Many of the recent submissions regarding cant and cheek placement suggest
that some readers would like to know how to adjust a free rifle for both.
There is a simple exercise I use for helping my shooters first find their
correct butt plate (including cant) adjustment and then finding their
correct cheek piece adjustment.

To find the correct buttplate adjustment for a shooter, first remove the
cheekpiece from the rifle.  The purpose of this is to ensure that the
shooter keeps their head in a naturally erect position.  With the cheekpiece
on, it is possible for the shooter to tilt their head, resting on the
cheekpiece like a pillow.  With the cheekpiece off, any tilt of the head
will be felt in the neck muscles.  So, with the cheekpiece off the rifle,
make adjustments to the buttplate assembly until the rear sight lines up
directly in front of the eye.  What you will find with most shooters is that
the buttplate needs to go a whole lot lower than you thought, and a little
bit of cant adjustment is often needed too.  But once you get it correctly
adjusted, the rear sight should line up in front of the eye so well that the
cheekpiece almost seems unnecessary.

However, we of course know that the cheekpiece is very important for
ensuring a consistent head placement, thus ensuring proper sight alignment.
Having found the correct butt adjustment, the cheekpiece adjustment is found
by putting the cheekpiece back on the rifle, and removing the rear sight.
Then, using a target that has a single bull in the center of a very large
sheet of blank paper, the shooter fires shots using only the front sight to
aim.  The cheekpiece is adjusted to move the aiming eye, and thus the point
of impact of the shots, until the shots are hitting well inside the bull.
(While doing the exercise, the shooter will often complain that the bull
appears very fuzzy without the rear sight.  This is a good opportunity to
demonstrate the merits of using a larger front apperature.)  Once the
cheekpiece is adjusted so that the shooter can consistently hit black
without a rear sight, you've found its proper place.  Put the rear sight
back on and you're all set.  You've got a buttplate adjustment that keeps
the head naturally erect, and a cheekpiece adjustment that guarantees
consistent sight alignment.

A few notes on this exercise.  First, the idea of adjusting the cheekpiece
without the rear sight is an old one, certainly not my own.  I last heard it
from Frank Briggs when we hired him to coach the Air Force team.  Next,
hardware on the rifle may limit your ability to fully exploit this
technique.  Older free rifle buttplates only go down so far.  To make them
go down far enough for most shooters, you have to do serious modification to
them.  The alternative is to add riser blocks under the rear sight instead.
With the post-1984 Anschutz buttplates that have a zillion screws and run up
and down on a center post, you can unscrew the post from the flat plate and
screw it back on a couple of holes lower.  This enables you to adjust the
butt elevation correctly for even the longest-necked shooters.  A similar
situation exists with the cheekpiece hardware.  With the newest Aschutz and
Walther (and I assume FWB) cheekpieces, you should be able to adjust them
laterally enough to get the aiming eye in exactly the right spot.  But with
older cheekpieces that only adjust up and down, you may have to either move
the metal plate under the wood to the right or the left (requires a drill
for small adjustments and a Dremel for larger ones) or else sand-down or
beef-up the area where the face makes contact.  Since no one really wants to
cut the wood on a $2000 rifle, I'm a big advocate of buying and extra set of
the adjustable cheekpiece hardware ($50) and a 2x4 ($2) and making my own
cheekpieces.  One 2x4 allows you to try at least 16 different shapes of
cheekpiece without ever touching your originial stock.

[Editor - <standing ovation> Wow! I couldn't have said it better myself.
This is the same thing I do with my shooters. Kudos to Capt. Clark for
actually putting it into words. Some excellent advice here. </standing
ovation>]

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