How to check if your rifle needs bedding

ackleyman

New member
Guys start off working up loads, chase their tails spending a lot of money on components and gas going back and forth to the rifle range.

Hint, start at the start, bed your rifle, freefoat the barrel.

So, how can you determine if the action needs bedding?

This simple trick works!



Jam your finger between the barrel and floor plate, now loosen the front guard screw slowly. If you feel the barrel spring back away from the stock, there is binding in the action area somewhere. A high spot in the action, the mag box pushing up on the action will cause the action to be "bent" with tightening down the screws.

There should be no more than .002 movement.

 
Good call, I like it.

But for me, I have an even easier method. I just have every single rifle I own bed, usually, as soon as I get it and often before I ever fire a single round through it. If done right, having a rifle bed only helps things and for the ones I shot before and after, I've yet to have one not shoot better after it was bed.

This may be surprising to some but rifles I have with alum. bedding blocks like the HS Prec. benefited the most from being skim bed. It was a bit of a surprise but usually the action only makes contact at a couple spots and the rest of the action isn't touching anything but those high spots. After a light skim bed, they're solid as a rock!

ackleyman, have you noticed the same when dealing with stocks that have alum. bedding blocks?
 
Originally Posted By: B23Good call, I like it.

But for me, I have an even easier method. I just have every single rifle I own bed, usually, as soon as I get it and often before I ever fire a single round through it. If done right, having a rifle bed only helps things and for the ones I shot before and after, I've yet to have one not shoot better after it was bed.

This may be surprising to some but rifles I have with alum. bedding blocks like the HS Prec. benefited the most from being skim bed. It was a bit of a surprise but usually the action only makes contact at a couple spots and the rest of the action isn't touching anything but those high spots. After a light skim bed, they're solid as a rock!

ackleyman, have you noticed the same when dealing with stocks that have alum. bedding blocks?

I bed everyone before I fire a shot. 9 out of 10 "HS" type stocks with the bedding blocks need bedding. I have only seen two in my life that shot 1/4"-3/8" groups without a skim coat bed. The bedding block is usually tilted from front to back, and side to side out of alignment. Just think about how difficult it would be to install a bedding block in a stock perfectly and still have the cost reasonable. With the method above that I illustrated, if you feel anymore than just a very tiny amount of movement, then your groups are suffering horribly. If the magazine box is pushing up on the action, you are in a bad state of affairs in terms of accuracy. Trigger pins touching the stock, trigger housing touching the floor plate, Action screws touching the stock, all change harmonics. I have seen some people bed the tang and the area just behind the lug and they guessed that the area inbetween was freefloating, but the stock touching the action in those areas will also have an effect on harmonics.

In an un bedded stock, If the recoil lug is not fully seated up against the stock, your point of impact will change in a big way, especially if one side of the lug is touching indicating that the action is twisted in the stock.
 
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These pictures are over 15 years old now, but an HS aluminum block stock that needed bedding pretty bad and my preferred method for checking bedding. Same thing Ackleyman is checking, just a different way to do it.

DialSetup.jpg


DialSetup2.jpg



I'm not happy with more than just a flicker of the dial. At .002, I'm thinking I did a crap job with the bedding and need to do it over. Can't remember what that particular HS dialed before skimming, but it was high - like .012 or something in that neighborhood. Most I've ever looked at have been at least .004 or .005.

- DAA
 
What's even more surprising is you'll get many that'll argue the fact their rifle absolutely DOES NOT need to be bed because it has an alum. bedding block and that eliminates the need to have it bed. Yeahhh, sure and let me know how that works out for you. lol
 
How do you guys feel about the shims Ernie the gun smith sell. I ordered some and I was going to play with them and see if I could get my vs to not having any indicator movement after getting the action shimmed with the least possible shims. Then I was going to skim bed the entire action length and just a 1/2" or so of the barrel. Im tired of wasting supplies hoping some magical fairy load will get rid of those flyers that ruin my 5 shot groups. How much pressure do you guys use to hold the action into the stock? Do you use the bolt or some head less alignment bolts and surgical tubing etc. As an automotive machinist I understand how metal will distort under fastener load which is going to occur when the action is torqued in. I am ocd big time and sometimes it drives me nuts. Do you think simple pillars with no support elsewhere is better than slamming an action into a universal bedding bock and cranking on it. My vs barrel climbs big time when loosening either action screw. That action has to be flexed like mad when torqued and it shoots worse at 65 in lbs. than it does at 35. Doesn't savage just use pillars? Very minimal point of contact though to induce clamping force to keep the recoil lug located.
With all this said I have a bone stock [other than trigger work] vls .223 that still has the pressure point and it makes me sick how consistently accurate it is with 40 v-max. It shoots better than I can with no special attention paid to case prep etc.
 
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Great pics Dave!

You are exactly right, .002 is a country mile, which you may get with a quick skim coat vs stress free bedding techniques...preaching to the choir here, I know.
 
