How to Adjust the Comb of Your Stock

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. As I set down on this rifle, I realized that I had to hold my head up to get my eye to the center of the scope. There's several ways to take care of that problem. This is a stock pack. It's adjustable. I've put padding in this one to obtain the right eye height. These have hook and loop fasteners. Makes it fairly quick and easy to adapt. Add or subtract support to get different heights for different shooters. It can be found in, by several different manufacturers. This one's covered with a suede leather which actually helps with the cheek welding. And what that is, is where when your cheek rests against the comb of the rifle. It keeps it from moving, and gives good support. So as Joe's finishing the setup on the rifle, we've talked a lot about comb height, and the importance of the cheek weld. And making sure that you can consistently lay your head down on the gun, have your cheek comfortably rest on top of that comb on the back of the stock, so that your eye is naturally in line with the scope. And that you're naturally looking through and getting that reticle without having to do a lot of balance and manipulation or use a lot of head or neck muscles to keep yourself in the right position. Being able to relax on the back of the rifle is going to be very important, to allow you to shoot longer, allow you to shoot in a more relaxed way. And of course, not to put any pressure or push on the rifle as you're shooting. Well one way you can certainly do that is with one of those cheek pads, or with a rifle that has an adjustable comb. Where you can actually physically change the height of the back of that stock. Another way to do it, a field expedient way, is to take some of this closed cell foam and actually use it to create a pad on that comb, that's gonna allow you to adjust the height specifically to you. As we open this up, all we'll really need is the closed cell foam, which you can get at any camping or outdoor store, it's made for sleeping mat applications and things like that. Some tape, in this case we're gonna use some type of a duct tape here. And then, a knife. We'll take the knife, and we're actually just gonna cut strips. And the strips will be three-quarters of an inch to an inch wide, and about eight to nine inches long. Once we get those strips cut, we'll be able to use them to set the height to the right amount. Now, I know from past experience that it usually takes me, three strips at most, and at least two. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut three strips, and we can always come back and cut more. This will allow you to save your mat and, well at this point we could still use this for camping. So, if you buy one of these, it'll probably get you through a lifetime of comb height adjustments with the different rifle and scope combinations that you're gonna use when you set up your precision rifle. Lets take this over to the rifle, and see how we can use this to set it up so that I have the proper cheek weld, with the right eye height level behind the scope. Joe, you got that all together? You bet. Great. I'm gonna go ahead and put this field expedient comb adjustment on here. Now Joe's got this rifle set up for him. I haven't been on this rifle yet. So we're gonna take a look and see what it's gonna take for me to get my adjustment on the rifle. Which of course means, before I put anything on it, I need to actually go ahead and put my head down on the rifle, get my cheek against the comb, and see where I am. It might be perfect. Honestly I think it's gonna be a little low. Okay, so as I look through here right now at this point, what I'm seeing is a big, dark circle taking up the lower half of the reticle. Which means I really am low. Now certainly I could raise my cheek up, and actually mount the gun here instead of up here, but that's not gonna be very comfortable at all. That's gonna require my muscle control, and again put more pressure on the rifle, move the rifle more, and cause more fatigue for me. It's not gonna be enjoyable. It's not gonna be consistent. So I'm gonna start with my first piece of solid core foam. Go ahead, pull off some tape. Now, this doesn't have to be pretty. This doesn't have to be a final adjustment. What you do want it to be is smooth. Make sure you have all of the wrinkles out of your tape, as you come up and put that over. And what you wanna do is match the contour, as much as you can, of the top of that stock. Now I cut these to a couple different widths. And that was so that I could layer them from the widest to the thinnest as I go up, and try to maintain that contour that's gonna be comfortable up against my cheek. Once I get this relatively stable and pinned down, I'll go ahead and check that height, and see if it works before I make any final adjustments, or put a lot of tape on here. Well I'll tell you what, on this particular rifle, with this particular scope, given the height of the rings, the size of the objective, and all the things that go into play that decide what the right eye height and the comfortable eye height are going to be for me, this is actually gonna be enough. So I'm gonna go ahead and complete this. What I wanna do is make sure that I cover the foam up completely, get it locked down in a very solid way. Now, these strips, the first strips I'm gonna put down are rather short. And they're really just here to anchor it and to get it started. What I'll probably do then is go back, cover them up completely with more tape. And one of the things I like to do is then take a piece of moleskin, or something else that's gonna be soft, and, and more comfortable for my cheek, especially if my cheek is gonna lay on the rifle for extended periods of time, or a long shooting session, I'm not gonna wanna build up the sweat or have some of the gummy, tackiness from the tape rub up on my face, so I'll just cover this up with moleskin if this were gonna be a permanent application. Once we have this set, again, it should be very easy for me to consistently lay my head down and line up right behind that reticle. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.