Hopefully Peter Smith will be at the NQRA Queens in May. If he is I will take a picture of his stock. I believe it will undo many myths. It's not that he didn't put thought into it, Peter is very much a thinking mans shooter. He can also do, with some offcuts of ply, what others can't with the best timber the world has to offer.
I think there are many ways to skin this cat. I think we have to make a few assumptions of what we think are the important factors, then take a holistic approach to solving them. I don't think all the answer lie in the stock. I do, however, think the stock needs to 'match' the rest of the gun , and I think that can differ depending on what is being shot and the shooting style. I'd agree with Speedies assessment of hinge point, for me it was the drop comb that most stocks seem to have. I think that if someone is shooting a retail round the recoil effects are somewhat reduced compared to trying to get the most out of a hand load shooting a heavy projectile, which is where F Class seems to sit for any given calibre. The concept behind the design Bob did for me (Charlie Watson has a couple over there btw Giro) was to eliminate the drop comb so all recoil forces come straight back. The light weight of the stock, combined with the Ultra action from Peter Bevan allowed me to put more of the weight in line with the axis instead of under it. Running with the minimal twist and slowest powder that will work (in my humble opinion) also smooths out, if not reduces, torque effect.
When thinking through the design I cast my mind back to the development of protecting people in the passenger compartment of cars. For years it was all about strength and stiffness, and trying to stop the impact forces reaching the passenger compartment. Stiff, ridged structures that were meant to stop the object getting to the passenger. They did that, unfortunately it was the stiff ridged structure that got to the passenger instead. It took time for thought to deflect into not stopping the forces, but rather absorb and divert them to somewhere safe. Now we have crush zones so you can write your car off by hitting something at carpark speed!
I figured there are 3 main effects to deal with. Muzzle lift, torque and harmonics.
For F Class, elevation is the killer so I just figured that doing anything that might reduce muzzle lift had to be a good thing. The drop comb went, the parallel barrel puts max weight at the muzzle and a reduced lead angle came from the "FTR" reamer. (Apparently a steep lead can cause muzzle lift, I think that snippet came from the Aussie target shooter world.)
We are never going to stop torque, but here I felt that if it's going to twist, I want it twisting about the axis of my choice, and I want that as close to the bore as I can get it. I pinched an idea from DG Rod Davis and use the scope to cancel (or mimic) the torsional effect of the stock. The scope is obviously lighter than the stock so it was a case of removing stock material as it gets further from the axis. Material in the butt is pretty redundant anyway, all it does is hold the butt plate.
Harmonics, I believe, are dealt with in the loading room, and it appears with knobs. I don't think I'm quite ready to display my knob in public yet but it's a work in progress for barrels that refuse to sing when naked.
Anyway, I ended up with what you see (as well as some hidden, secret stuff (Bobs intellectual property
![Question :?:](./images/smilies/icon_question.gif)
)).
It's early days but the results look promising.
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I like to think the incline is purely down to spin drift.
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Time will tell I guess.
It certainly isn't the only way of doing it. Jason Mayers ended up with 3 guns at the WC's and I think they all ended up on the line. He is certainly a guy who can get a gun to shoot.
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