Under the tang and the flat behind the recoil lug the idea being to provide a large contact area for the receiver when the action screws get torqued. Big contact patch, lotsa friction, things don't move. Back of the recoil lug, back ONLY, after relieving plenty of wood. The idea being recoil forces get spread evenly across the width of the recoil lug. No hotspots or stress risers to split the wood. About an inch and a half of the barrel or so for no other reason than it feels right. Action/barrel is free floated everywhere else. Be sure to leave a little space at the back of the tang. You see lots of cracks there particularly as the inletting shrinks over time. This is easy to do in one step.
You could pillar bed, I do sometimes, but I'm not convinced it helps much for a sporting rifle.
Overall the idea is to bed only where needed. And that's where the force of recoil couples to the stock. Contact anywhere else just adds another variable you don't need.
You may want contact between the barrel and the stock in the form of a pad near the end of the forearm. Can tame barrels that weren't completely stress relieved or don't like your load. But that's for later.
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I run plenty of grease into that front action bolt hole with a Q-Tip and more grease on the bolt threads and never had a problem. Have had to use a bottoming tap to clean out epoxy when I got sloppy but that's no big deal. I use stockmaker's screws to loosely hold the action where I want it to be in the stock, barely finger tight. Action screws work too. You want the action to rest squarely and gently on the epoxy pads you are making.
"You could pillar bed, I do sometimes, but I'm not convinced it helps much for a sporting rifle."
I agree with this statement. I remember when Pillar Bedding first started getting popular. It was supposed to be for hard recoiling rifles to keep from splitting the stock by spreading the recoil over a wider area. I really see no benefit for a sporting rifle of moderate recoil. Then they came out with bedding blocks which there again spread the recoil over a wider area but at the same time made it easier to do. But for accuracy improvement on a sporting rifle, I see no gain in pillar bedding.
However, I have done a variation in pillar bedding that I believe DOES help with accuracy becase it really mates the stock to the metal and distributes vibration very well. I did this about 30 years back with my post 63 Model 70. I cast pillars with epoxy into the stock and then drilled them out on a drill press. This was an old trick I learned from reading Warren Page. You drill out the front bolt hole with a 3/4 " bit, fill the hole with epoxy, clamp the barreled action into the stock and let it cure. Then drill out. Then do the back bolt with a 1/2" bit and fill with epoxy and bolt the action in with the front bolt and clamp the rear. Again, when it's cured drill it out. Then bed over the everything tying it all together. My model 70 has been that way for over 30 years. It shoots great and temperature and/or humidity don't seem to faze it. I did it on a Model 700 with similar results. However these are different from a pure Mauser.
