Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing is there any reason to pillar bed a laminated stock?

Just asking . My thinking is that a laminated stock, such as Boyd's, has so much epoxy that there is little chance of compressing the stock due to torquing the action screws, which is, from what I've read, the main reson for pillar bedding a stock. Does this make any sense?

Sure, if the present bedding is in any way stressing ones action.

iminute:
How can you tell if the bedding is stressing the action?

Not all laminate stock blanks are created the same. I've seen a couple with pretty soft wood. I pillar everything I work on. Doesn't make sense to me to take half measures. With the pillars I have complete confidence and can concentrate elsewhere to determine why the hell that last shot didn't go into the X-ring.

If the rifle has a scope and the barrel is free floated: Carefully install a bore sighter. Note the exact crosshair position at the highest scope power possible. Do not move/remove the bore sighter. Now carefully loosen the tang and recoil lug screws on ones action, and check the bore sighter's position again. If it's moved at all then the process of loosening and tightening the screws in the stock is flexing the action. One can check again by noting the same effect as he tightens the screws. Unless those screws are precisely torqued each time one assembles his rifle, there is a fair chance it will not return to zero, and heating can also cause issues.

I have a 257 Mark V Weatherby that exhibited this behavior. I bedded the action in a fully relaxed state (no screws installed). Simply propped things up and sat the barreled action into the stock/bedding compound and let it harden. Now assembly/disassembly exhibits absolutely no movement. It's gone from being a slightly over 1 moa unit to about 0.56 inches at 100.

If one's barrel is not floated, he will see some evidence of how much movement is induced by any pressure points. That same Weatherby came with a forend pressure point. Scraping off the pressure point dropped point of impact 7 inches at 100 yds.

Great post 1minute!

Interesting use for a bore sighter, I use a dial indicator with a magnetic base to check my bedding and bed to zero runout. I would love to check your bedding jobs to see how accurate using a bore sighter is. Not saying your method isent good I would just would like to see how good is it, you maybe on to something. I would bed a rifle using your method but I don't own a bore sighter.

I pillar bed all laminated stocks. Removes all guess work. I also use a dial indicator to check the bedding before and after the work.

Using the dial indicator on the barrel is one way of dectecting stress via the bedding.

Poor man's method, is to place your index finger at the end of the forearm/barrel juncture, and tighten/loosen the action screws; your touch will give an indication.

gemby58:
I have no means for quantifying the sensitivity of that process, but with the muzzle typically being 24+ inches from ones action where our scopes are typically mounted, I think it's quite telling. Might not even be detectable with measures at the action itself. With some reasonable measures, someone good at trig or math could probably come up with some accurate values.

It's somewhat similar to geologist sensing ground/glacier movements with a laser and target separated by a sizable distance. A mm of movement by the laser might be indicated by feet of difference on a target a mile away. One can also detect responses to shooting technique as well.

Might be useless for scopes that are affixed to ones barrel, however. I.e. something like a Ruger #1.

I have a very accurate heavy barreled Anschutz in 22LR and let a friend give it try on some targets. He was all over the place. His style though was to grip both the forearm and the floated barrel with the left hand. Put the bore sighter on and one could clearly see that his technique affected the scope/muzzle relationship. Without a consistent grip, there was no way he was going to drive nails with that rifle. Had it been equipped with a forearm pressure point or a stock/barrel band, his technique might have had no effect.

Have a good one.

You attach the magnetic base to the receiver of the gun and I have a 12 inch extension for my dial indicator and you place on the stock at the tip when you loosen the action screws if there's any stress in the action the dial indicator will show you this. This is the exact same technique that benchrest Shooters use for bedding their rifles

Would your touch be able to indicate 0.02 in stress. Benchrest bedding techniques is to shoot for 0.00 to 0.02 stress on the dial indicator, anything over that grind and rebed

I think your onto something but just wondering if you could see 0.02 of stress in a scope looking at a borebsighter, and does parallax in a scope play a factor into this too. No scope is parallax free at 24".

I can not see parallax effects in my bore sighter, probably because it's too close to the scope. Move out to 50 or 100 yds on a target and it's in your face obvious. Even my lowly 22's, however, are equipped with adjustable AO's. From my inconsistent field shooting positions a half inch of parallax at 100 yds is more than enough to generate a miss on a ground squirrel.

If your instruments had twice as much reach, they'd be even more sensitive. We're detecting the same issue, but you've got the better gear for putting specific numbers to it.

Have a good one,