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Bedding a rifle question
bpost
Member Posts: 32,669 ✭✭✭✭
Have a project rifle, a customized 1903A3, the stock is very nice birdseye maple that I want to glass bed. How much wood do I remove to make the proper space for the glass? I noticed the action and especially the magazine trigger guard were very tight in the stock.
Do I stain, finish the stock then bed it or do I bed it first?
Any words of wisdom are appreciated.
Do I stain, finish the stock then bed it or do I bed it first?
Any words of wisdom are appreciated.
Comments
I would do the inside "WORK" first, then the outside. Barrel channel can be very thin, recoil lug area needs to be thicker. I inlet a piece of steel there also.
added. Maple moves around a lot, be sure and seal every thing like mag well, sling studs the recoil pad/butt plate area including the screw holes. Q-tip with thinned LinSpeed and paste wax on the screws.
With thick epoxy paste you can mount the rifle up side down and a hang a 3-5 # weight on the barrel. This provides a nice dampening force, that can be scraped out later if needed. I usually scrape out the channel except for the last inch at the tip.
The old Micro Bed would soften if subjected to a thick coating of Rig grease on the metal (ask me how I know).
We need some more information here. Stock barrel, or after market? What are your intentions with this rifle?
Depending on your answer's, here is what I would do, and most likely I would do it anyway, no matter what your answers are.
I would not stain the stock first, as I would want the best chance of the bedding adhering to the stock.
I would not just simply bed the action into the stock, but I would put pillars in first. It is not a big job, and you can use 1/4" brass pipe from your local hardware to fashion the pillars from.
I would most likely use Marinetex, Brownell's Steel Bed, or J-B Weld to install the pillars. Once the pillars are installed, and perfectly mated to your bottom metal, and the bottom of the action, by SKIM bedding, then I would give an additional inletting of around 1/16" around the action, and free float the barrel channel. If you use STEEL BED to install the pillars, there are packets of dye, for brown, or black, to match wood or synthetic stocks. For bedding around the action, it is OK to use glass bedding too, but since I have switched to STEEL BED 20 years ago, I have not used glass since. I am experimenting with Marinetex, too, and have used the J-B weld in an emergency, with great success.
Hope this helps you out. I am sure there are a couple other's on here that do this stuff everyday, that will shout at you too.
Oh, and yes...if you look at the link in my signature, there are some scope rings, that you might need for your project.
Best
EDIT 1
SoreShoulder
quote:I don't see the point of hogging it out for pillars if the stock screws aren't overtightened
That is the point of pillars, and most everything that is accurate in a bolt rifle, today has pillars...and a lot of them from the factory.
The pillars form a big "O" frame, between the bottom metal, and action, when the screws are properly torqued to 60-70 inch-pounds. All the stock is used for then, is to hold the pillars, and the action supports itself...stress free...stress free, and rigid are prime contributing factors when it comes to accuracy of a system.
Best
EDIT 2
SoreShoulder,
quote:I don't know if pillars will do much to prevent flexing the action if there is plenty of meat in the receiver around the action screw. I would guess it's more important on a 700 or a 110 action. I can't picture an M1903 but on some rifles the screw goes into the receiver's recoil lug and I just don't see bending that out of shape so much as to flex the action much. Plus, doesn't the Springfield floorplate have a pillar built in?
It matters on everything...get over it!
The pillars themselves do not mate perfectly with the action, just as the stock does not. That is what the bedding epoxy is for...to form the 100% contact, stress free zone, once the action screws are properly torqued. Once the screws are torqued properly to 60-70 inch-pounds, the action, bottom metal, and pillars become one frame. All the stock is doing is holding the pillars. I have done this many times. Yes the pillars are needed to eliminate the compression of the wood, and some cheap blow molded stocks(surprising that Savage even includes molded in pillars in their synthetic stocks?).
Best
Aren't most stock woods typically a good deal stronger than most bedding compounds?
I don't know for sure but I don't think the action needs a skin tight fit. It just needs to not be allowed to vibrate more freely in some directions than in others. The wood can do that, and may be more resistant against crushing from vibrational forces than bedding.
I don't see the point of hogging it out for pillars if the stock screws aren't overtightened.
Edit: reply to AsphaltCowboy: It may or may not require better fitment to prevent the action from shifting or vibrating too much in a certain way.
I don't know if pillars will do much to prevent flexing the action if there is plenty of meat in the receiver around the action screw. I would guess it's more important on a 700 or a 110 action. I can't picture an M1903 but on some rifles the screw goes into the receiver's recoil lug and I just don't see bending that out of shape so much as to flex the action much. Plus, doesn't the Springfield floorplate have a pillar built in?
Why destroy a tight inletting job just to add glass bedding?
Aren't most stock woods typically a good deal stronger than most bedding compounds?
I don't know for sure but I don't think the action needs a skin tight fit. It just needs to not be allowed to vibrate more freely in some directions than in others. The wood can do that, and may be more resistant against crushing from vibrational forces than bedding.
I don't see the point of hogging it out for pillars if the stock screws aren't overtightened.
In this instance I want to do it to learn how. If I total the stock [B)][:0] (whoops) it would be sad but I do have a Ram Line plastic stock that will fit it just fine if need be
1. Why destroy a tight inletting job just to add glass bedding?
2. Aren't most stock woods typically a good deal stronger than most bedding compounds?
3. I don't know for sure but I don't think the action needs a skin tight fit. It just needs to not be allowed to vibrate more freely in some directions than in others. The wood can do that, and may be more resistant against crushing from vibrational forces than bedding.
