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Grips affect accuracy?
FrostDawg
Member Posts: 706 ✭✭✭✭
In a previous post about my SP101, several members were critical of my choice to change the small factory grips for larger Hogues and other commented the Ruger was very sensitive to grip changes. I will show my ignorance and ask for an explanation of how a grip change can/will affect accuracy.
Comments
Obviously, grips aren't going to affect the intrinsic (eg mechanical) accuracy of the gun. No amount of changing grips can make an inaccurate gun accurate.
What good grips CAN do is let you achieve better reproduceability in your your shooting, leading to better PRACTICAL accuracy.
They do this several ways:
First of all, grips that are exactly matched to your hand will effectively force your hand to create the exact same finger and palm placement every time you pick up the gun, Increased repeatability of the grip leads to better consistency and accuracy.
Good grips also engage more of the surface area of your hand when shooting. This has at least two benefits. The more important one is that good grips are designed to allow ALL your fingers to apply equal pressure to the grip. This has the effect of causing all the muscles in your forearm to contract to the same tension level, increasing the overall stability of your shooting "platform" and reducing wiggle.
The next advantage of more surface area contact is that recoil energy gets spread out over more of your hand. That leads to lower perceived recoil, and less hand fatigue, again, contributing to accuracy over time.
With grips where you can't use all the muscles in your forearm (eg "boot" grips) your not going to stabilize the gun as well. Next, if your hand doesn't fit the grips well, then you have to squeeze harder to stabilize the gun, leading to increased fatigue and decreased accuracy, particularly with multiple shots over time.
If the grip forces your hand into an unnatural or uncomfortable position (and I think lots of stock grips actually do this, including the so-called Smith "target" grips) that is not conducive to accuracy either.
Conversely, part of a proper grip fit is ensuring that the trigger pull length is correct, and the angle that your trigger finger engages the trigger is optimal. If either one of these things are off, accuracy can be affected. For example, if your trigger finger isn't puling the trigger straight back, that will add a tendency to jerk the gun when shooting. Some grips position your hand so that you can't get a straight-back trigger pull.
Lastly, SOME grips can have special features. For example, apart from contributing to consistency of grip, palm-rests help take some of the weight of the gun off the fingers.
Some free-pistol grips use a wrist brace that can add the stability of the entire hand. If this didn't help, its use wouldn't be banned in many sorts of pistol competition!
Let me express my gratitude for all your advice, obviously based on logic, knowledge and practical experience. Wisdom is easily recognized. Much of what you say is why I went with the Hogue grips. They may not be the most expensive customized handle available...but some of us are on a budget. I thought they were infinitely more comfortable than the factory stub. I was surprised at some of the previous comments saying to switch back. I tried to reason their logic like maybe it placed the pistol on a non-level plane in my hand or something...but if the sights line up and I don't move the pistol, it should hit around the same spot when the trigger is pulled well...at least with good ammo. I wasn't happy with the group size nor the perceived center of the large group. It had to be the ammo. But I had to ask why several were downing changing the grip. It went against everything I thought I knew, which granted isn't much in comparison. But I wanted to be sure.
I shoot skeet/trap and used to scoff at those talking about shotgun fit and counting powder grains and such. It's a shotgun...you only got to get close, ya know? That is till I went hunting for a real trap gun. Till then I had used my skeet gun with tighter chokes...and did okay. A friend talked me into trying a Miroku he had for sale. It wasn't at all what I wanted. The chokes were fixed and tight. It had 32" barrels and I wanted 30" max...that is till I hit 172 out of the first 175 birds I shot at. 2 50's in that run. To this day I have never shot below a 22 with it. I used to average about 18. And, yes, the gun fits and comes to my eye so naturally I still marvel at how automatic it seems. So I was willing to listen to a logical explanation. I got one...thanks.
The "match" grips are sort of the ultimate in grips, but obviously, you aren't going to put bulky, heavy, one-handed, oversized custom anatomic match grips on a carry gun. I just used that as an example to make my points.
Expanding this point, the real world is full of compromises. The grips that might be the most comfortable and most accurate for you probably aren't going to be the ones that are most easily concealed, and vice-versa. So you have to do what "works" not necessarily what's ideal from a theoretical standpoint.
If you want to carry a gun in your pocket, you may need to use abbreviated "boot" grips, that simply aren't conducive to good accuracy.
Still, having a gun in your pocket that you might not shoot as well as you'd like is still a lot better than having a wonderful match gun that lets you shoot only "X-rings" sitting at home in your safe!
I say if you like the Hogue grips, shoot them will and can conceal them (assuming you need to do that), then keep them.
IF you're not sure if the grips are good or not, try to "Pepsi challenge" them using the same ammo against the older boot grips to see which you shoot better.