TargetTalk

I would appreciate some thoughts on the horizontal placment of the 2013 (walnut) buttplate. The stock already has about 1" of castoff to the right (righthanded shooter) and the buttplate assembly permits additional left- right movement and cant. Has anyone found better control of recoil (for example) with the buttplate moved to the left - closer to the centerline of the bore? Is it better to leave it centered with the rear of the stock? Is there some favorite horizontal position of the buttplate that seemed to cure some problem? Mike Barron

Firstly a general comment about horizontal positioning of the butt plate.
Too far left seems to give poor cheek weld while too far right makes it difficult to get behind the sights.

I position the butt plate well to the inside of my shoulder pocket. So moving my butt plate 10mm to the left makes it more comfortable to get my head onto the cheek piece and behind the sights. My butt plate is approx in line with the barrel centre line (Anschutz 2213 stock). Anymore than this and my position feels "loose" and "not locked in".

The recoil is usually very good. However I feel this is more dependant on getting a relaxed position than this particular positioning of my butt plate. Tension will destroy both hold and recoil.

Hope this helps.

Hi Mike, I've recently been going through this with my No.2 stock and my current thinking is that moving the whole buttplate to the left increases the horizontal component of the recoil.
I like the idea that the boreline should coincide with the center of the plate but in practice it seems that a degree of cast off is needed to get everything to balance. The boreline now seems to coincide with the left edge of my plate and my recoil is mainly vertical now (whether that really matters is another question though...).

It's a bit of a can of worms as it can also effect your head position - I found I had to play with butt length and cant (I have the plate canted anticlockwise) as well as cheekpiece alignment to get rid of all the small discomforts in my back and neck.

I think that Anschutz got it pretty much right with their stock design for the majority of normal body shapes.

Regards,
Ken.

Thanks for your comments. Some background may help you understand why I asked. Up until the coming of the AR-15/M16 as a bonafide target rifle we all used the M14/M1 in service rifle competition. I was very comfortable with that rifle in prone and could get my eye right behind the rear sight by putting my thumb under my cheekbone and on top of the rear of the pistol grip and relaxing my neck muscles. I've stopped shooting service rifle because of the short sight radius but I've tried to duplicate that head position with my smallbore and centerfire rifles with some success - particularly with my 2013 which has the circular cheekpiece assembly which permits me to pitch the cheekpiece up towards the muzzle (to some extent duplicating the rear of the M14 pistol grip) and rolling the top of the checkpice slightly under my cheekbone. With that in place I started to experiment with the placement of the buttplate and have been shooting with it about 5/8" to the right. But I find that the buttplate drifts further to the right out on my shoulder as I shoot, my sight movement after the shot is fired is a very fast quiver 9 to 3 o'clock and I haven't been able to establish a consistent elbow position so that I maintain my horizontal NPA. In spite of all of this I'm getting pretty good results (indoors this time of year). But in search for the elusive "clean" I'm going to start moving the buttplate to the left to see if that makes a difference with any of the above. Mike Barron

While on this topic, can one of our air gunners clarify the butt plate rule for me? Can the butt plate only be canted or only offset, but not both?

Butt plate cannot be turned on vertical axis per ISSF 7.4.2.1. Diagram in 7.4.2.1.1 makes it clear to interpret.