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Old December 22, 2013, 08:18 PM   #1
Powderman
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Competitive smallbore rifle shooters...

Have you heard of this?

I was in a gun store today. I noted a nice Winchester bolt action .22 It had a heavy barrel, nice wood stock with a medium-wide fore-end, and a block at the front sight location for mounting your choice of aperture front sights. It also had on it what I recognized as a hand stop, with two sling swivels on the front.

Now, it is my understanding that if you're shooting prone, the hand stop is permissible, and that one of the sling swivels is used for your sling or loop.

The lady I talked to in the gun store insisted that the handstop was meant to "hook onto a bench" when shooting competition.

I have never heard of such a thing.

Has anyone else? Am I off base here?

By the way...the same people had an Artillery Luger there--refinished, mixed serial numbers; a 1913 DWM that they wanted to sell for $2900.
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Old December 23, 2013, 01:25 AM   #2
Scorch
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Hmm, all that time on the line and I never tried hooking my hand stop on a bench. What was I thinking?

No, you are correct, the hand stop is to give you a consistent hand position when you are slinged up.
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Old December 23, 2013, 01:37 AM   #3
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The lady was wrong.

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Old December 24, 2013, 01:48 PM   #4
Bart B.
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Actually, that hand stop was designed to keep your fore hand's area between the fore finger and thumb from getting pinched by the sling close to the fore end with the swivel's bottom flush with the fore end. They also relieved the pressure of the fore hand pushing hard into that area.
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Old December 28, 2013, 10:36 AM   #5
old roper
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The lady is wrong and here is article from David Tubbs on hand stops.

http://www.zediker.com/books/riflesh...ing_spread.pdf
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Old December 30, 2013, 01:35 PM   #6
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I don't shoot from the bench, but in position shooting a hand stop is work its weight in gold.
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Old January 4, 2014, 02:04 PM   #7
darkgael
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Bolt

I am thinking that the rifle may well have been (and still is) a model 52.
What was the asking price?
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Old January 4, 2014, 03:36 PM   #8
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There were two of them, and they were indeed Model 52's. Asking price was around $1500 each, and they were on consignment.
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Old January 4, 2014, 04:28 PM   #9
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Kind of looks like this: The Hand Stop anyway, this rifle is my Model 70 1000 yard rifle.



I use the same hand stop on this rifle that looks more like yours. Disregard the block in front of the trigger guard. That's the mount for the palm rest.

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Old January 4, 2014, 06:40 PM   #10
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Quote:
Powderman There were two of them, and they were indeed Model 52's. Asking price was around $1500 each, and they were on consignment.
Next time you see them check the serial number for a letter[A,B,C or D] The B and C models were popular competition guns.
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Old January 6, 2014, 11:50 AM   #11
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Unless it is a stacking swivel, the lady was way off.

Without a picture I don't know if the two swivels are no the handstop, or you have one handstop on the rifle, with a swivel, and another swivel on the rifle.

The Army was only interested in Civilian Marksmanship as a method of training civilians prior to joining the military, so the rules were written so that the match rifles of the era had to be close in configuration to a service rifle. The rules changed as time went on, and eventually the Army totally abandoned the concept of accurate fire (around 1968) with the effect that Army support for the National Matches and Civilian Marksmanship went away. Since then the configuration of small bore rifles have radically changed. What often happened, with older 22LR's, shooters/competitors modified the rifles beyond recognition to make the things easier to shoot.

This is a competition small bore rifle that would not have been allowed in the 50's



So what you see on older rimfires are swivels, then handstops, that are way up the stock, and I suspect it was because the Army wanted the things way out there. On early Stevens M416's the swivel is so far up the stock that for my hand to reach the thing, the back of my hand would be almost touching the ground. That is a very uncomfortable shooting position so you end up resting your hand about six inches away from the swivel and without a solid hand stop, you get elevation errors.



I have seen a number of older rimfire rifles where someone inletted a handstop and rail beneath an older swivel.

Note that this pre war Stevens M416 came with a post sight. Since the 03's of the era had a post, I suspect this was a requirement to compete in NRA matches.
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