Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Aluminum Cradles In Stocks

You're not being an ass, John. You do seem evasive though.

Torch was just the way I read "apply heat". I still don't see the applicability of that to a system that is thermally equilibrated - all components at the same temperature.

If a rifle is zeroed and then "thermally torqued" I don't doubt accuracy problems will ensue.



Still don't see any trade secrets in whatever the answers to these might be:

......I fail...... long ago.....

I seem to remember either DickD or Ryan weighing in on bedding blocks a while back and the long and short of it was if bedding blocks were better, their stocks would have them.

... sorry but there is no such thing as an aluminum "bedding" block. Many stock companys use an aluminum chassis or metal framework in their stocks to stiffen and strengthen the stock. But they have nothing to do with "bedding".
Bedding is a process of mating a particular action to a particular stock with an epoxy bedding compount to reduce the manufacturer's tolerances in all man made products to basically "zero".
A machined aluminum chassis is made to the same CNC tolerances as all other CNC products and does nothing to address the inherent tolerances in a production action.
Regards, Dick at McMillans

Wait a minuet, didn't we just have a long discussion about this a month or two ago. Those full length aluminum reinforceing block in stocks have nothing to do with bedding, remember.
Bedding is a physical act, a process of mateing two non-matching surfaces with a castable compound. If you insist on calling this action mounting block "bedding", then the McMillan stocks do have "bedding blocks", just solid fiberglass one's instead of aluminum. Afterall, fiberglass has much better recoil absorbing and vibration dampening properties than aluminum. Dick at McMillans

Every manufacturer has tolerances of +/- X amount that they produce things to. Remington, Winchester, McMillan, H.S., Savage, everyone does. These are, depending on the application, small enough that everything fits, functions and preforms to a certain standard. If you take 10 actions of the same make ( Rem, Win, Sav, it doesn't matter) and go over them with a good pair of dial calipers you will find many little differences between them, .001" here, .0005" there, .002" in between. This is due to tooling wear, metal polish before blueing, metal movement during stress relief, etc, etc, etc. Everything fits together and functions because the maximums don't interfere with the minimums. Same with stocks, triggers, scope bases, etc. Everyone has tolerances. A typical Remington receiver will have a diameter between 1.350" and 1.360", usually around 1.353" to 1.358" and they may be a bit bigger in the middle than at the ends. This is all within tolerances and they shoot just fine.
When you put them in a stock (of any make or material) they rest on the high spots and when you tighten the guard screws the receiver may flex a bit and you will feel the bolt dragging just a bit, or it may shoot to a different impact point with different G.S. tension because of this stress on the receiver. All this is within the standards of a good production hunting rifle.
Competition shooter and accuracy buffs found their rifles would shoot better if they eliminated all the production tolerances in the way their action fit into the stock by using an epoxy resin interface to eliminate these manufacturing tolerances and make their action fit into the stock perfectly so there was no strain on the action when the guard screws were tightened. This is called "bedding" the action. You put some epoxy material (Marine-Tex, accru-glass, accru-gel, Devcon,etc, they all work fine) in the entire action area of the stock (full length front to rear) and seating the action firmly into place without putting any stress on it and letting the resin set up. This mated that particular action to that particular stock "perfectly", and another seemingly identical action may not even fit into this stock.
Now, using this defination of bedding, there is no such thing as a "pre-bedded" stock, bedding must be done with the action that is going into the stock because it has it's own unique set of dimensions you are trying to mate the stock to.
There is a lot use in our industry/sport of the terms "bedding blocks" and "bedding pillars". This is all B.S. as they have nothing to do with bedding. There are a lot of ways to make gun stocks. Some use an internal skeleton of metal, usually aluminum, such as H. S.,A.I., Hoage, etc.Some use a solid fiberglass and machine the inletting into it such as mcmillan, some mold the inletting into a fiberglass shell with a light core filler. They are all good stocks properly used but they are all made to a set of tolerances and should be refered to as "mounting blocks" or "re-inforceing blocks" as they have nothing to do with bedding and do nothing to eliminate manufacturing tolerances or stress on a receiver.
So, I again state, there is no such thing as a "pre-bedded" stock or a "bedding block".

Well, I "went down this road" for several reasons. Today I must have had about 20 inquires as to why customers couldn't get a "pre-bedded" stock or why we didn't aluminum bedding blocks in our stocks. Also a statement in another thread the the A.I. stocks come already bedded. I finally decided that too many people must not know what bedding an action to a stock really means. "Bedding", as Mike D. said, is a verb, an act of doing. It's not a thing in a stock. I went out in the shop about an hour ago and measured 9 different Remington action diameters and got the measurements quoted above. The average on the front receiver ring was 1.355", the rear receiver ring was 1.353" and the middle of the action averaged 1.357". You take an action that is bigger in the middle than the ends and lay it in any stock, a glass mcmillan or an H.S. with a aluminum mounting block or an A.I. with an aluminum chassie or a stock with a V-block in it and tighten the guard screws and it will flex, usually in the rear tang. To elimate this stress you must bed it properly. Do you have to do this, no, not really. Rifle will probably shoot pretty good anyway. Will bedding improve the accuracy, maybe, not always. And I am not picking on the stocks with the internal skeletons or aluminum mounting blocks, they are fine stocks. I am picking on the gross misuse of the term "BEDDING" and trying to educate some of my very good customers as to what this is and to what the term means to those of us in the firearms industry.

There are far to many McMillan stocks in use by men (military and police agencies) world wide far greater than me to make me doubt their superiority over the competition.

I've recently put a Manners EH2 on my Stiller Predator. I can detect no difference in accuracy between it and the McMillan Remington Hunter that was on it. The McMillan was pillar bedded by one of the best in the business, Mike Bryant. Return to zero has been very good with the Manners as well after removing an replacing the stock.

John

Well, I don't jump out of airplanes and I'm not understanding your point with regard to what I said.