BH Eye Dominance Rail

[Sian]

If you have a keen eye or just not very good at keeping still like me you can often find one on the ground of a shooting ground.   I could have picked up at least 8 to date.   It’s like anything some will love it, some will hate it but I’m tired of reading the bickering about whose is best and the utter rudeness that seems to be ever present.  I simply scroll on now.

 

[Lloyd]

I have this same issue on teal. Took a while to figure it out but with a comment from an instructor and input from @willhewland and going back and checking the hypothesis and using a 3D printed part to mask the bead it sort of helps. I think the real issue is I need to train myself to consistently focus very hard on all presentations. Not just the long/fast ones. 

FYI FWIW  I did a little experiment. I got a quote from a very expensive supplier who could make a part such as this in aluminum in probably the most inefficient way. The price came out at £7.56 each. That’s without the Scotch 3M VHB acrylic tape , sans packaging, sans marketing, sans mark up. 
from experience I’d estimate a cheaper supplier I know would charge £2.50ea while still being very inefficient. 
increase the volume from 50 at a time to say 5000, maximise efficiency and my guess is the cost would come down to a quid. 
 

min a nutshell, you can sell on value or sell on price and in both ways the input cost matter. 
 

so be it £100 or $18, it all stacks up. 

 

[Salopian]

Sian,

 Well said , it just goes to show how gullible we shooters are , everyone searching for the 'magic dot'.

Diver , You are correct I do not wish to influence anyone , they will make their minds up as you have said , and they will waste shedloads of money on gadgets that are hyped up to be fantastic , but actually masking the real cause .

But how do you reconcile £50 or £100 for a gadget that is not new , not revolutionary and as been available for years at a cost of $18 US  or as Lloyd said available for less than £1 0ff a 3D printer ?

Perhaps we should all flock to Nick Penn at considerable cost to shoot with both eyes open .

Or listen to Hamster who's advice is free and freely given.

 

[Hamster]

The gadget is not new or revolutionary, it has been offered in different guises for decades, Ben’s is his interpretation of it and why not if he can charge people a oner ! 

In principal I believe it is a very good route into helping many cross shouldered shooters improve their game but as with all things it isn’t for everyone. I’ve no axe to grind with anyone but when I’ve inspected this particular design I thought it to be too delicate looking and somewhat too big of a blob. Had I been asked to draw potential designs I’d have made sure the (dearer one at least) had provisions for tiny screws to secure it onto the rib AFTER a suitable trial period by the owner, I’d have also made it somewhat smaller; clearly this would have avoided the unintended losses referred to by Sian (and she is by no means the first to have mentioned it). 

There is a specialist rib company stateside who manufacture standard as well as custom made add on ribs which rather cleverly integrate the bead (or preferably a cm long plastic small rectangle, a la original Beretta 682 beads) inside a groove made into the rib. In effect what happens is that by sinking the bead into this groove the shoulders (meaning the rib) act as the “blinder” which has the advantage of being ambidextrous as well as potentially micro adjustable up and down to suit the shooters mounting idiosyncrasies. They also look completely normal with nothing sticking out and highly unlikely to sustain damage, an important consideration for the numerous times a competition gun gets put in and out of a gun bag. I’m sure one of our American forum members can provide a link. 

When I’m King or win the lottery, I shall design a supergun one of whose features shall be just such a rib/bead design but I shall make sure that I pay homage to the fact it wasn’t my invention. 

Sian,

 Well said , it just goes to show how gullible we shooters are , everyone searching for the 'magic dot'.

Diver , You are correct I do not wish to influence anyone , they will make their minds up as you have said , and they will waste shedloads of money on gadgets that are hyped up to be fantastic , but actually masking the real cause .

But how do you reconcile £50 or £100 for a gadget that is not new , not revolutionary and as been available for years at a cost of $18 US  or as Lloyd said available for less than £1 0ff a 3D printer ?

Or listen to Hamster who's advice is free and freely given.

When I wrote that essay I made sure I repeated the advice that mine was simply one of four potential cures for cross handedness, no one method or gadget can be effective for everyone, I also repeatedly mentioned that mine is simply the “close the master eye just before shooting” method but which has been refined and taken one step further into its ultimate conclusion. 

