DIY Pistol Bench Rest

[thisisdonald]

After struggling at the club with bags and even a rifle rest, to keep my pistol stable and consistent when zeroing, i decided to make a bench rest.
With some help from my dad, we knocked this together from a slab of laminated ash. Its not going anywhere thats fir sure!
I made the jaws adjustable so as to make a snug fit for any pistol and lined them with some nice goats leather, thanks to my fave old leather jacket that i hung on a glass door for an entire summer! Hence the yellow accents!
I tried my DIY rifle bag that i made in another thread, to support the grip, and its perfect! Ill be donating this to the clubs 10m range.

Id love to see everyones DIY/Redneck shooting accesories 😃 that would be an awesome thread!!!

[Rutty]

Donald,

The only problem is that you have now zeroed your pistol for benchrest; what about zeroing it for shooting single handed and unsupported? The zero may well be in a totally different place.

I realise that you are quite new to 10m air shooting, so my advice would be to forget about zeroing at this stage. As long as the shots are all on the target that's all you need as you should be concentrating on producing groups that start to become consistent and show a decrease in size. By a "group" I mean 10 shots, any fewer is open to chance effects. Once you are shooing fairly consistent groups about the size of the aiming mark, then it's only a few clicks on the sights and a couple of groups to move the group centre roughly coincident with the centre of the target.

Another tip is to always use a backer target behind the target you are shooting at. Carefully align the front target with it every time. Then, at the end of a session you will have (say) 6 targets with 10 shot groups and one with a 60 shot group. This makes it much easier to assess where the majority of shots are going.

Forget about scoring targets, shoot groups. When you have achieved some degree of consistency then you can start to look at the score, but not before.

hope this helps,
Rutty

[thisisdonald]

Thanks for the pointers Rutty. I have been shooting and zeroing standing one handed but a couple of the boys at the club said to zero on a bag or bench.
Here is some targets from my last session last week.
https://goo.gl/photos/nAncR1Za4pfqwpRo9
First target was adjusting the sights and then i was adjusting my grip on the pistol so that if i kept my eyes closed and brought the gun to target it was near enough sighted in. I havent yet put filler on the grip to accomodate my hand so after shooting a couple of cards like this its pretty painful.
The last two were shot one after the other 5 shots each.
I dont think its too bad. Im watching olympic and commonwealth matches and reading pilkguns website to coach myself.
Id really like to find someone to help me set this grip up properly as i know its a big part of consistency. I bought some ronseal multipurpose woodfiller for the task but im not sure if its the right stuff. Ive never used it before and was hoping it was of a putty like consistency but its more like plaster.
Again... thanks for the advice. I will definitely use the extra target grouping trick.
Anything else you can give me would be great.. cheers!

[Rutty]

Masking tape and Blutack, then you can experiment easily. When you have arrived at a satisfactory result the get some Morini Grip Paste.

Rutty

[Marc.RG1]

HI Donald, nicely done mate you did a great job on the test. It looks really good.
ATB Marc

[thisisdonald]

Cheers Marc.. hopefully it will get some use at the club.