cracked rubber butt pad mystery

bobski

i cant take no for an answer. ive been searching for years. there has to be something out there, or someone with the knowledge of repairing a plastic factory fused spacer crack on a factory rubber butt pad. the area where its cracked is in the classic high stress area of the toe. either it was snagged on a gun rack, over tightened, or dropped. ive seen many like this. and the answer i always get is...must be replaced or it will just crack again.
who out there has a secret repair method for this?
it is one of the hardest repairs ive ever encountered, that always tends to leave 'smiths stumped. any old timers know any tricks? anyone want to take it on? ive had suggestions to drill and pin, glue, remelt with a soldering gun, etc.... i need a for certain, done it a million times, works like a champ answer. lmk. and thanks in advance.

mac10

its rubber .old age, have gunsmith put on a new one it is done

TANK78Z

The spacer is OLD plastic, it has deteriorated partly due to environmental conditions , and the fact that many plastics and rubbers lose some of the chemicals {voc's} that they are made of over the years.
You may be able to make it appear a little better with a lot of careful experimentation, for the short run, but its time is over and really a waste of time and energy. You need to get or make a new spacer.
Except, it looks like the rubber butt pad is also in declining condition, probably hardening from age, if this firearm is a collectable it would be best to leave it as is, if its a shooter replace both pad and spacer with an appropriate looking pad/spacer of current manufacture, and just keep the originals in your gun cabinet.

62fuelie

For some of the classic/collectible recoil pads (Winchester, for certain) there are excellent reproduction pads with spacers to replicate the original appearance of the rifle or shotgun. I have one on a pre-'64 M-70 Featherweight '06 and it looks exactly like others I have seen and compared it to. The only difference is mine is flexible and the others are red rocks.

35 Whelen

Were it mine, and I wanted to keep it, I would pull the pad, and cut two shallow channels, perpendicular to the crack and overlapping it equal on each side of the crack, deep enough to hold small, headless screws. Make the channels deep enough that the screws lay down, sit just below flush, then epoxy them in place, along with the crack itself, sanding down the excess when dry. You might have to rig up some sort of fixture to hold it flat while it cures, maybe even place it on some wax paper, and set a few pounds of weight on it. If the pad is original to the gun, I'd do everything I could to keep it that way.

bobski

thanks Whelan.
as for the others....trust me, replacing is the easy way out. I wouldn't have posted q&a if that's what I planned on doing.
as for old rubber, that is correct. that's why owners try to save the old rubber. to match the old gun. the black plastic is easily replaceable. but getting off the rubber is the hard part. many owners of old guns want to keep the same dimensions too. so im thinking, sand off the old spacer, make a new one, sand to fit and on it goes.
anyone else?

TRAP55

35 Whelen wrote:

Were it mine, and I wanted to keep it, I would pull the pad, and cut two shallow channels, perpendicular to the crack and overlapping it equal on each side of the crack, deep enough to hold small, headless screws. Make the channels deep enough that the screws lay down, sit just below flush, then epoxy them in place, along with the crack itself, sanding down the excess when dry. You might have to rig up some sort of fixture to hold it flat while it cures, maybe even place it on some wax paper, and set a few pounds of weight on it. If the pad is original to the gun, I'd do everything I could to keep it that way.

This ^^^, I use black Acraglas. I've used it to restore buttplates that have the toe chipped off too.

Bill DeShivs

The spacer is broken where the screw that holds the pad on goes through.
Replace the spacer.

Dokey

use Loctite 420. Take the pad off and clamp it to a flat surface with a piece of non stick foil between facing the pad. Try to get the spacer parts tightly together. Then apply the 420 to both sides until rejection . Wait overnight, remove the clamps and add 420 to the break to fill it. Loctite 420 is an industrial super glue used in pre positioned applications

pip5255

it appears to be a stress crack from overtightening the screw, I would clear a space in back to recess a washer and epoxy it back together and set washer in epoxy and coat over back side lightly when hardened sand down backside smooth to mate surface to stock for a good fit then when mounting do not overtighten screws to prevent breaking/cracking again. I have even used another thin spacer glued together to reinforce spacer and I have also used sheet metal spacer to reinforce back side and to make a solid connection to stock.