 

[Lloyd]

@Hamster  I have tried the closing one eye method. It didn’t help me. I think it interferes too much with my concentration.
Concentrating hard on the clay (or learning to) I feel is the proper fix for me. 
Maybe if I close both eyes I’ll have more success?

 

[timps]

I have written a few long posts on the subject years ago on PW and shotgunworld.

Unfortunately you have to be careful with coaches on this subject, you get a lot of fantastic shots / coaches / unnamed Olympians commenting on eye dominance but they have never suffered from cross dominance, they can smash clays for fun & teach most how to do it, but don’t understand the difficulty of cross dominance as they don’t see it through your eyes. I also get people who have never suffered from it telling people how it affects me, which I find amusing.

Everything usually works to a point, it tends to improve your shooting over doing nothing. As to the best method / gizmo it’s subjective, each shooter reacts differently to each method, all cross dominance is not the same. Some are strongly dominant in one eye, some switch as the brain chooses what it perceives is the better picture of the target.  I have come to the conclusion training and routines work best for me, I don’t claim to be a world champion or even a good shot but I have hit in the 90’s ex 100 at registered shoots so it seems to work for me.

It has also been proven the static test such as looking through a hole on a CD etc. used to identify eye dominance suffers from precision and bias issues. Even if it does correctly identify dominance this does not always replicate what happens when you mount a gun.

Herein lies the problem, you have to find out for yourself by trial and error what works for you.

Would I have tried this back in the day for £100, answer nope I’d have made my own with an old easy hit and a Stanley knife,  but if it works for you then fair play it's worth it.

 

[diver682]

Sian,

 Well said , it just goes to show how gullible we shooters are , everyone searching for the 'magic dot'.

Diver , You are correct I do not wish to influence anyone , they will make their minds up as you have said , and they will waste shedloads of money on gadgets that are hyped up to be fantastic , but actually masking the real cause .

But how do you reconcile £50 or £100 for a gadget that is not new , not revolutionary and as been available for years at a cost of $18 US  or as Lloyd said available for less than £1 0ff a 3D printer ?

Perhaps we should all flock to Nick Penn at considerable cost to shoot with both eyes open .

Or listen to Hamster who's advice is free and freely given.

Salopian, 

All I have said is my experience using the D Rail, for the first time there is noticeable improvement in my scores and the frustrating days shooting a 65/100 are less frequent

The device you sent a link to I have never seen before, so if you don't know it exists you can't buy it

I respect Hamster and its quite clear he is very knowledgeable on the subject  and has worked things out for himself on how to overcome eye dominance issues 

I have tried most eye dominance devices on the market but they have not worked for me, that's not to say others have not had success with them and that's great news for them 

So I paid £50 for the plastic rail its not a great deal of money in the grand scheme of things about the same as a slab of shells and most of us go through plenty of them in a year 

For the record I don't know Ben never met him and I am not hear to endorse his product , but in the same token he has never done me any harm 

 

[DavidJ]

I’d have also made it somewhat smaller; clearly this would have avoided the unintended losses referred to by Sian (and she is by no means the first to have mentioned it).

What part of it would you have made smaller? and why would it have avoided the unintended losses?

 

[DavidJ]

I’d have also made it somewhat smaller; clearly this would have avoided the unintended losses referred to by Sian (and she is by no means the first to have mentioned it).

What part of it would you have made smaller? and why would it have avoided the unintended losses?

I’d have also made it somewhat smaller; clearly this would have avoided the unintended losses referred to by Sian (and she is by no means the first to have mentioned it).

What part of it would you have made smaller? and why would it have avoided the unintended losses?

 

[Hamster]

What part of it would you have made smaller? and why would it have avoided the unintended losses?

The whole Shabang. I think the whole thing is bigger than it need be, also despite claims made to the contrary the bead is not particularly bright especially when the muzzles are addressing the sky as opposed to vegetation. 

