Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mercury Recoil Reducers

This is a question that has recently been brought up.

Are they all they are made out to be?

Do they REALLY reduce the recoil dramatically, as they are touted?
Would you install these on your own firearm?

Thank you for your responses!

Rockinbbar

Yes, they do reduce recoil dramatically. I have them in two .375 H&H rifles, and in a .450 Dakota. They add a lot of weight (obviously) and make a soft gurgling sound as the mercury sloshes back and forth, but that's about the end of their limitatiions.

I will ditto WiseGeezer and add that they do nothing for balance unless you prefer a butt-heavy rifle.

Rockinbbar,

I put them in a .416 Rem that was in the seven pound range and was barrel heavy. They worked well in that rifle.

jim

That is interesting & useful information guys. Thank you.
I was interested in them because I like to shoot a lot. Most of my shooting is at my home made range off the bench that goes out to 300 yards. I can shoot big recoil rifles well, but find that I often leave them in the gun cabinet because I really just don't want to mess with them....
The main rifle in question is my Savage 99 in .308. I'm not kiddin' you, that thing stomps you. It is like shooting a 7mm mag a steel buttplate...LOL.

Thanks again!

Consider getting a mcmillan or other after market synthetic stock for with with a decellerator or limbsaver recoil pad. I have a brother in law whose 30-06 kicks terribly hard also in his Savage. I think the Savage wood stock is very light, and therefore the rifle tends to kick very hard "for caliber". My brother in law's kicked alot harder than my 7mm Rem Mag Model 700 left hand BDL.

Stuck a mercury tube up the backside of an 1100 trap and made a hell of a doubles gun out of it. The mercury has an edge on just adding more weight.

HunterJim,
I may have missed this, as I only get to the Campfire on weekends, but how did you get involved with a 7 lb. .416?

For the Savage I would recommend a PAST recoil(slips over your shoulder) pad it should do what you want for that rifle.

Mike

I will never forget my dad's 30-06 pump. In his later years, recoil started to hurt him and he put a mercury tube in the stock. I casually picked up his rifle laying on his cot and just about could not believe how heavy that rifle got. Since his passing, I gave his primary deer rifle to my oldest boy, less that mercury tube! Very very heavy, but works.

I'm a big fan of the mercury recoil reducers. At 5'9", my arms are not the longest in the world. Most guns will feel barrel heavy because my balance point is a little further back on the forearm. The addition of a 11oz mercury recoil reducer has made my guns balance much better. A heavy gun has never bothered me if it balances well.

On interesting experiment that I did was with my son's 7-08 Winchester Compact Classic. I added a 11oz mercury recoil reducer to his rifle. You talk about a pussy cat to shoot. After adding it, I asked several of my buddies to handle it and make comments. They didn't know about the recoil reducer. Each one of them said that the gun felt very nice to shoulder. Only one of them made the comment that the gun felt kind of heavy for such a small package. I think it ends up somewhere around 9lbs with scope, sling, etc...

I know this is all personal preference about the balance and stuff. I was going to put two in the butt of my .416 Rigby and my .458 Lott, but they would have been butt heavy with the extra 11oz. Before I drilled the holes, I took two of the mercury recoil reducers and temporarily attached them to the side of the stock. You could definately feel the gun was unbalanced. The extra recoil reduction would be nice, but I never feel the recoil when shooting at game, just at the bench. That is easy enough to counter with shields.

Some have mentioned that they have put the smaller mercury tubes in the forearm. I've never seen one done this way. Does anyone know how do you do that?

Talus,

I was in mid-project in '88 or '89 building a .416 Taylor using a M70 Win Super Grade in .458 Win as the platform when I read an ad in Shotgun News for .416 Remington brass. I called the guy immediately, and had a fun chat with a gentleman who turned out to be George Hoffman.

It turned out that Remington was going to announce their new .416 (based on George's .416 Hoffman), but the paper ran the ad before they were supposed to.

Anyway I ordered a .416 Remington from the Custom Shop and 100 rounds of ammo (they were building the first rifles before factory production). It took more months than quoted, but the rifle and some of the ammo did arrive. It was in a gray synthetic stock, and had a heavy 20" barrel. It was very muzzle heavy, but only weighed 7 pounds and change.

I took it out to the range to shoot some of the factory ammo. The first shot caused the barrel band swivel to depart, and the third shot broke the extractor. I had it to a couple of gunsmiths to fix the extractor, and cure the handling.

So that is how I ended up the that rifle!

jim

My question about these gadgets is, does the mercury sloshing around reduce recoil, or is it just the additional weight? Would a lead slug under the buttplate weighing the same as the gadget reduce the recoil just as much? This would seem to be an obvious question easily answered with a little testing, but in decades of reading the gun press I have never seen such a comparison. If anyone else has, please advise.

Some feel that the same amount of lead will reduce the recoil as much as the mercury tube. I lean towards the sloshing of the mercury having an effect.

When you install the tube, the manufacturer suggests that you drill the hole parallel to bottom edge of the buttstock. This will cause all of the mercury to settle to the bottom/back of the tube. When the gun is fired, the mercury stays in place as the tube is forced backwards. You know, the inertia thingy.

The movement from one end of the tube to the other supposedly changes the recoil's "pulse" or frequency. This is the advantage of the mercury's movement vs. a smaller tube of non-moving mercury with the same weight or lead.