Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles recoil pad color -- show your preference

Trying to decide on what to grind for a Husky 1640 that I'm refinishing. I like the red decelerator, but don't love starting with the medium size on a stock that should really have a small. (My other Mauser has a red, but it barely had the extra meat on the sides to make it work.) Other option is the Old English/brown decelerator.

What do you prefer and, better yet, show us some examples.

Use the template, to be sure the medium will work for your rifle. I know I prefer red personally.. Don't want to show you all of them I have, but here are a few:

These are the most recent recoil pads I've fitted to my rifles. Within the last year, anyway:


Who doesn't love an SKS with a red pachmayr?? ha ha


Girlfriends 243 classic compact model 70:


1956 270 featherweight:


H&R 340 30-06:



A red pachmary doesn't weigh as much as you would think either. This one was ground pretty small. Probably similar to the one you will be doing.


New stock on the XTR 300WBY required a red pachmayr. After all, the original factory stock had a red pad:


Cool little Ruger m77 MKII 300 RSAUM. Had to go red Pachmayr with the brown painted factory stock:

BSA - Yea, the medium will technically fit, it'll just cut it pretty close on the sides at the toe, and I like the idea of a little extra there in case it gets gauged or something, so it doesn't expose the metal frame underneath. That's probably being paranoid about an unlikely problem... but I'm usually the 1 in 10000 that the weird thing happens to!

I prefer the Connecticut Shotgun 1/2 inch red pads.

There is only one proper pad color, and its English Red...

I just got in a red Decelerator for a 1954 Marlin 336 RC and a brown for a 1970 rem 700 ADL. I like either of those colors for wood stocks and black for composite

Red for me also.

Nobody has photos of brown pad?

Pachmayr .6in decelerator in brown....

That's a sharp looking rig, TeeBone.

All pads should be red. Here’s a deceleraor on a husky for ya

I wish CSMC made [bleep] that worked half as good as it looks. Everything I’ve purchased from them has gone back at least once, including a red pad that somehow broke. The chambering on my Inverness looks like a 10yr old had a hey day with a Dremel, and I finally gave up thinking CSMC would actually fix it.

I like the brown ones personally.

I have three guns with brown decelerators but attachment file size limitations won’t let me post pictures. 🤷‍♂️

Red on a wood stock, or a synthetic stock painted brown. Black on everything else...

Red on Walnut, Black on African Walnut.

Red on Winchesters... The rest get black.

Black or brown

I have one rifle with a red pad, Kimber BGR. It is OK, but prefer black.