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Stock Extender

16K views 10 replies 5 participants last post by  Utah Blaine 
#1 ·
Hello,

I'm looking to buy my first shotgun but I'm having difficulty finding one that is long enough for me. I'm 6'4'' with long arms and I'm wondering if anyone has an advice on the best way to increase the length of a stock. I'm looking for either general advice (for both wood and synthetic stocks), and also specific advice for the Remington 870 Express, the Browning Citori, and/or the Beretta 686. I was told by a gunsmith that to add a 2'' extension onto a $350 870 Express would cost $175. Doing a `nice' job on the more expensive O/U would cost considerably more. Recoil pads seem to be a mixed bag at best, and in any case I'm unlikely (to the best of my current knowledge) to get the 1.5-2'' extension that I need from a recoil pad. Surely this most be a solved problem (extending stocks for tall shooters), I'm just not sure what the best solution is. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

UB
 
#2 ·
I'm not sure these would work on the 870 synthetic (seems I recall there not being much "meat" along the periphery of the hollow stock), but you could definitely stack something like these to your desired length on the other guns:

http://www.brownells.com/aspx/ns/store/ProductDetail.aspx?p=7403&title=BUTTSTOCK+SPACERS

If I remember correctly, the last pad I had installed was a KickEEZ on a 525...about $75 or $80. I would venture that adding a couple of these spacers and a thick pad for your length would get you in the $150 or so ballpark pretty quick.

Here's a guy who does excellent work. Send him an e-mail inquiry or give Ken a call:

http://www.speedbumpstockworks.com
 
#3 ·
The length of pull (LOP) or stock length necessary for a particular shooter is affected by the length of his neck, the width of his shoulders, his stance (how directly he faces targets when he shoots) and the height of his gun mount, which would put the heel, the top of the butt, nearly even with the top of the shoulder and in the shoulder pocket, the recessed area just inside of the shoulder joint. (Long sentences are good because they use less expensive commas rather than the higher priced periods and capital letters.)

If you are new to shooting, there is a good chance you are shooting a shotgun like a rifle with your shoulders too edge-on to targets. This increases the length needed in a stock. Face targets more directly and a shorter stock will fit.

At your height, I cannot imagine your needing an LOP two inches greater than that of a standard stock, which is just over 14".

Using the correct stance and gun mount, with only a slight nod required to put your cheek on the comb, there should be about 1 1/4" between your nose and your trigger-hand thumb.

Shooters with long necks can be better fitted by using a stock adjuster of some sort. These units allow the entire recoil pad to be lowered. This is a far better arrangement than a long stock that may require the neck to be leaned or tilted forward to place the cheek on the comb.

The length of shooters' arms has little to do with stock length. Its only involvement is the comfort of the arm with the hand on the gun's grip.

http://www.stockfitting.com
 
#4 ·
Morgan Adjustable recoil pad.

Simple installation, DIY. Will add quite a bit over most any factory pad, depending on just how thick the original is. And be adjustable in height and pitch. I even cant them for personal fits. (They don't advertise them to be so, but I have been doing the canting thing with them for years)

One could even add some spacers to lengthen it even more. Black or white, etc. plastic, or even alternating colors. Edge polished metal, if you needed weight at the butt.

I just increased a new Benelli, (fairly thick stock pad), by an inch. I am 6' 2" and it is almost too long now. But I didn't want to cut it if not absolutely necessary. (Just cut 1 3/4 off of the wifes, and installed a Morgan.) The wife needed about an inch of drop adjustment, and 3/4" for myself. Great adjustable pad. Interchangeable flat or curved, (trap) style butt pad.

Piece of cake! No rubber to grind, a couple of files, and some sandpaper will usually do all the fitting, (on the pad base), no stock work necessary. $26 at Cabela's, $34 at Brownells. My gun shop, $25.

