TIMING APPARATUS

In order to improve our speed in shooting, it is important to have a mechanical timing apparatus.

Trying to judge speed by counting or getting someone else to count half-seconds is very unreliable. Where everything depends upon making your last shot a good one the counting is bound to become slower, in the anxiety not to spoil a good score.

With a mechanical timer there is no relenting, it is Fate, and if you cannot make a good shot in time, your score is spoiled. This trains you properly; you are not buoyed up by false ideas of your skill which, when there is real timing, will prove that your ideas of your skill are vain delusions.

In England a clock is used, marking seconds or half-seconds.

This is very good for the man who works the targets; he sees if he is working the time right, but it does not assist the shooter as he does not hear the time being struck.

For the learner, it is important that he should be able to apportion his time, take so long for lifting his arm, so long for aiming, etc., so as to learn how to do the best shooting in the time limit allowed, and judge accordingly.

For this purpose there is nothing better than the metronome.

The metronome is used by music teachers for instructing their pupils in the right time when playing.

Music for instruction is marked with the metronome beat proper to it: all that has to be done is to wind up the metronome, set it to that number, and start it beating.

A metronome consists of a pyramidical box with clockwork, which makes an upright pendulum beat at whatever speed it is set.

The speed depends on a weight which is moved up and down the rod, to set marks, which correspond to numbers engraved on the sides.

It is, in fact, a clock pendulum reversed.

The more elaborate ones have a bell attachment which strikes after any desired number of beats of the pendulum. If you want to practise three minutes’ exposure of target, you set the metronome at half-second beats (120 to the minute) and the ball to strike at every sixth beat.

Accuracy of course depends for what purpose you are practising, but to be able to hit an object a foot in diameter, at ten yards’ distance instantly, is ample for self-defence.