Dave: I commend you for your efforts in putting together an excellent thread on bedding Ruger M77 MkII action. With all the picks and your attention to detail I know it was not easy and was quite time consuming. You are a credit to the community here at 24 Hour Campfire. I had posted over at Varmint Hunters .com on how to bed a Ruger MkII with its angled forend action screw and your thread was recommended buy Pauls and am glad he did.
If I may be so bold as to offer an observation or two.
IMHO the wood showing thru on your bedding indicates that the action screws were tightened down to hold the action in while the bedding cured. Unless the wood that is showing in your picture was already fitting your action perfectly (which I doubt) then when you torqued the action screws down you inadvertently induced stress in the action. My method of holding stock in place is to wrap masking tape or surgical tubing around stock and action to hold in place. Action screws would be used to keep action aligned in stock with little to no torque on them. Sometimes I lightly torque action screws down a tad to align things up but then I�ll back them back out a � to � a turn so as to not have them affect any pressure on action.
A method I use to check for if an action is stressed is to support rifle butt on a table or counter top and while holding vertically grasp forend at tip and place a finger to feel movement between forend and barrel. I found it helps a bit if you wedge a bit of skin between barrel and wood in order to feel movement, it ain�t much so pay close attention. Now with action screws tight loosen and tighten one at a time each action screw if you feel movement in barrel then action then action is being stressed as you mess with the screws. Obviously this will only work on free floated barrels. Also I suspect the angled front action screw may have a less affect on this method as opposed to action screws that are perpendicular to action.
To respond to others who have mentioned leaving the forend pressure in during bedding I don�t see anyway this can be done and still effectively bed an action. � If you use the action screws to torque the action down during bedding then the upwards pressure on the barrel will induce its own torque on action and compound the problem. � If you use the tape/surgeons tubing then you lose all your forend pressure anyways because there is no torque on action as it should be during bedding. � If I did a good job of bedding and can�t find any stress in action with the method I described above and bench shooting shows still more must be done then I go to applying a forend pad.
So sorry for this post being so long and wordy, but felt this info may be of some use to you guys. I hope so anyways.
Cheers, Larry
PS: For anyone looking for more info on bedding a rifle Google �rifle bedding instructions�. Gobs of info there.
I hope so anyways. 
