Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles DIY bedding M77 (pic heavy)

I set out tinkering with my 264 last night & decided to take some pictures to share here. The do it yourself bedding questions come up from time to time so I thought I'd share how I go about it with some photos.

I happen to be free floating the barrel on this rifle so the first thing I did was some relief work in the barrel channel of the fore end. I wish I had taken pictures of this but it's really quite simple. There are probably a thousand ways to do it but I actually use deep well sockets from my tool box as (sanding bars) since I have the entire range in metric & standard deep well sockets to choose from I can always find the right size for the barrel channel I am relieving. I select my deep well socket & wrap a piece of course sand paper around it (which adds more thickness so you must account for this) I don't like too much revile between the barrel & stock, in this case I was shooting for around 50 thousandths of an inch. Unfortunately my first photo is of an "after" shot, the idea of taking photos came after I completed this step. You can see where the pressure pad or contact area used to be in the end of the barrel channel though. I finish with 320 & I am very careful to not contact anything other than the inside radius of the barrel channel. This is important, you don't want to round the edges there the channel trough drops in from the top flat surfaces, plus you don't want to mess up the finish outside of the barrel channel. I will seal this exposed wood later with true oil.




here you can see some prep I have done in the action inletting. I have drilled small anchor holes in the tang, recoil lug & barrel chamber areas. These are the areas where I will be applying the bedding.







Next I dry fit the barreled action back into the stock & mark a spot for my barrel centering tape.... Yes tape, it's just how I do it. I select the furthest point in the barrel channel to locate & center the barrel in the stock. I wrap tape (in today's project I am using 3-M fine line automotive masking tape) I wrap the tape around the barrel until I have achieved the thickness of my revile in the relieved barrel channel.


Next I begin applying my release agent to the areas on the action that will be in contact with the bedding compound. I like to coat the action screws as well, I use a cotton swab.



forward area including recoil lug..

[img]http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e364/northerndave/rifle%20bedding/Picture002.jpg[/img]

And the tang.
[img]http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e364/northerndave/rifle%20bedding/Picture004.jpg[/img]



I'm using a brownells acra glass gel kit on this project. It comes with the release agent, resin, hardener & some color dies.

The release agent looks thick here but at it dries it shrinks down to a very thin film.

Ok, I'll give it a rest here before the next round of pictures.