I'm slowly creeping toward completion of a rifle project. It's a No.4 Long Branch SMLE rebarreled to .45-70.
As I've gotten older I've accumulated the usual ailments, including a shoulder that may wind up needing surgery eventually. Since I don't want to aggravate things any more than I have to, I want to add a pad to reduce felt recoil.
I went looking at recoil pads, and now I'm confused.
As I see it, you can reduce felt recoil by spreading the recoil out over a wider area, or by spreading the recoil impulse over time, or by absorbing some of the recoil energy.
A soft or vented rubber recoil pad spreads out the impulse over time, plus is adds area as it conforms to your shoulder. Other than a tiny amount of hysteresis (energy converted to heat by flexing the rubber), you get all of the recoil, but it's not all in one sharp blow. That seems good.
A "dead" foam like Sorbothane is a high-hysteresis material, and absorbs some of the recoil energy by turning it into heat. (we're not talking about flaming buttpads here; you'd need instruments to measure it) These pads are usually softer than rubber pads, which helps them conform better to your shoulder and spread the load more. That seems good too.
Where things start getting weird is the shape of the pad. Most of the pads aren't very thick, and attach to a flat butt on the stock. Now, you're limited to how thick the pad can be by how much you can allow the rifle to move back. The ultimate limits are your face or trigger finger contacting metal parts that won't give way. In practice, I don't really know what the limits are. 1-1/2" seems to be the thickest commonly available pad, and looking at the design, compression would be less than half that.
Okay, since the pad is relatively thin, it would help to start off with something that's not a flat surface beating on a round shoulder joint. Some pads have a slight curvature to them, but I doubt it accomplishes much. Some older muzzle-loaders and target rifles had elaborately dished shapes conforming to the shooter's shoulder, though they were in brass or steel. I don't remember when Goodyear invented vulcanization of rubber, but what we think of as "rubber" didn't really exist before the late 1800s.
Those shaped stocks spread the load, but I suspect their primary purpose was so that the shooter shouldered the rifle in the exact same way each time when shooting while standing.
On the other hand, some places sell pads with convex shapes for trap shooters, with highly rounded tops and bottoms, supposedly to make the shotgun easier to shoulder, with no sharp corners to get hung up in clothing.
It looks like I'd want something concave; maybe not as much as some of the antiques, but certainly not a flat or convex pad.
Speaking of sharp corners, all of the pads on my current rifles have very sharp edges. I've wound up with line bruises from them before, where the sharp edge dug in.
So, my ideal pad would be concave, fairly thick, with rounded edges that don't dig in, with a dead foam core. Of course, I haven't found anything like that for sale...
As I've gotten older I've accumulated the usual ailments, including a shoulder that may wind up needing surgery eventually. Since I don't want to aggravate things any more than I have to, I want to add a pad to reduce felt recoil.
I went looking at recoil pads, and now I'm confused.
As I see it, you can reduce felt recoil by spreading the recoil out over a wider area, or by spreading the recoil impulse over time, or by absorbing some of the recoil energy.
A soft or vented rubber recoil pad spreads out the impulse over time, plus is adds area as it conforms to your shoulder. Other than a tiny amount of hysteresis (energy converted to heat by flexing the rubber), you get all of the recoil, but it's not all in one sharp blow. That seems good.
A "dead" foam like Sorbothane is a high-hysteresis material, and absorbs some of the recoil energy by turning it into heat. (we're not talking about flaming buttpads here; you'd need instruments to measure it) These pads are usually softer than rubber pads, which helps them conform better to your shoulder and spread the load more. That seems good too.
Where things start getting weird is the shape of the pad. Most of the pads aren't very thick, and attach to a flat butt on the stock. Now, you're limited to how thick the pad can be by how much you can allow the rifle to move back. The ultimate limits are your face or trigger finger contacting metal parts that won't give way. In practice, I don't really know what the limits are. 1-1/2" seems to be the thickest commonly available pad, and looking at the design, compression would be less than half that.
Okay, since the pad is relatively thin, it would help to start off with something that's not a flat surface beating on a round shoulder joint. Some pads have a slight curvature to them, but I doubt it accomplishes much. Some older muzzle-loaders and target rifles had elaborately dished shapes conforming to the shooter's shoulder, though they were in brass or steel. I don't remember when Goodyear invented vulcanization of rubber, but what we think of as "rubber" didn't really exist before the late 1800s.
Those shaped stocks spread the load, but I suspect their primary purpose was so that the shooter shouldered the rifle in the exact same way each time when shooting while standing.
On the other hand, some places sell pads with convex shapes for trap shooters, with highly rounded tops and bottoms, supposedly to make the shotgun easier to shoulder, with no sharp corners to get hung up in clothing.
It looks like I'd want something concave; maybe not as much as some of the antiques, but certainly not a flat or convex pad.
Speaking of sharp corners, all of the pads on my current rifles have very sharp edges. I've wound up with line bruises from them before, where the sharp edge dug in.
So, my ideal pad would be concave, fairly thick, with rounded edges that don't dig in, with a dead foam core. Of course, I haven't found anything like that for sale...
I can usually do 5 to6 rounds from the bench with the shield.
