How to avoid recoil owees with full power loads

G

G.O. West

New member
My 8 1/2 lb. Winchester Model 71 in .450 Alaskan can push a 400 grain jacketed bullet at 2200'/sec. with 75 grains of powder. The recoil energy calculator says this equals 58.77 lbs. of recoil energy. (For comparison it shows a .30-06 at 7 lbs. and a 338 LM at 15 lbs.) After levering off 20 rounds my shoulder tells me it would appreciate a rest, and under my t-shirt I think I can read "Pachmayr White Line" imprinted into my skin.

Then I came across a different recoil pad design that instead of being made of solid rubber, is a rubber casing enclosing a soft gel pad that claims a 1/3 reduction in felt recoil. Unlike traditional pads that you shape the pad to fit the stock, this design is manufactured to fit specific firearms and cannot be ground down. Seeing as there is not one available for a Winchester Model 71 or 86, I made a new stock to fit the pad.

Beginning with a block of walnut...
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Recoil pad base plate installed.
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Glass bedded for top tang.
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Stock rough sanded.
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First coat of linseed oil.
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Ready to shoot.
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So after firing off a bunch of cartridges I can report that the gun has less muzzle jump and my shoulder has no complaints. If anyone is interested in this pad the manufacturer's website is http://www.falconstrike.ca/
 
The numbers you show for your 450 are pretty close to being accurate.

I can't say about YOUR 30-06 and the loads you use, but my relatively light 30-06 with 180 gr loads is closer to 20 ft lbs, not 7.

An 8.5 lb 338 Lapua is going to be in the 45 ft lb recoil range.

Even a 243 has much more recoil than the 7 ft lbs you show for 30-06.

But all of the modern high tech recoil pads really do work well.
 
Interesting. The recoil calculator says my Barrett Semi has 103 ft-lbs of energy.
While that might be true, and I question it, I have no problem firing 100 plus rounds in a day, and often 30 rounds in about a minute.

What's the difference, cause I don't have Superman's shoulder?

The Barrett spreads out the recoil over ~~ 200 milliseconds, where your lever action Alaskan is going to dump all of that energy in a single (painful) impulse about 5 milliseconds long as it has no energy absorption mechanism (much less strategy) other than the weight of the rifle.
 
Regardless of the hokey numbers, before the gel pad my .450 Alaskan had a stouter recoil than my 375 H&H Sako. Now the 450 feels pretty nice to shoot.
Click to expand...

That is what counts we just are nit pickers that like to keep wrong data from going down internet !

It worked and it looks good, life can be good.
 
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