Adapting your gun
Altering a gun may ruin its second-hand value, but you can improve it to suit your own shooting style – which also increases its personal value
There are many things you can do to adapt your gun to your shooting style without falling foul of the law or rendering the gun out of proof.
To give you a good example, let me tell you the story of my favourite gun – my Winchester 6500 fixed-choke sporter.
In the 1980s Robin Scott (Sporting
Gun’s longest-serving editor, and now editor-at-large) and I both bought brand-new guns. Robin, who was getting seriously into FITASC (the international sporting clays discipline) bought the Winchester which is now mine, and I bought the newly-introduced Beretta 682.
The two guns were as different as chalk and cheese – to me at any rate. I found the Beretta to be a heavy, unresponsive gun, although later versions were lighter and hugely improved to the point they were used by champions. On the few occasions Robin allowed me to shoot his Winchester, my scores went up by at least 10 per cent.
New owner
As Robin’s ownership of the Winchester progressed, he made a major stock alteration. The gun, as supplied, had a pronounced palm swell in the pistol grip, and the story goes that this unwanted lump of walnut was initially removed with a Surform file in a shooting ground clubhouse before being sanded to the pistol grip’s current form.
This drastic surgery made the gun much easier to hold, and neither Robin nor I ever got the chequering restored.
I wouldn’t say Robin got fed up with the Winchester, but he had really set his heart on a Browning B125, which was built in
“There are many things you can do to adapt your gun to your shooting style”
Belgium and was only one step down from the immortal B25.
The result was that Robin and I did a deal. I sold the Beretta through a local gun shop, bought his Winchester, and Robin put the money towards his Browning.
Moderations
As far as the Winchester is concerned, it always seems strange to me that a gun can fit two people who are so physically different. Robin is at least four inches taller than me, and much wider across the shoulders. I have a somewhat weedy frame, while he is more solidly built, yet the gun fitted us both.
I can’t remember which of us modified the hard plastic buttplate, but it has been filed and sanded to get rid of chequering, and the heel has been rounded off – both modifications to allow for very fast mounting without snagging on clothing which is essential for FITASC and desirable for English Sporting and Skeet.
When I took possession of the Winchester there was only one thing about it I didn’t like, and that was the trigger, which was adjustable in a foreand-aft plane. Although its action was nice and crisp (and still is), the trigger itself, which is locked in position on a rail with a set screw, carried some rough chequering which, I found, gave me a sore trigger finger during a full day’s clay shooting.
I therefore decided to make my own trigger, and the material I chose was an aluminium alloy – goodness knows an alloy of what except for aluminium, but it was a short bar end a friend “liberated” from an aerospace company’s scrap heap. I first roughed out the basic shape on my milling machine, then set to with files and increasingly fine wet-and-dry paper to achieve a polished finish. The result was a smooth, non-chequered trigger which fitted my finger exactly.
Only other work on the gun has been strictly maintenance – replacement
“i shoot with it better than i would with a standard, as-supplied shotgun”
stainless steel firing pins that former gunsmith Jason Harris acquired for me from the USA, and a complete new set of main and ejector springs.
People may say that, between us,
Robin and I have ruined the gun’s second-hand value. That may be so, but we have improved the gun to suit my shooting style. I have no intention of parting with the gun after around 30 years, and I shoot with it better than I would with a standard, as-supplied gun. To me, I have increased its value.