to Bed or not to Bed?
 

I am far from an expert in this area but have done some reading on the subject and opinions are all over the map.

Although most agree bedding a action (rifle) improves the characteristics of a rifle to allow it to become more accurate (if done properly), there are different opinions on how to do it and what you should use .....

Forgive me if these questions are stupid - but I'd appreciate your thoughts...

Rifle is a newly purchased used Remington 700 BDL wood stock in .30-06. Rifle is older generation (according to serial number maybe from the 80's) is it worth bedding?

What type of bedding process would this rifle benefit from? Considering the value to "payback" on what you should expect to achieve.

Pillar, the type of compound (and why) are important for me to understand.

And people's experiences with a wooden stock on a skinny barrelled 700 BDL specifically - I'd be interesting to hear results both good and bad.

Bumping an old thread ...pillar bedding. EDIT ADD: Pillars can be purchased or “made”. If you want the top of the sleeve contoured, you pretty much need to purchase. I bought a couple of sets from Bashaw Sports. One set was “adjustable” and the other required the bottom to be trimmed. I have heard of the threaded extensions used in light fixtures also work well when cut to length.

Sounds like you want a project so I won’t go down the “shoot it first to see if it might benefit from bedding” line. I am certainly no expert at bedding but willing to contribute “what I think”.
First, the reason to pillar bed a wood stock is to resist compressing the wood when tightening guard screws. If compression is occuring, it can alter the torque as temperature changes, resulting in changes to POI.
Pillars are often aluminum because it is easy to trim, but steel is fine...just harder for novices to work with. Some just drill out the guard screw hole, fill it with epoxy, and redrill to make a “composite” pillar. There are different schools of thought regarding “best practice”. Some pillar bed the action with no other bedding compound touching ...thus the action would essentially be “free floated”.
Some add a band of bedding at the tang and another at the recoil lug. Most bed the complete action from the tang to the recoil lug. Some continue the bedding forward of the recoil lug about an inch.
My bedded rifles are both pillar and epoxy bedded from the tang to the recoil lug (of course the recoil lug is always bedded). I never bed forward of the recoil lug because I get best results from a fully floated barrel.
I have bedded with Marine Tex, AccraGlass, and Bedrock with preference to the latter.

I’ve discovered thru doing several that a simple epoxy bedding job reduces a rifle’s grouping by about half. A spot under the rear action screw, the recoil lug area, and with my 28” barrel piece I went out under the barrel a couple inches, as I saw recommended for long barrels. With that particular piece groups went from 1.5” to .75” with Nosler Trophy ammo. So in my opinion, bed it! It’s worth it. Just remember to use your favourite release agent. Lol. I like a thin rub of silicone grease.

Follow the 3 “B”s for accuracy
Barrel
Bullet
Bedding

Ok before you get down and dirty shoot it, see if there is a reason to bed, if it puts five in a dime size at 100 yards.....tear it apart at it not shooting well:)

I prefer pillar bedding with a floated barrel, but this combination does not always improve accuracy. Now and then, I run into a rifle, that prefers a pressure pad in the stock.

Yes, some barrels perform best with a barrel/bedding “block” exerting upward pressure near the front of the forestock. (And some factory stocks even have a “bump” in the barrel channel.). Personally, I think the “bump” is a cheap way to dampen vibration in a skinny barrel...). Back in the day when I ran into the bump/block, I sanded it out and replaced it with a “neutral” bedding block.
To create a neutral bedding block ... place two bands of tape about an inch apart accross the barrel channel a few inches back of the forestock tip ... place epoxy in the space between the tape (the tape is just to keep the job neat) ... set the barreled action (release agent where epoxy will touch)... torque the guard/action screws to spec and mark the position of the screw heads for future reference ... remove barreled action when epoxy is cured and clean up. Now you have a neutral bedding block that is touching the barrel but exerting no upward pressure. Shoot to access group size. Remove the barreled action and place an aluminum shim on the bedding block (pop can works well - even has a bit of curve for a good fit). Reassemble with the screw heads set back to the reference marks. Shoot and assess. Repeat 2-3 more times, adding another shim each time. Once you get the best performance, you are done. If there is no difference, go back to the barrel block with no shims (neutral) and accept the result as your reality. No harm done.

Thanks for the thoughts everyone ..... pretty much mirrors common logic on this subject.

I am thinking, as it's an old Remington, with a wood stock, over the years it's shrunk and I can feel the action/barrel moving if I press down on the action/barrel above the recoil lug - so I was thinking a bedding job would firmly seat the action nicely.

If the bolts snug down securely - I'm just debating in my head if adding pillars is worth it or not in this case or would a simple bed job be enough.

