Give it a rest: your gun might just shoot better than you think

Guns Magazine, Oct, 2005 by Holt Bodinson

No firearm demands more consistency than a handgun--consistent hand position, consistent hand pressure, consistent critical sight picture--it's amazing we shoot them as well as we do. There is a wide variety of approaches when it comes to handgun rests.

The Cadillac of rests is the Ransom Machine Rest, and if you have $450 and a handgun for which Ransom makes the necessary grip inserts, go for it. You're really in business. There's none better than a Ransom. It's the ultimate test rig, but the Ransom is also coldly impersonal. When using it, you don't even get to hold your own handgun. I miss that feel.

One of the most useful and inexpensive handgun rests I have used over the years is Midway/Caldwell's "On-Target Handgun Rest." Selling for about $25, the design has been around for a long, long time and serves most purposes just fine. It's all plastic. The front rest is fully adjustable for height. The rear rest platform that supports your hands (use a two handed hold) can be positioned fore-and-aft and locked in five different positions. Both rests are padded with a soft, but durable polymer. I like this rest for moderate power loads--anything from the rimfires through light lead loads. But when you have a raging dragon in your hands, there's a bit too much rigidity to the system, too much bounce to your gun plus your supporting hand is in contact with the rear rest platform and can be severely pinched by the grip during recoil. In fact, I have often removed the rear rest platform to eliminate that point of painful contact.

Simple Solutions

My solution to taking a rest with a heavy recoiling handgun is twofold. Either shoot it off a simple sandbag or off a roll of carpet. The carpet roll is neat idea I picked up from one of my shooting partners, Bud Bristow. We have a symbiotic relationship. Bud gets to use my LBT lead hardness tester, Lyman pot and dipper, and in turn, he fills me in on his endless cast bullet experiments.

Anyway, all you need a scrap of tough carpet, just enough to make a tight roll approximately 6" to 7" in diameter and a foot long. Tape it tight at both ends with duct tape.

Depending upon your range set-up, you can either use the roll alone on top of the bench or you might have to raise it a bit with a shot bag or sandbag underneath. In use, rest the barrel or the barrel and frame over the top of the bag, press down slightly and shoot from a two-handed hold with nothing but air space under your gripping hands. With your arms extended, the roll rest offers an extremely consistent and accurate position.

Consider the carpet roll rest expendable. The escaping gas from revolver cylinders is going to cut it up in time, but so what? It's cheap to replace.

My only parting shot and bit of advice is to be consciously consistent when it comes to using a rest--any rest--plus experiment a lot until you find rests and methods of resting that suit your range conditions, your style of shooting and the firearms that you shoot. Like all worthwhile aspects of our sport, using a rest successfully takes practice, but can you think of a better excuse to get out to the range more often?