Clyde
 
#5 ·
Clyde had a good idea regarding the installation of a stock adjuster to add length but I disagree with his recommendation of a Morgan. The ones with a concave pad are not fit for man nor beast and the ones with a flat recoil pad cannot be adjusted for cast at the toe, e.g. rotation of the pad for a better fit in the shoulder pocket.

http://www.stockfitting.com
 
#6 ·
Rollin Oswald said:
Clyde had a good idea regarding the installation of a stock adjuster to add length but I disagree with his recommendation of a Morgan. The ones with a concave pad are not fit for man nor beast and the ones with a flat recoil pad cannot be adjusted for cast at the toe, e.g. rotation of the pad for a better fit in the shoulder pocket.

http://www.stockfitting.com
Well we will have to continue to disagree there, Rollin! For a mounted gun, trap shooting, the concave pads work great! Once they are adjusted and set right, it is almost impossible to miss mount! It just has to be in the right place every time!

And since they are interchangable, I do not understand your comment on the flat pad at all. Neither is claimed to be adjustable for cant, by the factory, just up, down and pitch.

BUT, I have been canting, (rotating), both types for many years. No notches running in matching directions, but I just rotate them to what ever fits best and is most comfortable and tighten that center screw down. I can not remember even one, ever slipping.

You say "cannot" and I have been doing it for years. My gunsmith/dealer said they couldn't be either. But after he saw mine and tried it, his is also now canted as well. (And he just ate up the Annie Oakly matches last Tue. night with that old model 12! Something sure improved his shooting all of a sudden! Damn!)

Clyde
 
#7 ·
Rollin Oswald said:
At your height, I cannot imagine your needing an LOP two inches greater than that of a standard stock, which is just over 14".

Using the correct stance and gun mount, with only a slight nod required to put your cheek on the comb, there should be about 1 1/4" between your nose and your trigger-hand thumb.

The length of shooters' arms has little to do with stock length. Its only involvement is the con fort of the arm with the hand on the gun's grip.

http://www.stockfitting.com
I'd listen to Mr Oswald here.

If I were in your shoes, decide which type of shooting you do most, clays, skeet, trap, hunting, etc? then which gun you would like to use for that activity. Ideally you would then get fitted by a stock fitter and have the stock altered. then when you recover form that outlay o' cash move on to the next gun/disipline...

conversly get a jig saw and a drill. Make four spacers out of 1/2" ply and mount them between the existing pad on the citori or Beretta. Then take it out shooting. You'll probably find that one or two spacers will make a big difference. Problem here is that adding length will likely INCREASE the drop at comb, which might mess things up more. You can try building that up by taping some closed cell foam to the comb. This is just a way to "mock up" any changes and try them before making any permanent alterations.

I don't mean to offend, but if you haven't had a lesson, or two, You might not find a stock fitting by yourself works until you are sure you are mounting the gun properly as Mr Oswald stated in his post. Any stock fitter worth his salt would send you to a good instructor if you got any bad habits prior to fitting.

You might end up having to add to the rib on one or more of these guns to get the point of impact desired for the use of the gun.

If you are shooting clays mostly, you should get a vest, possibly with a pad, before trying to get fitted or fit yourself.

Best of luck..
 
#8 ·
Here we go, Clyde. Please pardon the sarcasm in my reply to your reply. I will continue to aid in your realization that concave pads like the Morgan, make correct gun mounts impossible. And incidentally, they cannot be adjusted for pitch.

Concave pads fit only when they make contact with a convex surface. In the shoulder area, there are two, the shoulder joint itself or the upper arm. This assumes of course, that the shooter does not have a large tumor growing in the shoulder. Neither is the correct place to mount a gun. The shoulder pocket, just inside of the shoulder joint is where the gun should be mounted. There are no exceptions. The "right place" you mention is the wrong place. I will agree that concave Morgans will help you consistently mount the gun in the wrong place, however.

Part of their problems are that they cannot be rotated when used as designed. If is a flaw that could easily have been incorporated but like the original concave pad, the designers weren't thinking very clearly. With a flat pad, most of their evil is eliminated and the owner is left only with a hard pad and the design flaws.

You imply, with the mention of your gunsmith and his canting, with an apparent improvement in his scores, that I do not favor rotating recoil pads. (Guns are canted, not recoil pads. Pads are rotated or cast.) I am a true believer in rotating pads to provide a better fit by the pad in the shoulder pocket. Rotating pads can even partially compensate for inadequate pitch on a stock.

