutionary War was almost as tall as the average heights today.  Where I think the older thinking "that people were shorter" came from was at least in part from surviving articles of clothing.  There may be a surviving authentic coat, weskit, or dress in the case of the ladies, attributed to a famous person and that article of clothing is very small.  So the thought was, since the surviving clothes are so small and these famous people were at least moderately well off and would thus have been fed well - then the people were smaller back then.  The problem with that is we forget in the 18th and early 19th century that after about age 6 to 8, they dressed kids in smaller versions of adult clothing.  So that small sized coat or weskit may have actually belonged to the famous person, but it was when he was 11 or 12 or still growing up.  The smaller article of clothing may well also have been the "Sunday go to meeting" or special occasion clothing, so it wasn't worn a lot even when the kids were growing up and even though clothing was saved for younger children to wear as they grew into them.  

We also have to remember that clothing that was worn out held more value in the 18th and early 19th century than older clothes today.  The worn out clothing was sold to rag merchants and the material was used to make "rag" or linen paper.  

After seeing so many authentic civil war union soldiers uniform items, I thought the soldiers back then were much smaller than they actually were.  The average height of a soldier in the Union Army was 5' 8 1/4".  The boys from what we now call the midwest and especially farm boys were taller than from the large cities back east, but the average was still that tall.  The reason so many of the smaller items have survived is because they fit so few people in the time period and thus were not worn and worn out.  

Now, by the time of WWII the average soldier's height had SHRUNK to 5'6".  This and the height of soldiers in Civil War are almost directly opposite what used to be believed.  However, there had been a huge Influenza epidemic around the end of WWI and of course the Depression meant that people did not get either the quality or quantity of food when they were growing up to reach taller height.  There had also been huge numbers of shorter immigrants from Europe who came here trying to escape from starvation in Europe, Post WWI.

Now I realize this goes afield of longrifles to an extent, but I believe it is very important information when we consider the stock dimensions from surviving guns of the longrifle and the period we talk about up to the Civil War.  (I don't mean to discount the long rifles that they never completely stopped making in Appalachia for example, though.)  We have to consider why certain longrifles lasted long enough for us to study their stock dimensions.  Quite often the rifles used the least are the ones that have survived the best.

Finally here's something to think about in modern recreation of longrifles.  I have no idea of how many "boy sized" rifles have been made from the 1960's to present VS the number of long rifles made for adults in a ratio.  I would guess that usually only one or at most two boy sized rifles would have been made while a boy was growing up, even though it doesn't cost as much to make a longrifle as it did during the actual time period.  In some cases "Mom's" rifle was used for a while when her son or sons were growing up and I suspect there have been more "Ladies' Rifles" made since 1960 in proportion to the number of women in muzzleloading than in the actual time period.  150 or more years from now, those boys' rifles and some of the Ladies rifles will survive very well as they aren't used as much.  Will the future people think people were "shorter back then" (meaning in what is now modern times) because shorter rifles will be more common?  I doubt it as information is getting easier all the time to access, but I hope you see the point that if information was less accessible, they in the future might also see things differently than what is common today.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Could someone describe the "modern" shooting style to me?

When I read the descriptions of "shooting across the chest" that seems about the way I naturally shoot.    Is this not the modern way of shooting?  

[Artificer]

Could someone describe the "modern" shooting style to me?

When I read the descriptions of "shooting across the chest" that seems about the way I naturally shoot.    Is this not the modern way of shooting?  

BJJ,

For the purpose of this discussion we are basically talking about the deep drop/ heavy crescent shaped buttplates of the early 19th century where the buttplate was rested on the arm rather than the earlier 18th century and more modern method of a flatter or more gently curved buttplate that was placed in the shoulder when shooting.  The guns with greater drop of the stock also were for a more "head held higher" position when shooting off hand.  Outside the time period of the deep drop rifle stocks, both before and after that time period, people put their their cheeks down on the comb and do not hold their heads as high.

