I was talking to a guy recently who said he has bedded several Montana's and has added pressure points to get the best accuracy from them. What's your opinion on this? Is it a good idea or not? Should it be tried just to see the results? I assume it would be easy to remove if it didn't help, or is it a fix for something that should be addressed in another manner?

I'd bed the action and go from there. I've found full length neutral bedding of the barrel typically helps with light rifles, but I don't start there.

Read lug

Remington out of the box are pretty accurate for the $$$ vs Kimber

Ruger the same.......

Both start with tip presure from the factory.....and not just a little

Skim bed the action only. There is a reason it comes from the factory fully free floated.

The reason being it is the easiest, but that doesn't mean it is the method that works best for each and every rifle.

It would be easier to sell a gun with a pressure point in the forend(ala Remington) then to go thru the trouble of installing pillars and then glass bedding even though they use a slave action and not the original action.I would check for magazine hitting the bottom of the well, correct that and then skim bed the action , it can't get any easier.

Very true.

I've found that more light barrels like some amount of pressure than to be free floated.

I always start by bedding the action stress free with the barrel floated & shoot it.

If it's not what I want then I proceed to put a pressure pad with more or less neutral pressure under the barrel near the forend tip & lastly, full length bedding if warranted as a last resort........very rarely is that needed.

MM

If I was going to have a rifle free floated again I would request the gap to be bigger than the "see the dollar bill slide down the barrel trick." Would be interesting to be able to have a camera record what is going on between barrel and stock with the above. I would be willing to bet there is more than a little contact between the two at lift off.

However, the truth is most of the time it works. For myself good accuracy with a variety of loads is the goal rather than excellent accuracy with a few select loads. From limited experience FL Neutral accomplishes that with LW barrels.

Less than 10 years ago I started neutral full-length bedding all thin barrels... None has gotten worse since and virtually all have seen large improvements.

Pressure points are seldom a real fix. The rifle will often shoot, but in time they will go back to being erratic and require more playing.

Oldelkhunter is correct on making sure the magazine is not bottoming out... being used as a recoil lug as someone here suggested recently!

I've done all the Kimber fixes. Screws fine mag box fine. It shoots OK, 2.5" at 150 yards. but want all I can get out of it. I've shot a bunch of tighter groups, but a long string over several days of 10 shots shows about 2.5"

I'm thinking of bedding the barrel on one of my light guns that I feel should be shooting better. My only hesitation is, if it shoots worse afterwards that is a hell of a lot of bedding to remove to start over.

Question for those who have done it...do you have to redo the action bedding at the same time? Or can you simply apply bedding compound to the barrel channel and screw the gun together?

My sentiments, exactly^^^^^^^^

RH,
How's the bore? Mine never shot all that great until I ran some Tubb's Final Finish bullets through it. Did about half of the mediums (5) and all of the fines(10). Helped a lot and it stays cleaner and is much easier to clean.
If you've done the SAS stock tips and have a good bore, fold up a business card, put it between the barrel and fore end and see what happens.

I can't see or feel anything out of the ordinary in the bore, but I don't have a bore scope. I may try the business card test as soon as I get another chance to shoot at a range. I had forgot about that Tubbs deal. I have heard of it but never tried it. Thanks for the suggestion.

I have the same gun in 7-08 and was getting poor groups when I first shot it (groups opened up after a couple of shots). I followed SAS's advice and this is what I did to get it to shoot:

-checked for binding in the mag box (none)
-checked clearance of the floated barrel. I had to open up the channel a bit to relieve a tight spot.
-bedded the recoil lug tight and drimmeled out underneath
-fully floated back to the recoil lug
-the crown was really rough. had it touched up
-replaced the front guard screw with a longer one to give me about three more threads.

I've only worked up loads for three bullets with RL-15 (120 bt, 140 bt and 140 nab) all shoot great; especially the 120's and 140 NAB.

These groups are at 50 yds (all I had access too at the time). I just wanted to compare 140 NAB and 140 BT with the same load and to see if the groups opened up after repeated firing. I shot three on the left, let rest for about 5 minutes then three on the right and continued for a 9 shot group. The last 5 (upper left were in the same cluster with a hot barrel)

Tried free floating, pressure point and full length - neutral bedding on my 7-08 Montana.

Full length neutral was the most effective.