Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Pictures of bedded rifle actions

With a nod to the OP, bsa1917hunter, here is a pic of a Tikka I bedded in Devcon titanium a few years ago. It was by far the most complicated bedding job I have ever undertaken, and the most expensive given the cost of the titanium based epoxy. It came out pretty well, but probably missed my goal of keeping the weight down. I say "probably", because I stupidly forgot to weigh the stock before bedding it. It is about a half pound heavier than another Tikka 595 stock I have, but some of that may be due to differences in the wood, so I don't know how much weight the bedding added. Those 595s are great shooters, but no lightweights. I can't say that this bedding job improved the accuracy. Again, I neglected to do any real before-after testing. As the pic shows, I bedded the funky separate aluminum recoil lug right into the stock

Paul

Wow, that is nice. Where did you get the titanium putty? Is it expensive?

I'd have to say wow too. Very nice job Paul39. Thanks for the nod too, bsa.

The absolute best and most durable bedding job I've ever experienced on a severe use rifle was Devcon Titanium with a skim bed of Marine-Tex performed by USMC 2112s. Quite a few 2112s were fired from this operation due to mastering the technique and the expense of the Titanium Devcon. When performed correctly, it is bomb proof.

Best:)

A bit of perspective. It's been a few years since I tackled this project. Like I mentioned, I was trying to keep it light and strong. It is a 7mm-08 used for hunter class silhouette at the time. It's also my nature to tinker and experiment, trying new things. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes not.

I had a fair amount of experience with epoxy and bedding before this job. The Devcon titanium putty seemed to be like other Devcon metallic putties in texture, but it seemed to have a relatively short working time, starting to stiffen up in the pot fairly quickly. Once hard, it wasn't difficult to cut and shape with conventional tools, end mills and Dremel bits. May be rough on the tooling, but I really don't know much about the technical details.

For me this is moot, a one-time event. I am feeling my age lately, and am less inclined to tackle new or complex tasks, and money is tight. Although I recall the Devcon titanium as being pricey a few years ago, a quick search showed it to now be from $75 to over $100 for a one pound kit. You can get it through various industrial suppliers, and possibly Brownell's. I can't envision a need that would lead me to spend that kind of money.

That said, what GaryVA reported about its use by the USMC says a lot. It probably makes for about as bomb proof a bedding job as is possible with any epoxy product. If I were building a DGR or some other rifle for heavy or critical use, and the cost of the epoxy was a minor part of the overall expense, I'd probably choose the titanium.

Hope y'all find this helpful.

Paul