4. I don't see the point of hogging it out for pillars if the stock screws aren't overtightened.
1. Without knowing the accuracy history of bpost' rifle,,
In many instances glass bedding make the rifle even more accurate. It eliminates the minute levels of action shift during recoil.
2. All accepted bedding agents are stronger (harder) than the wood of any naturally grown stock blank. Moreso in the case of Steel Bed.
3. A skin tight ,like it grew there fit, is paramount to accuracy. The rear of the recoil lug, bottom of the front of the receiver and bottom of the rear tang are the important areas in this fitment. This prevents the action from shifting within the stock from shot to shot.
4. Pillar bedders shouldn't be used to prevent wood crush. (Only ham handed misfits crush wood while reassembling a rifle.) Their main purpose is to have an accurate surface for the receiver to set down on when installed in the stock. This prevents the risk of flexing the receiver when the action screws are tightened. They also provide the benefit of not requiring a specific torque spec during reassembly.
In your situation, I have used clear fiberglass resin (often referred to as boat 'glass) to both seal and bed the barreled action. This allows the beauty of the wood to be seen when the barreled action is removed from the stock (craftsmanship), acts as a water proofing for the interior of the stock as well as accomplishing the bedding of the action. We used this process for every wood stock that left the shop but it was the very best for those stocks which exhibited the 'Extra Lusso' richness because it showed off the beauty instead of hiding it.
We currently use Ultra 4 Mold Release as a release agent because it's simple and fool proof. You can find a cheaper release agent like shoe polish or something similar but the chance of missing a small area has large potential. This is an aerosol which will do several barreled actions with the one can.
http://westcoastplastics.com/HTML/PD-Polyester-Parfilm-4.php
Here is a fine illustrated article on bedding:
http://www.6mmbr.com/pillarbedding.html
Here is my response from several years ago when this was brought up for the umpteenth time:
If you use the 'Search' button in the upper right corner of these pages and type in 'bedding', you'll get a large number of posts about this process.
This is the lengthy version of some of my thoughts along with links to addition help:
Bedding
Bedding your rifle is one of the activities that can be handled by most shooters when they take the time and make the effort to study the process. Fear of gluing the action to the stock is the one thought that gives all of us apoplexy when comes to considering this process. No one wants to glue a perfectly good, barreled action into a stock. Like everything else, get the first one under your belt and go from there.
If you make a mistake, it's correctable by scraping out the old bedding or adding more in the proper areas. Accidental glue in can be fixed too, by applying either heat or freezing cold along with a sharp rap or two.
This is a link to ScoreHi Gunsmithing. There have a free CD available that covers the entire process of Pillar Bedding. You can avoid the wait by doing a direct download from his website but you need to have PowderPoint on your computer to watch it. It's really very well done.
http://www.scorehi.com/download.htm
This link covers the various types of bedding compounds and has a pretty good discussion of bedding epoxy properties:
http://www.charm.net/~kmarsh/glasbed.html
There are six different methods of bedding:
? Full contact bedding of the action with the barrel floated.
? Full contact bedding of the action and the barrel.
? Full contact bedding of the action with a pressure-bearing pad for the barrel.
? Pillar bedding of the action with the barrel floated.
? Full length aluminum action bedding block. (With or without skim bedding)
? Glued in action. (Intentionally in benchrest shooting, unintentionally by beginners)
We are trying to accomplish two things:
? Consistency
? Repeatability
Full length bedding will stabilize the barreled action in the stock. But it doesn't address two of the bigger problems that we find with most rifles and that's stress and compression.
Stress, simply stated, is when the barreled action is being acted on by other forces such as twisting or bending. These are not necessarily large stresses; they can be small but can contribute to the overall lack of accuracy or repeatability. Proper bedding of the action is the process we use to relieve these stresses in order to provide place for the action to be seated stress-free.
Compression is the process of tightening the action screws overly tight, thereby compacting the wood or synthetic material beyond the factory or accuracy dimensions. You're essentially squeezing the stock material together between the action and the trigger guard/bottom metal. This distorts the stock and the action relationship causing stress and a misalignment of the action and trigger guard parts and even the sear/striker relationship.
This is where the pillars come into play. They provide the spacer between the action and the trigger guard so you have a finite distance between them, so you can only tighten the action screws so far or so tight. The aluminum pillars are non-compressible so far as the real world is concerned.
Bedding blocks or full length bedding systems such as HS and others use, are machined from blocks of aluminum to factory specifications. These blocks cannot and will not match the contour of every action and barrel manufactured. I don't care what's written in the advertisements, I can prove otherwise. The cure for this misalignment is skim bedding. This is a thin layer of bedding compound between the action and the bedding block, which corrects the inconsistent surfaces of the block. When combined with pillars, you achieve the best of both worlds and the greatest potential for accuracy, consistency and repeatability.
I bed most barrel channels to give either a finished appearance or in the case of wood, a great degree of waterproofing. You can wrap tape around the barrel before bedding the barrel channel, which will provide a space between the barrel and the bedding or free-floating the barrel. Be sure to coat the tape with release compound.
Do you really need to go through all of this for your basic hunting rifle?
Nope. But it's a simple enough process that even the average shooter can tackle and see improvements so long as the process is executed properly. If you make a mistake, just scrape the compound out and start over. Look for all the places that can become mechanical locks when covered with compound and fill them with clay. Use release agent but use common sense also. Too much of certain release compounds will affect the bedding compound itself, causing poor bedding.
Best.
Added:
If you need more information, let me know.
Best.