Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Aluminum bedding block

Remington is offering a new version of the 700 rifle, the NRA American Hunter rifle. This rifle has an aluminum bedding block. In your experience has this bedding block been instrumental in retuning the rifle to zero after disassembling or it does not matter and is no better than any other bedding system. Also does it really improve accuracy and overall keeping its zero if not disassembled at all.

I know there is another thread about takedown rifle, but the aluminum bedding block is intriguing even though it’s not a new concept.

Thanks for your answer.

To get the best/most consistent accuracy from any rifle, it needs to be properly glass bedded. The aluminum bedding block in the stock is no exception to that fact.

I have always leaned toward aluminum bedding blocked stocks since acquiring my first TC Icon many years ago. The icon experience for me was that good. For me, I think a big reason for alum block or pillar bedding is to provide a consistent material to torque action screws against for repeatable reassembly stock pressure. Free floating the barrel is another, but too many folks still skim coat blocks for increased accuracy to think bedding blocks alone deliver optimum accuracy. Just my rationale, I do not claim to know thit from thynola in the grand scheme of bedding techniques.

Bedding blocks are great, as long as there machined flat and square to the action. Some are not, there fore a skim glass bed works, if done right.
But to answer your question of RTZ, IME, they do. I have several HS Precision stocks that do exactly that. I also bought a composite stock from Stockys I`ve my 7RM in. It doese the same.

That's also been my experience: If the bedding block is straight and square.

Recently dropped the barreled action of my Remington 700 .204 into a Stocky's bedding-block stock. The rifle was already very accurate in an epoxy-bedded factory stock, but shot noticeably better after simply bolting it into the new stock.

I think it's just a Bell and Carlson stock. I've had them all skim bedded

The success of aluminum bedding blocks are also dependent on the trueness of the receiver bottom where it mates to the block. V-blocks mitigated that problem to a degree. Otherwise a skim glass is your easy solution.

Any manufactured item has tolerances. The only way to make sure your action fits your stock is to bed it. Doesn't make any difference if the stock is wood, fiberglass, aluminum or steel.
Even factory glass bedded stocks are bedded to a dummy action, not your action. If there is any question that the fit may be affecting accuracy, I bed them all.

I only have (6) data points:


Bell and Carlson round block Aluminum on Remington or Savage round bottom receivers shoot poorly for me in 7mmSTW and 280AI.

Drop in Whidden V blocks worked poorly for me in 300WM and 280AI



I built a homemade flat bottom Aluminum block for a 6.5-06 Mauser, and it shoots better than me.



I built a homemade drop in 20 degree V block for a 250 Sav on Sav action, it shoots better than me.

I talked to Tom Manners not long if they came out with their mini chassis, asking him if they had seen any noticeable difference in accuracy between the mini chassis and an epoxy and pillar bedding job. He told me it was very minimal, generally less than .1 MOA using the same barreled action in each stock.

One of the best shooting rigs I’ve ever had was in an MPA aluminum chassis. It was not epoxy bedded and I shot some phenomenal (for me) groups with it. One that comes to mind was five shots in about 3” at 700 yards with a Criterion barrel chambered in 22-250 launching 75gr Amaxes at 3200. Can’t imagine that bedding would have improved on that group.

Edited to add: Some bedding blocks and chassis are better than others. I know from experience that the MPA chassis and Manners mini chassis showed more repeatable return to zero and better precision after removing and replacing barreled actions than Bell and Carlson and HS Precision stocks did for me. Long Rifles Inc used to advertise their truing procedure for aluminum bedding blocks.

John

My experience too--exclusively B&C stocks. Skim coat the top of the blocks, free float and bed chamber area and tang.

I have a Mt. Eagle rifle and it works well as a take down. It shoots so well I have not skim bedded it. Those that do do you remove any metal on the block?

I have heard of some short range target shooters using "Space Gun" all aluminum stocks say they thought it increased vibration over wood and to a less extent over fiber glass. I couldn't tell an 0.1" difference in accuracy if I had too.

Very interesting as I always figured that if the bedding is stress free and the recoil lug makes good contact that there wouldn't be any difference. Did you check the first stock for stress free bedding? Was there any other change made, such as a pressure point on the barrel?

I haven't run an aluminum bedding block enough to know much about them. Properly bedded rifles have always returned to the same point of impact for me after removing/replacing the barreled action. By properly bedded I mean stress free, regardless if they had pillars or not.

Thats not the norm. An aluminum bedding block will never be absolutely perfect. Thats why most will skim bed the action to the aluminum bedding block. You got damn lucky. Im thinking whoever glass bedded the first stock fu cked it up by inducing stress to the receiver. A properly glass bedded stock would have generally out shot a straight up aluminum bedding block stock, that was not skim bedded to that receiver.

Good post dave. Ive had the same exact experience. Its just a matter of mechanics.

