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Sythetic Stock Bedding - Pillar vs. Full Bed

Camelot43
Question: Do Sythetic Stocks need to be professionaly bedded to the gun?

There are claims by some manufacturers that there is no need for a gunsmith to install... Has anyone had success with just taking the firearm out of it's original stock and sticking it in a new sythetic?
Or are there accuracy issues that need to be addressed by a gunsmith?

Obviously it will always be recommended but is it really necessary or have the manufacturers figured it out?


Also -

Pillar vs. Full Beds...

Is it truely preference or does a full bed stocks actually perform better?
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Comments

6 comments

Date Votes
  • ern98
    In many ways accuracy means repeatability. If it isn't then the results were really an accident. The barreled action must be set solidly onto/into the stock or you can not have a repeatable situation, more of an ongoing average of shot placement. Most manufacturers will say yes they have solved this, most custom gunsmiths would disagree. If you are looking to restock your SKS for 50yd shooting, then the manufacturers are probably close enough. If you want to restock your Rem M700 .308win for longer range shooting the gunsmiths are most likely very correct. But also remember that not all synthetic stock are created equal. Way too many one piece bolt action plastic stocks have forestocks that twist and flop and slap the barrel in ways that are not going to help no matter how the action is bedded. So my answer to you is maybe, but probably not as it depends on what you want to get out of the rifle as the end result. Even stocks with full aluminum bedding are improved with just a skim coat of epoxy to give that 100% interface that just can't be beat. Tell us which stocks you are interested in and for what purpose and we will be better able to help....
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  • Camelot43
    The Hogue Overmold Long Action, Standard Barrel, Full Bed Block Stock - Rem. 700 .300 WSM


    quote: Even stocks with full aluminum bedding are improved with just a skim coat of epoxy to give that 100% interface that just can't be beat. Tell us which stocks you are interested in and for what purpose and we will be better able to help....



    How difficult is a skim coat of epoxy? Is it something I can easily do on my own without worrying about ruining it? and what type of epoxy is best? I really don't want to spend a ton on a gunsmith to bed my gun basically due to financial reasoning and the fact I like working on my own guns as a lot of us do! Acra-Bed?
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  • tsr1965
    Camelot43,

    There are some of the blow or injection molded stocks today that are worse than wood or laminated stocks. By bedding, we are trying to accomplish a few things.

    The first being a rock solid launching platform. In order to get GREAT accuracy the action needs to be stabalized. If the gun has a floorplate, the best way to do this is to put pillars between the floor plate and the action. This inturn mates the bottom metal to the action, and if properly done accomplishes the second thing.

    The second thing is establishing along with the rock solid launching platforn, one that is also stress free. To do that, the pillars are skim bedded to mate perfectly with the bottom metal, and the action lug, and tang. When the action lug is properly bedded, it will only contact the bedding on the back side, and the bottom will be free floating. This removes the chance of creating a stress point between the action lug and the front action screw.

    During this whole process, it is my prefference to make sure that the barrel is free floating. Some peolpe like to bed the barrel, or put in a pressure point for the barrel to sit on. I find that more often a hinderance than not to accuracy.

    Basically what we have done in this process, is made the stock something that just holds the action, where as the pillars are whats supporting it.

    There are some drop in stocks that have pillars or an Aluminum bedding block molded right in. These should still be skim bedded for best results. The bedding is not that hard to do, just make sure you use plenty of release agent.

    What the manufacturers have figured out is how to give you a compromise, and take your money for it. Everything is automated for the most part these days, so your action will never be handfitted to a stock from the factory.

    I am sure nononsense and sandwarrior will be along to add their knowledge to the equation also.

    Best
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  • Camelot43
    Are most people using the pillar beds? I see the full beds are much more spendy but if there were a preference would a full bed always win?

    What product is recommended? I see Acra Bed on Brownells but there are several others as well!

    "Use plenty of release agent" I assume it is one of the chemicals mixed for the epoxy?


    So if I understand right, I'm not really using the exopy along the bottom of the barrel but more the action inside the stock itself, correct?
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  • JustC
    Pillar bedding is the most expensive. This includes installing aluminum pillars which are machined to the shape of the action's underside, AND then using epoxy bedding agent as well. This is the way to get the strongest and least flexing mating of the barreled action and stock. The pillars reduce or eliminate flex under recoil, which can still take place with just the epoxy compound around the action belly, sides, recoil lug, and tang. The action screws can be removed from many rifles with a fair amount of recoil, and be visably bent,...this is from the flex and recoil moving the action around in the stock and stressing the action screws.

    Skim bedding is all that is necessary with the stocks that have bedding blocks, Like HS Precision, Bell and carlson medalist etc. The aluminim chasis won't allow the flex, so it acts as pillars, thus requiring only a skim coat to mate the bedding block to the action.
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  • nononsense
    Camelot43,

    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 correctible 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 link to Brownells is a good, illustrated guide to general bedding. Remember that Brownells is in business to sell tools and materials so you'll see plenty of mention about those.

    http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/GunTech/NewsletterArchive.aspx?p=0&t=1&i=641

    http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/GunTech/NewsletterArchive.aspx?p=0&t=1&i=633

    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.
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