Early pre-1922 patent recoil pad|Winchester Rifles|Forum|Winchester Collector

clarence said

JC said I’ve never

What do the members think of this pad.  It is orange, not red like the 1922 pads and hard (like a Silver’s pad) not soft.

  

I’ve never touched one of these early pads that wasn’t hard as a rock.  We must assume their condition now is the result of chemical changes in the rubber since mfg., not their original cond.  In fact, if it was soft, I’d assume “repro.”

  

I agree with Clarence

Hi Jeff-

I can speak to the origins of the Winchester solid red pads with the June 6,1922 Patent Date.  Note that there’s NO <space> between the comma after “June 6,” and “1922”.  The Galzan “repros” corrected that typographical error, which identifies them as non-Winchester repros…

Check out US Patent No. 1,418,532.  Patented by one James R. Caldwell and assigned to the Seamless Rubber Company of New Haven, CT, which BTW manufactured the “NoShoc” brand recoil pad for rifles.  Took me a while to find this on the USPTO site:

Short story is that Winchester outsourced those solid red pads from Seamless Rubber Company. Similar to the way that the later Ventilated pads were made by Pachmayr.  Internally, the Winchester pads are identical to the Noshoc pad of the day except for the embossed “Winchester” instead of “NoShoc”…    

I can only speak to M70s, but the first Winchester bolt gun to be regularly supplied with a recoil pad was the 375 MAGNUM chambering in the M70.  It has been said (by Roger Rule) that some of the earliest M70 375 MAGNUMs (specifically the infamous “pencil barrel” guns with the standard barrel contour) were fitted with NoShoc pads marked “NoShoc”.  I have seen one such gun in the 3XXX serial number range (not my gun so I didn’t give the full S/N) that has a NoShoc-marked pad and that I think is legit.

As for color…  Most of the older (as in pre-war) solid red pads I’ve seen are (nowadays anyway) more of a reddish brown than red, but Winchester used these pads on the M70 (375 H&H MAGNUM and 338 WIN MAGNUM) at least until 1960 or so and the later ones are more consistently what I’d call red.

As for the pad in your picture.  I do not know…  But I suspect that the Seamless “NoShoc” pad with the June 6,1922 date was the earliest factory supplied recoil pad Winchester used in cataloged production, and that the pad you showed is a much later Winchester product (if even Winchester), not a “pre-patent date” pad.  I could surely be wrong of course!!!

To all reading this… Educate me… What Winchester Model(s) before the 375 MAGNUM M70 in 1936-37, came factory supplied with a solid red recoil pad (NOT including special orders).

Thanks!!!

Lou

Hi Bert-

Thank you!!!  I don’t know much about Winchesters that aren’t M70s (and not enough about M70s either), but I’ve assumed there were Winchester firearms produced earlier than the M70 that would have had that pad.  Have you seen any factory original Winchester firearm with the June 6,1922 pad (special order or not) that was marked “NoShoc” and not Winchester?  

Here’s a 1932 ad (low res from the internet) and a pic (better res but still internet) of an older M70 with one (not saying this was factory-installed but it has the Patent date on it):

FWIW… Roger Rule claimed that some of the “pencil barrel” 375 MAGNUM M70s were made with NoShoc pads marled as such.  Of course, he also estimated that there were less than ten of those pencil barrel rifles made, so he couldn’t have had much of a sample size…

As for Jeff’s original question… I really don’t know… The Seamless patent was based on the idea of a soft rubber inside layer fused to a more durable outside shell.  I supposed Seamless could have made pads during the “Patent Pending” period, but would they have been marked Winchester under license?  I just have no info on that…

Best,

Lou

I have saved a catalog page that discusses the Winchester Recoil Pad, but I forgot to include what date catalog it was from. I’m assuming late 20s early 30s. It is page 233 of the catalog.

It mentions other recoil pads “In Stock” that could be ordered. 

Sincerely,

Maverick