I do not understand the first sentence in your second paragraph about a flat pad. Please explain.

16'er,

Great minds think alike. But please, "Rollin"; no formality is necessary or allowed.

All your advice is coompletely sound. Without knowledge of correct shooting form for the shooting discipline involved, changing stock dimensions is nearly a complete waste of time and money. Guns are well fitted only when the stock dimensions fit the shooter when he is using a correct shooting form.

http://www.stockfitting.com
 
#9 ·
Hi Rollin! I didn't notice any sarcasm to speak of!

Some of our problems are apparently only semantics, I think. You say guns are canted, and pads are rotated. I haven't had an education in the semantics of gun fitting, only the 60 odd years of experience, on my own, so to speak. I know what fits me and have helped lots of other folks. And of course, had failures in trying to help a few others as well. All in all, a pretty fair record I believe.

Anyway, I always called it canting the pad, as well, to keep from canting the gun! Makes sense to me, but rotating works as well. I will have to remember that so the word police don't get me!

Most "off the shelf" guns won't fit me at all. Most are so far off, it is pathetic. The European manufactured ones come the closest, and the "old" American ones are among the worst. But I can make them fit. Call me a "wood butcher" if you want, but I will take form and function over pretty any day.

It is sort of funny, how the same guns can fit people of totally different builds. I am 6 ft. 2, 220 lbs. I have an acquaintance, about 5 ft. 7, 300 lbs and we can pick up each others guns and they fit perfectly! We can swap guns and just keep on busting birds like they are our own personal guns.

I have another friend who is about 5 ft. 9, and neither of us can even come close to shooting each other's guns. I mount his gun and the muzzle on a 26 inch barrel, 20 gage, 1100, is 4 inches below my line of sight.

I regularly shoot Annies with a bunch of guys and about half of them use the Morgans. I see a high percentage of Morgans used all over and at many trap ranges, most of them being the curved pad. Boy, there sure must be a bunch of misinformed trap shooters out there! I have them on two or three of my trap guns and much prefer them to the straight pads of any brand. I just am not going to cut some of the others and fit a Morgan to them, because they work well enough as is, and why modify if it is not necessary. It is more $ sense than anything else.

You didn't understand one sentence, I am not real sure which one you were talking about, but you said the Morgan couldn't be canted, sorry, rotated, by design. Yes, Morgan doesn't advertise that, but lots of us have been doing just that for years. I believe that was the sentence where you were bad mouthing the curved pad, and where I said they were interchangeable. They are, simply unscrew the center bolt and replace with the other pad.

Oh, Morgan says that they can be adjusted for pitch, you say that they can't, (or do I use rotate here again?:roll: ), and I say that their pitch adjustment is pretty sorry. About like some of those air or hydraulic stock recoil absorbers that move a whole quarter of an inch! (Absolute worst I ever saw was on the BT99 Plus when they first came out! Spring there, if I remember right. I picked one up on Friday, used it both Sat and Sun. and put it in the paper on Monday! That gun just couldn't be adjusted to fit me, and the recoil mechanism, had scores on the tube, where it so didn't fit me, that shooting it a couple of more days would have ruined it entirely. Not that it was a good design in the first place. I traded it off for two older BT99's that I could shoot! Wow, was I happy to get rid of that POS!)

Any way, maybe I am finally beginning to get the idea here. Just maybe it is like a Ford and Chev. thing. Or maybe more like Cad vs. Ford.

The Morgans are cheap compared to the name brands, and where the greater profits are realized. (No offense meant!) Hell, I have Cad tastes, but a Ford or Chev. wallet. (Or maybe even Yugo? :lol: ) So Morgans work just fine for me.

Sort of like, "Whoa, nothing but brand new, premium, plated hard shot for me!" vs. reclaimed or home made shot. They both work pretty well in most cases.

Rollin, nothing I have said was intended to be detrimental, and I hope it wasn't taken that way. I just know what I need and what works for me. And I have been able to help some folks, along the line, in the same boat as I.

You use the term, "correct", well correct is what works for me! And I am putting that flat OR curved Morgan "in the pocket" every time. Just for the record I am not Politically Correct either!

Hope we are still friendly!

