As I have already mentioned, the grip which suits me best is that on the French duelling pistol. But what suits one man may not necessarily suit another.
A smooth, mother-of-pearl stock is very slippery to me, but some think this gives the ideal grip.
Some men have fat flabby perspiring hands, others have cold damp hands, both of these seem to be able to hold a mother-of-pearl grip comfortably, but they do not suit a man who has dry warm hands.
In the revolver days I knew several men who could not grip the Smith & Wesson Russian model revolver comfortably. They said the stock was too small for them. Even the Colt stock, according to them, was too small. They, in consequence, induced the makers to supply Colt revolvers to suit “The English market” with enormously big stocks.
Now these very men who found the normal stocks too small did not have abnormally large hands. It was that they held their pistols with much too rigid a grip.
Some men have special stocks made so that they “can get a firm grip.”
Some of them even go to the length of putting India rubber tennis racket grips over the pistol stocks. I have tried shooting one of their pistols so ornamented (?) and found it was like trying to shoot with a big potato held in my fist.
Others, in order to obtain this “firm grip,” smear the stock of their pistol over with wet modelling clay, take a grip of it and then have a plaster cast made of their finger prints in this clay and get a stock cast from this. When they hold this monstrosity with their fingers embedded in it, they claim to have a perfect hold.
The idea they are working for is an entirely wrong one. The pistol should be held as a fencing foil, lying in the palm of the hand. Because the left hand gets burnt when many shots are fired in rapid succession from a rifle or gun, a hand guard was invented which slips over to the fore end of the gun and protects the left hand from contact with the hot barrels.
It was also claimed that, having to hold this guard made the shooter always hold his hand in the same place, and that this was a great advantage.