A while back I bought a SW36 snub. It's a nice gun in a lot of ways, and I really like the feel of it. But, I can't shoot it worth a damn! Any advice/confirmation of technique would be helpful.
First: most practice is DA only. Although the gun has a hammer spur, I figure for both practical and legal reasons, if I ever need to use it I'll probably be shooting DA. So...best to spend most of the practice time on DA shooting.
1 - Sight picture: A guy at the range said that the sight picture isn't supposed to be normal. I've been trying to line up the front sight and rear sights evenly. He said that the front sight should stick up above the other two. Basically, plant the front sight at COM on the target and make sure it's standing between the two rear sights, but don't worry about hiding the front sight down in the notch. That makes sense to me--it's a pretty natural way to aim the little gun--but it's against everything I learned in class.
2 - Trigger finger placement: What I learned in class was that the trigger finger should be placed on the trigger so that the trigger is between the last knuckle and the pad at the tip of the finger. My fingers are pretty long, and the DA trigger pull is pretty long. I have found that I need a lot more finger wrap-around or else the barrel will be shoved around as the pull is completed. I actually need to pull the trigger with the middle-third of my trigger finger, not the tip. Does this make sense? Am I simply learning a bad habit that I will have to unlearn?
3 - Point-of-aim: I'm left handed. The bullets tend to punch paper a few inches to the right of point of aim, and I've started aiming a few inches to the left to compensate. I assume that the gun shoots true, and that I'm just compensating for some sort of trigger jerk. Is this ok to do as long as the groups are tight? Or, again, am I just praticing something I'm going to have to unlearn? Another way of asking this: if I consistantly hit the center of the target this way, and I only compensate this way for this gun, does it really matter that my form might be bad? The gun is hard enough to shoot properly, and I'm not trying to win any awards, just have the bullets go where I want them to.
The gun has a nice heavy trigger weight. Nice might be the wrong adjective. Is it worth taking to a gunsmith to get a lighter pull?
Sorry about the long-winded questions. This is just bugging me to no end. I actually did a lot better at the range today, but I'm worried because I've started to work with what seems to be bad technique.
Moved to Training Techniques/JonJ
First: most practice is DA only. Although the gun has a hammer spur, I figure for both practical and legal reasons, if I ever need to use it I'll probably be shooting DA. So...best to spend most of the practice time on DA shooting.
1 - Sight picture: A guy at the range said that the sight picture isn't supposed to be normal. I've been trying to line up the front sight and rear sights evenly. He said that the front sight should stick up above the other two. Basically, plant the front sight at COM on the target and make sure it's standing between the two rear sights, but don't worry about hiding the front sight down in the notch. That makes sense to me--it's a pretty natural way to aim the little gun--but it's against everything I learned in class.
2 - Trigger finger placement: What I learned in class was that the trigger finger should be placed on the trigger so that the trigger is between the last knuckle and the pad at the tip of the finger. My fingers are pretty long, and the DA trigger pull is pretty long. I have found that I need a lot more finger wrap-around or else the barrel will be shoved around as the pull is completed. I actually need to pull the trigger with the middle-third of my trigger finger, not the tip. Does this make sense? Am I simply learning a bad habit that I will have to unlearn?
3 - Point-of-aim: I'm left handed. The bullets tend to punch paper a few inches to the right of point of aim, and I've started aiming a few inches to the left to compensate. I assume that the gun shoots true, and that I'm just compensating for some sort of trigger jerk. Is this ok to do as long as the groups are tight? Or, again, am I just praticing something I'm going to have to unlearn? Another way of asking this: if I consistantly hit the center of the target this way, and I only compensate this way for this gun, does it really matter that my form might be bad? The gun is hard enough to shoot properly, and I'm not trying to win any awards, just have the bullets go where I want them to.
The gun has a nice heavy trigger weight. Nice might be the wrong adjective. Is it worth taking to a gunsmith to get a lighter pull?
Sorry about the long-winded questions. This is just bugging me to no end. I actually did a lot better at the range today, but I'm worried because I've started to work with what seems to be bad technique.
Moved to Training Techniques/JonJ
. Tricky...
