Some weeks ago we bought a nice Sauer 12 gauge shotgun manufactured in 1904, but it definitively had some issues. First and foremost the recoil pad was dry rotted and close to disintegrating and length of pull was too short for the complexion of most shooters from these "rather stupid times."
The solution was a relatively simple installation of a new recoil pad with a spacer to bring the length of pull to an almost standard 14-1/2 inches, but as I took the shotgun for a trial last Tuesday another problem appeared. J.P. Sauer makes firearms of outstanding quality, but this particular shotgun had the worst balance of any decent gun that I ever shot, and this intrigued me.
So, today, with a bit of time I asked Joe to check the gun for me and he agreed that it was very butt heavy. So, we went about taking the new recoil pad out and found a chunk of lead inside the stock. After a quick operation we removed it and parts of it were rapped in a very old Cincinnati newspaper. The weight was over 12 ounces! (You can see it between the stock and the leg of mutton case.)
With that thing removed and the new pad installed back in place, the shotgun now weights 6.3 pounds and with its 26 inches barrels balances like a wand.
I just wish that we could solve other unbalanced things in our lives as easily as we did the 120 years old Sauer shotgun!
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