Hearing alot of talk about these rests.
My local DNR staffed state supported range just bought 10 of these a few months ago.
If you lock the rifle firm into a rest isnt the recoil going to wreck a scope? what about mounts?
as well i would think that a hard kicking rifle in a big caliber might split a tang if the energy cant push back?

this is simple
never lock a rifle down ... so in a lead sled, never exceed 25# of weight

I borrowed a Lead Sled from a freind when I was working up my .416 loads, with a couple shot bags filled with only sand. In the few shots that I took the factory CZ pad got managled and the tiniest of cracks started behind the tang. The cross-bolt that runs through the wrist needed a couple full turns to just snug up, and the action screws loosened. Needless to say I quit using it at that point. The pad was getting changed anyway so that was no big deal. As luck would have it, this was my first try with RL22, which shot so well from the get-go that there was no need to use the Lead Sled anymore. 4350 was terrible.
Ironically the Lead Sled is a very steady if somewhat clumsy rest for rifles that don't need recoil reduction like .300s and such.

It's a real simple deal: shooting from a Lead Sled is like adding 25 to 50 lbs of upper body weight. If that breaks any stock or scope/ring combination, something was out of order to begin with.

Like Jeff said, you can abuse the concept by adding too much weight and in effect, "locking" the gun down. My self-defined rule is one 25 lb bag of shot for anything up to my 505 Gibbs and 450 Ackley. From there I jump to 550 Magnum and I use two bags. The 550 is in a laminated stock which I think is more prone to splittling than natural wood. It has two cross bolts, a rubber pad and is far too light for the caliber but no problems at all.

I still cannot see how a rifle moving less is going to be harder on a scope. Its not like these things allow it to build up a head of steam before coming to a dead stop. Used properly, the rifle/scope will never accelerate as fast as it would during a shot without it.

I can accept that they are a little harder on stocks, but I think that if a stock breaks in a lead sled, you were running the ragged edge of it breaking without one.

Canuck

If you give the subject some thought it appears that the lead sled will be harder on the stock and less stress on the scope.

The rifle action has to push on the wood bedding surfaces to force the stock backward to adsorb the force of the recoil back on the shooter's shoulder or whatever else is restriking the backwards movement. The more resistance to the stock movement the harder the metal must push against the wood bedding surfaces of the stock. In an extreme case you could hold the stock solidly i.e. put the stock against a tree and almost certainly break the stock with a few shots unless the recoil pad was really great. The old reccomendation for test firing guns was to put them on top of an unmounted tire so they could move instead of tying them to a tree.

As for the scope inertia tends to keep in its orginal position as the gun recoils backwards and pulls the scope with it. The ligher and faster recoiling the gun the faster the scope will be accelerated and the scope and mounts stressed. At the extreme end of the situation the gun is fixed in position and the scope and mounts are not accelerated or stressed at all.

WEll, we have just got one, and we will try it.

We had one before, made by another compnay, that actually hooks into the shooting table.

Our shooting table is VERY heavy - probably over 100 pounds, and we never damaged any guns using that rest.

We even shot the 577 T.Rex on it, without any ill effect.

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
WEll, we have just got one, and we will try it.

Are you going to let Walter "torture" test it?