Keep in mind this is a $600 gun and I'm looking for simply MOA (or close to MOA) performance - not a tack driver or LR rifle.

This rifle will be the bush gun used in areas where shots will be 50-150 yards.

Of course it’s always fun to tinker and tweak max accuracy potential out of any rifle,but for a dedicated bush gun from 50-150y I’m pretty confident I could strap a barreled action on to a hockey stick with duct tape and hit minute of deer heart at that range,haha 😜

Always bed wood from in front of the recoil lug to the rear tang. And bed the pillars at the same time. Wood will change with temperature and humidity. At the very least it will be more consistent in different conditions.
Its not difficult to do yourself

I haven't shot it yet. Bought it from a member here but everything looks pretty darn good from what I can see.

I think I will put it back together, mount the scope and drive out to Genesse and see what she will group with a few different factory rounds.

Hopefully this old girl will be group tight enough to warrant a project .... If I can get her to shoot within 2"-2.5" at 100 .... I will put some time and work into her.

Worst case scenario, despite my excellence with paints/epoxys/tools and other things where one needs patience ..... it's only a $600 gun ....... what could go wrong .....

I'm sure we can improve on that with a decent bedding job, but if she sprays I might have to look at plan B ... lol

For those in the “undecided” camp regarding the practice of some (maybe many) to bed forward of the recoil lug an inch or so... some rationale.
I have heard of several gunsmiths that bed forward of the lug (under the barrel shank). They suggest that the extra bedding provides better support. I will leave the promotion of that practice to those that believe it is beneficial.
Personally, I keep the bedding away from the barrel because I believe anything touching it affects the “vibration”. It seems reasonable to assume with temperature change, either ambient or in the steel after multiple shots, the pressure at the contact point would change and potentially set up a vibration pattern that could result in shot dispersion. With a couple of barrels, I experimented by bedding forward of the lug...doing load development ...then removing the under barrel bedding and re-doing load development. In both cases, the fully floated barrels performed best.

Any one tried Devon pillars
 

So been sitting around pondering this. Has any one fashioned pillars out of their bedding material? The process would go something like this......drill out around action bolts to approx twice the radius. Wrap the treads of the bolts in 2-3 wraps of painters tape. Apply release compound to screws, tape, action, and bottom metal. Flip action upside down in vise and fit the stock to it. Fill the action holes with bedding compound and place bottom metal and secure bolts. Clean up any materials that squirt out. Once hardened simply remove screws and use a punch to clean out any remaining tape. Now you have a pillar embedded in the stock. Continue with rest of traditional bedding.. as I'm writing I'm thinking instead of wrapping the bolts just use LOTS of release agent then once out drill using a pilot to slightly larger than the bolt threads.... might be a simple way to do round bottomed receivers such as Remingtons Ect... would say devcon or jb weld be as strong under compression once cured as aluminum?? If so it's cheaper than buying pillars and easier than building them to match the radius of the action

ob1 - yes, mentioned “composite” pillars in post #3 and I still have one stock with that style, installed pretty much as you described. Works fine, but I keep torque on the guard screws at 50 inch pounds rather than the 60 used with aluminum. No reason to think the epoxy could not stand up to more...

I bed my rifles about 1.5" in front of the recoil lug. The two I built for long range shoot MOA to one mile. One of the others is a 1000 yard gun because it goes sub sonic just over 1000 and the bullets don't perform past that but it shoots sub MOA at 1000. My varmit gun puts 55gr bullets into 4 inch groups at 700 with a stock barrel.

My buddy does the same thing and shoots MOA to 2300 yards. I'll kep with bedding in front of the recoil lug.

But one can always not do that and try it then add the bedding and try it to compare then make a decision form there.

Most Remintons that I have seen come with 2 pressure points part way up the barrel. I had issues with mine with the POI shifting with a bi-pod installed, as compared to off of sand bags.
After some consideration, I removed them and the rifle shot sub MOA. No bedding required.

I had a couple of Rems with those “bumps” in the barrel channel and discovered they were not even centered.

This 700 BDL walnut stock seems to have these bumps in the channel toward the front of the stock closest to muzzle. Based on the "rub marks" it appears to be touching the barrel in that location. These do, however, look quite uniformed touching an equal amount of barrel on each side (looks to me anyways).

I don't know enough about barrel harmonics, but read enough to understand the free floating idea ..... but these older 700's have spaghetti thin barrels and maybe they need some support up there??? I'm just going to have to shoot it and see what it does.

Seems to be barrels have gotten a little heavier/stiffer over the years (generally).

Totally agree with you that you should go out and shoot the rifle. Either try resting the gun in different positions or with a bi-pod. With mine it would change POI about 3 inches to the right and 4 inches up, (With and without the bi-pod) if I remember correctly.
It took me a lot of convincing to remove those tangs, but once I did I was extremely happy. POI never changed after that. Best thing I did with that Remington.