[northmn]

As another opinion, in the for what its worth department, I think most of the rifles fit, but were special purpose firearms.  Historically, by the 1820's the East was pretty civilized for the time.  An excerpt on E. Remington mentioned how he got started in barrel making by competing in a local turkey shoot or beef shoot or whatever and impressing enough people with his barrel.  I gather that shooting events were common back then.  Many of the rifles from about 1815 or 1820 on were straighter barreled as we were entering the Industrial Revolution, smaller calibers and long and heavy.  When I see the dimensions on them and relate to my own shooting experiences, I feel they were in no way offhand rifles.  Look at the swamped barrel selections and you see the earlier barrels shorter, the Isaac Haines at 38 inches, the early colonial at 42 and the Golden Age at 44.  Many of the later rifles had very long barrels, which implies that they may have been used for target shooting.  The earlier rifles had more swamp and were better built for everyday shooting.  In other words, looking at the decoration, the weights and designs I feel that they were made for Sunday afternoon turkey shoots.  Also that is why they lasted.  The Western trade rifles of the time were heavy barreled, but were shorter, and look like they would fit better.  The Golden Age rifles were no longer a rifle to feed the family but were made for the wealthier land owners and tradesmen for recreation.  The working rifles we imagine were used more toward the Lousiana purchase areas and further West.


DP

[ronward]

northmn,
 it may also indicate that as we got closer to the industrial revolution, balistics became more scientific and more generally known. the result was longer barrels to more efficiently use the burn rate of blackpowder in those small calibers. as the calibers got smaller as compared to the earlier guns, pressures went up and it was dicovered that the barrels had to built heavier to handle it. hence, the deeply crescented butt plates and the "across the chest, arm mounted short pulls,.... maybe an adaption of the scheutzen style of target shooting, with thier hooked butts, just not so exagerated for everyday use. the guns were shot off-hand as well as from a convenient rest...yree branch or what-ever while hunting.  the deep crescent in the buttplate made a very good anchor to hold up the front of the gun.....in close to the armpit where you have lots of leverage against it's weight. as barrels improved and got smaller and lighter, that style of shooting was abandoned in favor of today's more framiliar open stance. even the planes rifles had the deep butts and lots of drop, made to be shot off-hand as thier barrels were purposely heavy because of the powerfull loads thay needed to handle. on the other hand, the military practiced the more conventional by modern standards , "open-stance",  because it had the advantage of honest-to-goodness scientific methodology to produce guns that were not so heavily barreled and could be shot in an open stance more comfortably, as well as the connection to the advanced european industries and military that were"cutting edge" in firearms devopement at the time.   
    earlier guns with thier larger bores, pressures weren't as much of a problem. i think allot of what we today think was scientificly derived was arrived upon impericly.... small, independant builders started paring weight off the barrels by swamping them 'till they started blowing up and then backed off  on the swamp untill it stopped, or examples were obtained from europe and copied. i doubt that the majority of the early builders, save a few, had any formal education in metalurgy and balistics. they just had the talent, skills and work ethics to build guns. it would be real interesting to learn the curriculum of an apprenticeship in a gun shop from the late 18 to early 19th. centuries. by the early 19th. century, as gun components became mass produced and thier availability became less timely, they relied on the industry's reasearch to supply safe components, so barrels got lighter and the open stance more common. prior to this, as the trend towards smaller bores developed and pressures went up, barrels started blowing and  the swamp was eliminated and so the vicious circle went on in favor of more iron as a safety factor. most of those small builders were just good skilled craftsmen living in a world of slow communication and little formal scientific education.
    by the advent of the ind. revolution, barrels were  made pretty much the same as the are now, with exception of today's alloys, of course. earlier, not truely knowing how strong the iron was they were using for thier barrels, it was prudent to over build it for safety's sake.

[jwh1947]

I have read every word of the above thread and thought about it.  I, the normally longwinded one, will, this time confine to one sentence.  I'd bet that if a decent shooter takes a gun, shoulders it once or twice, says it feels nice to him and fits, that that man will be able to repeatedly kill deer with it.  Wayne

[Artificer]

Ronward,

I've read your post three times and am puzzled by something.  You contend that when the calibers were reduced, the pressure was increased and they had to go to larger barrel diameters until metallurgy advanced.  You are talking about heavier elongated bullets and not round balls, correct?

Modified to add:  I'm also wondering if you are mixing black powder cartridge pressures and Muzzleloading pressures. 

Gus

[James Rogers]

I have read every word of the above thread and thought about it.  I, the normally longwinded one, will, this time confine to one sentence.  I'd bet that if a decent shooter takes a gun, shoulders it once or twice, says it feels nice to him and fits, that that man will be able to repeatedly kill deer with it.  Wayne

Yep

[California Kid]

I have a headache.