Clyde
 
#10 ·
Clyde,

Over time, certain shooting forms have been deemed "correct". They are so described because these forms have been shown to result in the most successful shooting.

I suppose your definition of correct to describe the form required by the use of a Morgan or a poorly fitting stock, isn't that far off. We just use different standards.

So it is with the gun mount. The correct mount places the butt of the stock in the shoulder pocket. It is the area just inside of the shoulder joint. As an aside, the heel (top) of the butt, is placed in a position which is even or nearly even with the top of the shoulder. Both elements of shooting form, the height and the lateral placement of the butt, affect the position of the head when the gun is mounted, i.e. turned only slightly toward the stock, nearly upright with the eyes nearly in the centers of their sockets and with the neck not leaned or tilted toward the stock. There are too many benefits of those aspects of a correct form to list here. You'll have to buy my book to learn about them.

Concave Morgans do not allow the gun to be mounted in the shoulder pocket without the bottom toe of the pad digging into the chest. They come closest to fitting when the gun is mounted on the shoulder joint or the upper arm. Both constitute a mounting error.

The rotational movement of recoil pads (if we want to be hair-splitting technical), actually creates cast at the toe and at the same time, the opposite cast at the heel. Move the toe of the recoil pad nearer the armpit with the pad's rotational point at the center of the pad and the opposite cast has been created at the heel.

Cast is determined by looking at the gun from the back. If the stock as a whole or the comb via an adjustable comb, angles to the right, it is cast off. If the stock angles to the left, it is cast on. If the comb is to the right of the bore, it is cast off. This is similar in effect to a stock that is offset. Offset describes a stock that jogs one way near the wrist and then jogs the other way and continues back parallel to the barrel.

For a right-handed shooter, moving the toe of the pad toward the armpit creates cast off at the toe and, at the same time, creates cast on at the heel.

To cant the gun means to rotate the gun around the axis of the bore. I suspect that you are confusing cant with pitch. Pitch is the angle of the butt, usually, relative to the rib. It is usually close to ninety degrees.

The word police are everywhere, everywhere! You can hardly swing a dead cat without hitting one.

Concerning all the shooters you see using Morgans with concave pads, they have my sympathy. They are suffering from a rather serious flaw in their shooting form, i.e. their gun mount. This in turn, causes other aspects of their shooting form to be corrupted. Disastrous? No, only a limitation to how well they will ever be able to shoot.

That shooters of different sizes and weights can shoot the same guns, isn't surprising. They simply adopt different shooting forms, i.e. stance, gun mount, stock crawling, etc. and some must corrupt one or more aspects of the form.

You are correct when you say that there must be a bunch of misinformed trap shooters out there who are using Morgans with curved pads, not only a bunch, but all who use them.

There are many trap shooters who know little of shooting form. They use the stance, gun mount and body posture that the dimensions of their stocks require them to use. Most of them get used to the form they have to use and as a result, never consider trying to learn the correct shooting form and the stock fitting that would allow them to use it. As is said, ignorance is bliss; this is a perfect example.

You are right in believing -I did not know that the curved and flat Morgan pads could be exchanged. Are both as hard as the concave Morgans I have seen in the past?

You are also correct when you accuse me of bad-mouthing Morgan adjusters. I don't know what they cost but the Jones adjuster at about $70.00 is far superior. Jones' pads can be rotated, adjusted up, down and in both directions side to side. They are also less than a quarter-inch thick and do not affect the length of the stock very much. They do not come with a recoil pad, however. Shooters must buy a quality pad of their choice.

http://www.stockfitting.com
 
#11 ·
I wanted to thank everyone who posted for their long, detailed messages. This has been incredibly helpful. It is apparent to me that I need to do a lot of shootin' before I can make an intelligent, informed decision as to what I need. There really is a lot to this. I've since bought a starter shotgun (Remington 870 Express) and will shoot it regularly. I think that the advice about a lesson or two from an expert is wise. One thing I'm not going to do is go off and put some type of extension on the gun until I'm sure that is what I want/need to do.

There was another thread along a similar line several years ago on this board. I've added the URL below in case anyone else is looking for more information about stock extenders.

http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=8320&view=next

Thanks!

UB[/url]
 
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