While I think it could be argued that the pressure point midway down the barrel would reduce the “range” of vibration, I don’t think there is any reason to believe that as long as each bullet leaves the crown at the same point in the vibration cycle ... that it would not follow the same path as its predecessor?

Trying to visualize this, let us imagine that the barrel is vibrating only up (with A at the zenith) and B at the bottom ...and at those extremes the shots strike 2” apart. Then, with the addition of a pressure point, the barrel vibration is reduced so the group shrinks. So, in that case, the pressure point “worked” to reduce group size. Trouble is that with temperature changes in either the barrel or stock ... the pressure on the barrel changes, so the vibration pattern also changes.
Now, let’s imagine the barrel is free floating and the load is tuned so the bullet exits the crown at A every time. Each bullet should follow the same path, especially if the barrel steel has been stress relieved. OK, I just made this up but it sounds possible doesn’t it:)

But seriously, skinny barrels can shoot well.

The first thing I do with a Remington rifle is remove the pressure point at the fore end of the stock, I free float the barrel then shoot to see if that is all that is needed.
The recoil lug and about an inch in the barrel channel under the chamber portion of the barrel is all I have ever needed to bed, I use JB Weld putty.
It sets up fast (25 min) and works very well, you can add more if you need it, and you can drill it. My release agent is simply Saran wrap between the putty and the wood.
Once you get it all where you want it, blue Loctite the action screws, let it set up over night (24 hrs) and sight in your rifle the next day.

I have never seen a gun that was hurt by bedding, especially wood stocks. Sealing the stock is always an advantage. I have however seen a number of thin barreled guns that shot far better when they were glass bedded from the mag well clear to the end of the barrel channel. Ultra Light Arms makes all of their guns that way. It gets rid of POI changes from Bi pods, shooting sticks or resting the gun too far out on the forearm. It also stabilises the harmonics of the barrel a great deal. The guns shoot more often to the same POI with dead cold first shot and don't tend to walk near as much as the barrel heats up through five or six shots.

Most varmint or heavy barrels shoot better free floated, but with hunting weight and light barrels, try the full length bedding trick with about 6 pounds of pressure. (Ties a six pound weight to the front swivel while the barrel is set into the Devcon and allowed to dry.). You will likely be pleasantly surprised at how much more consistent the gun shoots under all conditions.

Sorry - a little confused here, isn't the thought to use release agent between the barrelled action and the bedded stock?. If you are putting Saran wrap between your wood and bedding won't your bedding be independent of the stock?

If you end up with 3 pieces - the barrelled action, the bedding, and the stock - is that the intent?

The release agent goes “on the metal”. The epoxy is bonded to the wood. I had never heard of Saran Wrap being used before the mention by 303. Most of the commercial “kits” include a release agent that is liquid and drys on the metal. When the action is removed from the stock, it presents itself as a super thin transparent layer. It would be only a fraction of the thickness of Saran Wrap. I am a real chicken when it comes to the potential for an action getting glued, so I use a wax (neutral KIWI shoe polish) which I buff on the steel...and then put a layer of the release agent supplied in the kit on top of that!

The release agent I have always used is RCBS case lube - stuff you spray on your brass before resizing.

I use Kiwi or some other Carnuba wax. I want something that goes on thin, polishes out to perfectly smooth and leaves a perfectly smooth professional looking bedding job. Other thing to watch for is to fill any potential problem spots with Plasticine so you don't get a mechanical lock. I have never had a problem getting a gun out of a stock using just wax as the release agent but one trick is to not take the gun out of the bedding before it is completely set. With Devcon I wait at least 24 hours, and that makes the gun come out perfectly clean with an easy snap.

I have have done literally hundreds and have taught many dozen people how to do it for them selves. No one has ever stuck a gun.

To prep the metal parts before coating with the release agent, I clean with rubbing alcohol to degrease, and rinse with distilled water. This promotes good adhesion by tape for those areas you want to keep epoxy away from, like the sides of the recoil lug (if it is square/not tapered) and to the bottom of the lug to prevent it from bottoming out in the pocket. It is also a good idea to tape off the action above the stock line ... taping off the stock areas where the epoxy will ooze out will also so save a lot of work and keep the job neat.

I always use shoe polish as a release agent and have never had an issue. Tape everything off that you don't want bedding agent on and use plasticine to fill holes and the magazine and trigger slots. Just clean up with a dremel and done.
My rifles shoot very well to a mile and beyond

I prefer modeling clay to plasticine as I find the latter to be kind of greasy which reduces its stickability.