I didn’t claim that that in itself would have avoided accidental loss but clearly a more secure glue strip would help and I personally would have designed tiny screw figments, even if it meant getting a gunsmith involved, expecting such a contraption to stay put (on glue strip) alone on a heavy use clay gun is wishful thinking. 

 

[Lloyd]

I haven't seen the BH Eye Dominance Rail, so I don't know what adhesive tape has been used so I can't comment on that directly.

I have however been involved in a couple of products that have been fixed together with glue/tape and can testify to the efficacy of the method and the associated problems also.

Aircraft, race cars and boats use lots of glue to hold both parts and material (reinforced fibre composites) together without issue and subject to significant loads.

I once designed a railway signal that had a Perspex screen fixed in place with Scotch VHB acrylic tape to an aluminium enclosure. Through an assembly error I had to remove the screen. After abandoning screwdrivers, pry bars and tyre irons I finally had success by sawing the screen off!

I also designed (embarrassingly... things you do to pay the bills eh?) an alloy wheel rim protector. This used the same tape. Tested at a famous proving ground at speeds of 150 mph and hitting a kerb at 30 mph, the protectors did not come off... and yet, if the materials were not properly prepared and cleaned, they'd fall off if you so much as farted in their general direction.

My guess is, this is why they can be found on the ground. Oily barrels, fingerprints, and oxide would almost guarantee bond failure.

I would assume this is pointed out in the product fitting instructions and advice to abrade the mating surfaces and clean with ethanol prior to bonding.

 

[DavidJ]

The whole Shabang. I think the whole thing is bigger than it need be, also despite claims made to the contrary the bead is not particularly bright especially when the muzzles are addressing the sky as opposed to vegetation. 

I didn’t claim that that in itself would have avoided accidental loss but clearly a more secure glue strip would help and I personally would have designed tiny screw figments, even if it meant getting a gunsmith involved, expecting such a contraption to stay put (on glue strip) alone on a heavy use clay gun is wishful thinking. 

Still not sure what you mean by smaller, It can't be very much shorter, it's surprising how much the off eye can see. I played around with a bit of aluminium after trying a prototype of it and it needs to come much further down the barrel to prevent the off eye seeing the bead.

It's never moved on my Gun, I'm not sure anything that involved a gunsmith to fit would sell to the masses, how many different screws would you need to include to cover the different threads and how would you fit it to a gun whose bead can't be removed. 

 

[Lloyd]

@davidJ I would rather image tiny set screws, in the order of 1mm - 2mm diameter could be so positioned in a profile designed to sit across the rib and clamp the the side of the rib.

That said, screws in my opinion or experience aren't the de facto solution to the problem of loss. Plenty of items screwed or bolted in place have come loose. I've had an alternator drop off a VW Transporter and I once frantically tried to get the attention of a motorist whose wheel was about to fall off. A friend of mine told me a tale of an aircraft logbook comment from one pilot writing "something rattling somewhere" to which the maintenance engineer replied "something tightened somewhere"

 

[DavidJ]

@davidJ I would rather image tiny set screws, in the order of 1mm - 2mm diameter could be so positioned in a profile designed to sit across the rib and clamp the the side of the rib.

That said, screws in my opinion or experience aren't the de facto solution to the problem of loss. Plenty of items screwed or bolted in place have come loose. I've had an alternator drop off a VW Transporter and I once frantically tried to get the attention of a motorist whose wheel was about to fall off. A friend of mine told me a tale of an aircraft logbook comment from one pilot writing "something rattling somewhere" to which the maintenance engineer replied "something tightened somewhere"

What seems like a simple solution isn't always where you end up at. A bracket might work but that adds width to a tapered rib. Not all ribs are the same width, some ventilated some not. Would you want these grub screws to mark the rib? 

The adhesive strip if applied correctly to a clean gun and allowed to bond is a very strong fixing. Some will fail and as you have said and as I have experienced, the screws used to attach my barrel weight come loose from the recoil forces unless secured with a bit of loctite.

 

[Hamster]

I haven't seen the BH Eye Dominance Rail, so I don't know what adhesive tape has been used so I can't comment on that directly.

