Friday, July 5, 2019

A Very Special Morgan Adjustable Recoil Pad

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know of our affinity for Morgan adjustable recoil pads.  A few weeks ago, I came across an eBay listing for a model I'd never seen before.  The shoulder "pad" (and I use that term very loosely here) is solid, shiny, beautiful diecast aluminum.  It's clearly a very early model--possibly made for small bore precision rifle shooting. 

I contacted Dave Brush, the current owner of Morgan Recoil.  He's the nephew of the company's founder, the late Bill Morgan.  Dave was not aware of this all aluminum model and could find no record of it in the company archives.






















 























The casting is marked W. J. MORGAN.    Some additional markings below that were worn away long ago.  My best guess would be "Youngstown, OH", based on other Morgan rubber recoil pads I've had over the years.   The inside of all the castings are marked "ALCOA". 



























The "base plate" on this unknown model is identical to the base plates on the first generation rubber Morgan recoil pads.  "First generation" sounds so old, but it just refers to the interlocking grooves between the base plate and center plate used to hold the pad's vertical adjustment   The manufacturing molds were damaged several years ago and Morgan updated the plate design.  They're not cross-compatible. 



























There's a missing hard foam spacer that should go between the shoulder "pad" and the center plate.  The upper and lower screws will then allow you to toe, or tilt, the pad up or down a few degrees.



























I purchased a current foam spacer from Morgan but it didn't fit quite right.   Ended up making my own from a piece of 1/4" thick closed cell foam.   The one I made is pictured here.





























Glued it to the aluminum with a quick setting two-part epoxy.




























Attached to the center plate and ready to go.





Bolted right up to the base plate already on the .20 cal Benjamin Sterling.


















































I'll keep looking around for additional info.  It'd be interesting to know when this was produced.  Morgan's website notes that the company was started before WWII, so it could be pretty early.     Maybe some old gun magazine advertisements would shed some light.


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