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I was taught to test bedding the same manner as DAA depicted. I run my dial indicator parallel to the bore though, and against the tip of the forend. Same difference, if the barrel raises or lowers relative to the stock, the dial gives it away.

Varminter .223 - the most accurate rifles built into wood stocks are pillared and bedded. Those in the know tend to leave a bit of clearance on top of the pillars, in fact, such that there is not metal to metal contact (this prevents the pillars from creating a high point when the bedding compound shrinks). Shims on top of the pillars while bedding can produce this, or a piloted facing reamer can be used - or simple bedding tape.

I install my pillars with stock makers screws which only hold the pillars to the action, with the action and pillars held into the stock only with a few wraps of electrical tape (used to use surgical tubing, either works).
 
My Savages have pillars but the action touches nothing but Devcon. When bedding I use 1/4x28 bolts with the heads cut off and wrapped with tape to center the bolts in the pillars when screwed into the action. I wrap masking tape 2 times around the barrel about 4" from end of stock to center the barrel in the stock and to make sure barrel is free floated. When bedding I hand squeeze the action to where the ejection port is dead even with the stock and wrap a paper towel around the action and stock then use electrical tape pulled tight and wrap around the action and stock to hold it in place while curing. I use Kiwi neutral shoe polish buffed for a release agent. Works for me.
 
I have a laminate stock from stocky's stocks with the aluminum bedding block. I can't feel any movement when loosening or tightening the action screws. Does it still pay to skim bed the action? The gun is a rem 700 22-250ai that shoots in the high 1's and low 2s.
 
you can never seem to find anyone local that seems to know stuff like this, this isnt somthing i want to unknowingly do and make worse
 
Fwiw I shimmed my vs swift with Ernie's Accu Riser shims and I have the action aprox .005" above the bed and down to around .0025" deflection when the front action screw is loosened. That is as close as I can get it with the thinnest shim being .005". I ran the action screw torque up to 65 in lbs. to get maximum clamping load with the two small points of contact. I am going to shoot it as is just to see how it groups and to see how the poi changes.
 
Do you guys bed the small areas along the action sides around trigger or just the front and the rear tang area? It is shimmed up so there is zero contact except under shims.
 
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I bed so there is no contact any place execpt the front of the barrel and the back of the action, how ever it's done dont matter, just do it.
 
I bought a Savage Walking Varminter in 223 for 650.00 at Gander. It would cut one hole at 100 yds. I noticed the plastic trigger guard was cracked at the rear action screw. I bought a stainless trigger guard from boyds and replaced it. It shot 1 1/2 to 2 inch groups at 100 yds after that. I bedded 2 pounds of lead shot in the forearm and 3 pounds of steel rod in the stock. Shimmed the front action screw up an 1/8th of an inch. Back to 1 hole at a hundred yds. I thought I had a canoe anchor.
 
I finally snapped last night at 10:30 and decided I was gonna bed my 700 vs swift. After 3.5 hrs. and the near catastrophic event of jb weld getting into the lug area through the front action screw hole, I had it done. I decided to look into the chamber just before cleaning up and thank God I did and saw the disaster unfolding. After 4 hrs of sleep the jb had been on for 6 hours and was set up. She popped right apart and after 3 hrs. of detailing it was test time. I had cleaned the bore last time so I figured it need fouled to be at it best so I shot 2 groups. The first 5 land 4 at .5" but the 2nd one slipped out to a little under an inch. The next 5 were all crammed in one ragged little hole. Needless to say I now belive in bedding a rifle. This was all with factory v max ammo too.
It turned out as good as I could ask for but next time I will be using studs in the action bolt holes instead of the screws.
 
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I have used the scorehi bedding kit on a few Remington 700's and it has worked great. It also uses studs instead of using screws and it makes it easy to take apart after bedding as long as a release agent is used in the right areas. Bedding makes a lot of difference on accuracy on certain rifles.
 
I have a Remington Model 660 in 222 caliber that I purchased in the early 1970's. I've had this rifle for years now and never really shot it very much. I was told that it had a bad trigger and I got that replaced with a new trigger from Remington. They had a recall on the trigger and did the trigger job for me. IE They paid my gunsmith to install a new trigger for me. I was not into shooting at the time and just got the rifle to shoot some groundhogs.

Later around 2010 I decided to take up shooting again after not hunting for a long time. I had the gunsmith bed the gun for me. It shoots pretty good I guess. I'm not sure if he did the job right or not. I did noticed that the barrel is free floated. But I installed a screw though the front part of the stock to hold a sling holder devise. The screw is too long and it makes contact with the barrel of my rifle. I need to take the rifle apart and use my Dremel Tool to sand the tip of the screw down some more so that it's below the wood surface on the inside of my stock. That way I can take a dollar bill and slide it though between the stock and the barrel and make sure that the barrel is truly free floating.
 
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