Custom Gunfitting

"a custom fitted gun is the pre-requisite to achieving a shooter's full
potential" - chris batha

Chris Batha is the custom gunfitter for E. J. Churchill Gunmakers, London, England.

He is also the Gunfitter of choice to many of the best London gun manufacturers in the UK and the USA.

Custom gun fitting is done with both side-by-side and over and under try-guns, with pattern plate testing.

To arrange for a custom gunfitting, contact ChrisBatha@aol.com

“If you want the Rolls-Royce of fittings, fly to London, stay at Claridge’s, and take a cab out to West Wycombe, where Chris Batha will fit you, take you for a sumptuous lunch, and then come back for an afternoon of instruction followed by an hour in the simulated driven-grouse butt. You will be a few thousand dollars poorer (but spiritually considerably richer).
-Terry Wieland,
Author and Editor of Gray’s Sporting Journal

Chris adjusting trygun photo
Chris J. Batha SMASC, MICSI

The following article will answer some questions you may have about gunfitting:

Q: Does a gun need to be fitted to shoot well?
A: Consider the first thing that you do on entering a new car. You adjust the seat and
mirrors to suit your personal requirements, in particular the height and leg room of the
seat so you can easily reach the controls, and ensure good vision of the road, instruments and mirrors. These adjustments are an essential aid to good and safe driving. A secondary consideration is comfort. A well-adjusted seat allows you to maintain concentration when the car needs to be driven for long periods. We have all suffered from a poor driving position and the resulting agony to back or neck it can cause.
An off-the-rack shotgun will do the job, but a custom-fitted one becomes a source of confidence and comfort and a joy to own and use.

Q: Is it possible to shoot successfully with an ill-fitting gun?
A: You can shoot an unfitted gun with a great deal of success; however, this will always be achieved by a compromise in style and technique. You will have to adapt yourself to the gun to achieve proper eye-muzzle relationship. This need to conform to the gun will necessarily create a pause or break in your natural mount or swing that on those split-second timing targets causes a miss, or at minimum, inconsistency

Q: What is a pattern plate?
A: The pattern plate’s role in gun fitting is to check the point of impact of the pattern, its pellet distribution and position. This is utilized in gunfitting by firing at the plate from fixed positions. The eye, on average, is three feet from the end of the barrel. If the plate is shot from the 16 -yard marker, the mathematics of three feet into 16 yards equates that 2 inches on the plate is an eighth of an inch on the gun. Thus, if you are a right-hander shooting four inches to the left of the aiming mark then you would require one quarter inch of cast-off to align the gun to the eye. This formula is applied equally at 32 yards with 2 inches representing a sixteenth of an inch on the gun. Used this way, the pattern plate gives accurate feedback to the gunfitter to make the necessary adjustments to achieve a perfect fit.