Clark I have personal experience n of 3. A PSS, a VSSF (both HS Precision), and one of the grand daddies of the chassis rifles made by Zelenak in the late 80's early 90's. All three are/were mated to short action Remington's; two SA's and one 40x. Only the Zelenak shot wurf a flip. It is a V-block and is ugly as sin. If I had to devine a trend in your experience, I'd say that you should make your own blocks and not buy other people's!

Reading through the different experiences, my theory (which might have relevance for the OP) is that a factory 700 action is a crap shoot. Sometimes they work in a block and sometimes they won't. My friend at the USMC PWS took on the mission of extending time between rebeds of the M40 (A1's at the time), and played with bedding blocks. Part of his problem was that the receiver bottoms weren't always true (he thought they sometimes were warped during the heat treat). The most perfectly milled bedding block won't mate up if your receiver is not straight. Hence the positive experiences of the folk using custom Rem 700 clones (just my theory).

The rifle that leaps to mind in the Bedding block done right is the AI AW. I don't think there's much argument that Malcolm Cooper got it right with his chassis based stock 30+ years ago (same era my 2112 friend was chasing his tail). Closer to the core question, he even produced rifles with blocks mounted in a laminated wood stock for the 300M and Palma crowd in England.

Now even the USMC is going the way of a chassis rifle with the Mark 13 Mod 7 rifle and I can only guess that Remington or Crane improved the QC of those M700 receivers for that contract.

Someone asked about prepping the blocks for bedding. I didn't do mine because I thought I could get more money for them unmessed with. But friends that had success took a grinder (and drill) to the block to give the bedding compound something to bite onto.

To the OP, if RTZ is part of your purpose...make sure you buy a torque wrench.

I made 1018 Steel bedding blocks so Mauser barrelled actions could drop in and play musical chairs with bedded stocks.
The idea was 3 points of contact for rifling torque reaction; the two bottom sides of the recoil lug and the rear pillar
The idea for the rear recoil thrust was a steel face against the lower part of the recoil lug.

Mausers made over a span of 100 years keep getting worse.
The bottom of some Mauser recoil lugs look cast, and are too rough. They need to be flat. I can mill a flat spot on the bottom of the recoil lug.

Dave284, etc.

I did NOT say that any action can be dropped into any "beddding block" stock and shoot well. But my experience is that with better bedding-block stocks is they often work great with a dropped-in barreled action.

Epoxy-bedding walnut stocks can help them shoot very well, but have often seen them vary in accuracy over time, due to the wood "squirming" over time due to atmospheric conditions. Which is why many people install pillars--which in my experience also do not help walnut stocks as consistently as synthetic stocks. The .204 I mentioned had been epoxy-bedded without pillars, and passed all the usual tests for stress-free bedding.

Another factor, of course, is the quality of the bedding block. Some are smaller pieces of aluminum or stainless steel rather randomly fitted into either a wood or synthetic stock of varying quality. Others are complete bedding systems for the action. Naturally the fit will vary with the system, and to a certain extent the action.

The most interesting experience I've had with what might be termed a "bedding block" has been with Charlie Sisk's STAR (Sisk Tactical Adaptable Rifle) stocks, where the entire action area and forend is milled of aluminum. (The buttstock is a separate, widely adjustable assembly.)

The "bedding" is milled into the aluminum block, and Charlie said he'd experimented with epoxy-bedding various actions into the stock, which never made any measurable difference in accuracy. I got one of the original run of the short-action stocks, and have since bolted a number of different barreled actions into it, including several 700s, a Bergara, and one of the few actions Charlie put together when he developed the stock. ALL have shot great without ever "bedding" the stock, so my experience matches Charlie's.

In a way, the Stocky's LRC synthetic/bedding block stock is a variation on the Sisk aluminum stock. The action-length bedding block is actually molded into the very stiff synthetic inside a multi-part tool ("mold"),l that itself is inside a machine about 2/3 the size of a school bus--with the machine itself water-cooled through interior ports to reduce warping of the stock as much as possible. The block itself semi-floats within the synthetic stock.

I dropped the .204 barreled action into it because I already knew it was pretty accurate, especially for a sporter-weight stainless barrel. Its best load, using 35-grain Bergers, averaged right around 1/2" for five shots at 100 yards. The LRC stock tightened up the groups even more.

Stocky's also offers a lightweight layup stock with a SYNTHETIC version of the aluminum block, which just may work a little better, due to the synthetic being able to flex a little to fit an individual action. I am in the process of testing one of those now, but won't have sufficient results for reporting for at least a month.

A bedding block is still a foundation.
Consider it a mass produced surface to grind under pressure to your action which is a mass produced surface.

Keep smiling, John. And keep using those aluminum bedded synthetic stocks. Allow me to take the heat off. Let them chase me.

It's easier, faster and cheaper to make an aluminum bedded, synthetic stocked rifle shoot.