I have however been involved in a couple of products that have been fixed together with glue/tape and can testify to the efficacy of the method and the associated problems also.

Aircraft, race cars and boats use lots of glue to hold both parts and material (reinforced fibre composites) together without issue and subject to significant loads.

I once designed a railway signal that had a Perspex screen fixed in place with Scotch VHB acrylic tape to an aluminium enclosure. Through an assembly error I had to remove the screen. After abandoning screwdrivers, pry bars and tyre irons I finally had success by sawing the screen off!

I also designed (embarrassingly... things you do to pay the bills eh?) an alloy wheel rim protector. This used the same tape. Tested at a famous proving ground at speeds of 150 mph and hitting a kerb at 30 mph, the protectors did not come off... and yet, if the materials were not properly prepared and cleaned, they'd fall off if you so much as farted in their general direction.

My guess is, this is why they can be found on the ground. Oily barrels, fingerprints, and oxide would almost guarantee bond failure.

I would assume this is pointed out in the product fitting instructions and advice to abrade the mating surfaces and clean with ethanol prior to bonding.

I spent the best part of 20 years fitting new number plates to freshly arrived stock cars using double sided tape, it took me all of five minutes to realise that so long as you cleaned the base material (which differ massively in texture and cleanability) failure rates were extremely low. It also eventually dawned on me that no matter how thorough or forceful I was in explaining this simple fact to newly arrived personnel, that most simply couldn’t absorb this important information. 

The loss rate of this item (many are presumably loosened by the repeated action of being sleeved) is testament to what I’m saying.

DavidJ - by smaller I mean something not as big as the present offering, many have complained they can’t get on with the contraption and that could well be because its size is in itself interfering with their sighting/preparation to take the shot. 

 

[Westward]

So if the rail is installed correctly such that the adhesive is fully bonded, does that mean removal would damage the barrels?

p.s. I'm just a casual observer so to speak and don't have a dominance problem but I'm also a believer in training the eyes rather than using a device to get round the problem. Having said that I realise it's a big commitment that takes time, whereas using an occluding device or closing an eye is pretty well immediate. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[vmax1010]

When I bought my beretta it had an easyhit on it same type of thing as eye dominance, can't say i noticed it when shooting so i took it off and my shooting scores didn't change but getting it off I had to cut through the tape and use a label remover I suspect the tape used is the same on both so it does stick 

 

[MartynB]

I’ve got a Browning HiViz sight on a K80 . Fitted nigh on 20 years ago. It’s located with a tiny screw into the front bead hole and double sided tape. I took the screw  out a while back and guess what ? I can’t budge the sight:  it’s so stuck that force might damage the rib IMHO . When I get time I’m going to stick the muzzles in a jar of solvent . 
 

As a few of the guys have said earlier, preparation is everything . Some modern lubricants creep and bond and a simple solvent wipe won’t remove them enough for preparing a surface for adhesives  .
ACF50 and TetraGun for example  are great until you don’t want them

 

[Hamster]

I’ve got a Browning HiViz sight on a K80 . Fitted nigh on 20 years ago. It’s located with a tiny screw into the front bead hole and double sided tape. I took the screw  out a while back and guess what ? I can’t budge the sight:  it’s so stuck that force might damage the rib IMHO . When I get time I’m going to stick the muzzles in a jar of solvent . 
 

As a few of the guys have said earlier, preparation is everything . Some modern lubricants creep and bond and a simple solvent wipe won’t remove them enough for preparing a surface for adhesives  .
ACF50 and TetraGun for example  are great until you don’t want them

Try “sawing” it off using 30 lbs fishing line, you’d be surprised how easily they come off with careful strokes. I’ve used this method to take off damaged manufacturer badges or brand names with missing letters. Heating the remaining sticker and gentle rubbing with a cleaner should suffice. 

 

[Martinj]

The problem with dunking in solvent is that it can only get to the adhesive via the edge so you might have to wait another 20 years, I like Hamid's suggestion of "sawing" it with fishing line, I have probably got some 20lb big game line if you want to try some.

Once the part is detached, remove residue with solvents such as white spirit, meths or petrol (depending upon the adhesive material)