TargetTalk

I have seen a few competitors with weight added to the palm rest for air pistol and .22. Looks like it was drilled and lead or some other material added. I assume to get some more control over the balance of the pistol.

Has anyone done this and found a benefit or it is another rabbit hole?

I think it's a rabbit hole. Increasing the weight near the grip does next to nothing to increase the moment of inertia of the pistol where it helps stability the most. The added weight will just make you tire quicker. I've never seen anyone do that before, and I see no benefit to it. If you can hold up the extra weight, put it closer to the muzzle, where it will actually do some good.

I could see that be mildly useful when also adding weight near the muzzle. To counteract the center of mass moving too far forward for comfort. With the current crop of sub 1kg pistols that seems plausible if you wanted to go up to say 1.2kg. You probably wouldn't want to add all 200g so far forward. You'd have to distribute the weight on both sides of the center of mass which tends to be slightly in front of the trigger for most models.
But then I'm not convinced weight is all that useful in the first place. When I experimented with that the scatt metrics always ended up fairly similar after a small adjustment period.

Thanks, as always, for the insight.

The only reason I'd consider that is if the pistol is otherwise incorrectably nose-heavy. It would never be designed that way, but perhaps if you have added an optic and it has to sit far forward, etc.

Generally, I want my pistol to balance at a point just ahead of the trigger, that is, slightly nose heavy, but only slightly. I'd never weight it so it tilted "back".

Early on I bought two of Andrew Berryhill's 3D printed barrel weight items, one each for my AP and FP; he can make them in a colour of your choice and of a diameter to suit your pistol.


The weight comes from up to four .38 wadcutter projectiles inserted in sockets in the fittings. The beauty of the device is that it is very easy to clip on and off the barrel (won’t mark it) and the weight can be varied on the fly if the pills are not pushed too far into the holder. Also, the device can be placed anywhere along the barrel - I use them up against the front sights to reduce muzzle movement, at least initially until I settle down. Especially effective of FP owing to the long barrel.

Bob