The Pattern Plate, a brief guide, on how to use this old-school format, not only for cartridge/ choke behaviour, but as an additional aid for gun fitting........or not!!!!! Simon O'Leary, of @hownhallshooting tells us more.
💥 Another beautifully presented video from the most eloquent Simon O'Leary, very fair & completely balanced viewpoints on the subject, nothing less than we've come to anticipate and enjoy. "...this can disappear off into a bit of an anorak entity" made me chortle 😆 Thank you for your insight once again, Simon 👍
It might sound a bit mad but comparing different loads, shot sizes and wad types through different chokes can be really illuminating on what does happen when the shot cloud leaves the barrel, compared with what we think happens! With transition to non toxic loads looking ever more likely, we need to educate ourselves on how it patterns and performs compared to lead. Great video Simon and thanks for posting ⭐
A "pattern plate" can tell give you THREE useful bits of information. (1) when you buy an o/u or sxs, the barrels MUST be regulated. That is, they have to shoot in the same place; or have the same Point of Aim [POI]. If they don't, you're in for years of frustration. (2) for a shotgun to "fit", it must shoot where you point it and that is determined by shooting a spot on a plate at 15-20 yards by mounting and shooting [not aiming]. If the Point of Impact [POI] isn't right on the spot or maybe a tad high, your gun doesn't fit and you need to have a qualified person bend the stock or add an adjustable comb. (3) if you're worried about whether or not your removable chokes put the right percentage of the pellets in the 30 inch circle at the prescribed distance, by all means aim the shotgun at a dot with a 30" circle around it and start counting. Having said all this, IMHO, using a patterning board in an attempt to see how evenly distributed shot pellets are on whatever "target" you are shooting at IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME. Shotguns shoot CLOUDS of pellets. They don't fly out the barrel and all line up in a single plane and fly to the target. If they did, it would render shotguns almost ineffective. I've watched great shotgunners break 10-20 straight edge-on crossers at fifty yards using 1 oz of 7 1/2's. Go pattern any gun you want to (with the exception of MAYBE turkey chokes) and look at the two dimensional "pattern" of that load at 50 yards. You'll be able to draw 5-10 edge-on clay silhouettes in the "holes" in that pattern. And if you subscribe to the adage that you have to put 3-4 pellets on an edge-on clay to break it, raise that number to 25+ areas within that two-dimensional representation of the CLOUD that has flown out of that barrel.
Another good video Simon. For me, patterning my gun at HH revealed that it shot slightly higher to the point of aim than the conventional wisdom suggests, despite lots of time spent in front of a mirror adjusting the comb height). Maybe a 70/30 vertical spread - not a crucial flaw, given my moderate shooting skills, but helpful in stopping me from missing those away birds on stand 10 by shooting over the top!
21g is so small, that’s 3/4oz right? You can’t even find that in the US 24g is 7/8oz and pretty rare here. 28g (1oz) is readily available but most shoot 1 1/8oz (32g) Why such a difference? You guys just have soft shoulders across the pond? 😊
