# installing a pad



## wburns (Feb 27, 2009)

This last evening I had to get my wife's gun finished for her duck hunting trip this weekend. I have been fitting the gun to her over the last week and had the pad left to install. Due to her gun fit I had to add a negative pitch spacer (thicker on the toe than the heel) to give her a setup of 60/40 pattern on the patterning board.

From time to time I have seen people on this forum asking about pad installation. I thought I would show the steps and method I use. It is actually a very simple process which may seem harder than it really is until you see how it is done. Below are my steps.

1. First I attach the pad to the base of the gun and trace the outline of the stock onto the pad 









2. Next I put the the pad in the freezer over night to harden the rubber to make the pad grind easier. The toe often is difficult to grind even due to the softness of the rubber. That is where freezing the pad comes in handy.









3. The tools used: I use an upright belt sander with 180 grit paper. I also use a pad grinding jig (Miles Gilbert, cost $50.00), square, screwdriver, furniture oil, and a sanding block.









4. I first set up the angle of the heel for grinding by putting the jig on the stock. 









The bolt under the aluminum bar screws out until it bottoms out on the bottom of the jig. That is where you tighten it down for the correct heel pitch. 









5. I next set the pitch for the toe to be ground. The center bolt that holds the aluminum bar is tightened to hold the angle.









6. I now bolt the pad to the jig and begin to grind the toe of the pad.









I grind to about the mid point of the pad to ensure the sides stay even for the final fitting.









7. Next I loosen the center bolt and tip the pad down until the bolt bottoms out on the jig like in step 4. 









I tighten the center bolt again to hold the angle and then I grind the heel.









8. I next take the pad and the spacer off of the jig.









Then I reattach it to the stock which has had black electrical tape carefully wrapped around the stock to protect the finish during pad installation.









9. Here is the pad installed with the sanding block and oil I use.









I wet the pad down with the furniture oil prior to sanding. 









I then begin to sand using wet/dry sand paper in 180 grit. I wet the pad down often while sanding. I finish the pad off with 220 grit.









10.The finished product.

















I highly recommend the jig. I have ground pads for myself and friends so it has paid for itself many times over. The time spent on the project was around 2-2 1/2hrs in total. I hope you enjoyed the pictorial and it will inspire some of you to try on your own.


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## rollin Oswald (Sep 1, 2007)

Burns,

The third line of your post - "Due to her gun fit I had to add a negative pitch spacer (thicker on the toe than the heel) to give her a setup of 60/40 pattern on the patterning board." - caught my attention.

I suspect you made or are making a serious mistake. The pitch, which you changed, does not affect a guns point of impact (POI) unless it is VERY wrong. In my opinion, you made it very wrong by adding a tapered spacer with the wide part at the toe of the stock.

Women need more pitch than men, meaning that the heel needs to be extended farther than the toe on the vast majority of off-the-shelf guns.
The reason is simple: women have breasts. With the toe sticking out as far as it does on stocks designed for men, women are painfully jabbed by the toe and to make matters worse, the resulting barrel rise during recoil is noticeably increased - often to the point of causing cheek slap.

Like everyone else, womens' pitch is correct when the entire pad makes simultaneous contact with the shoulder pocket as the gun is being mounted using _a normal shooting posture_. (...the 'entire' pad except for the short portion that extends above the collarbone).

If your wife will be limiting her shooting to overhead targets, less pitch is needed, which is what you may have had in mind when you decreased the pitch with the tapered spacer. If that describes what you did, don't let your wife shoot the gun without the muzzle being considerably elevated and don't let her shoot using the preferred shooting posture for overhead targets, that of an arched back.

If you decreased the pitch on your wife's stock, the above test for correct pitch cannot describe your wife's gun mount. Please reconsider the pitch on her stock.


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