Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Devcon Aluminum Putty or Brownells Steel Bed

As to "fool proof", there are people that can't figure out how to chew bubble gum. So no...nothing is "fool proof".

There are some good bedding products out there and a few excellent ones. 99% of problems that people have are from:

1. Not using a product the designed for the purpose.
2. A lack of understanding about what's involved and what's trying to be achieved.
3. Improper preparation.
4. Not following the instructions.
5. Not using a proper release agent.
6. A combination of any/and all of the above.

Good shootin' -Al

I have used Acraglas but I am always looking to up my technique. Can you guys tell me the negative atributes of Acraglass? I have always thought Brownells had good products.

I have bedded many many rifles with steelbed and it works fantastic.

Acraglas and Acraglas Gel both have their places.

For example, on a Savage 99 recently, I used a combination of ProBed and Acraglas Gel in different areas.

Over the last fifty years, I have used all kinds of epoxy to bed rifles but have bedded the vast majority with Acra Glass. Many of the other epoxies also got fibreglass added to them as a thickener and reinforcement. I quit using Devcon when I realized it was degraded by Hoppes No.9. Devcon clear, mixed with fiber glass floc, worked pretty well. Bisonite was a bedding compound which was very good but I don't know if it available anymore.
Al,
I really like your Savage 99 mod. GD

Thanks...appreciate it. Replacing the factory bolt (where a washer bears against a 'shelf' in the butt stock) with a substantial aluminum pillar and cap screw...and bedding the rear of the action against the pillar...is a very worthwhile modification to these guns. The solid pillar/bedding at the back eliminates the beating that the upper tang gives the stock, which leads to the cracking that's so common on these guns. On this one, I gave it .015 of clearance around the periphery of the tang.

With some additional work on the fore end, pillar bedding turned this 250-3000 'stringer' into a 'shooter' with nice round groups and eliminated the 1st round flyer that went close to 2" out.

Good shootin' -Al

Yep, that was a good compound. The company sold the mfg. rights to another company and it just wasn't the same...became absolutely miserable stuff to work with.


H.S. Precision used to offer a bedding compound that was excellent, as well. Tom Houghton told me they stopped carrying it as they found other more available products that did the job just as well without the inventory requirements of their own labeled product that was being produced for them.

The Texas Bureau Of Standards did testing on several epoxy compounds in that time frame and found the H.S. product to have the lowest shrinkage rate at .1% by volume when fully cured. That figure is what I encourage people to look for in any bedding compound they're considering.

Good shootin' -Al

Al, any thoughts on Acragls gel shrinkage?

Al, is there a place one can buy those savage 99 Aluminum pillars? I am doing several Savage 99's this year, 2 of them re-barreled to 450 Bushmaster, and I think this mod is a necessity for those.

You have to make it, I think. It really is a nice mod. GD

As GD mentioned, I make them. Be aware that the thread on the rear of the action is 5/16-22. It's not 5/16-22 British, either...just 5/16-22. I cut the threads on both the mounting bolt and a long section of steel round bar that was used as a guide rod to position the pillar. There's a lot of angles involved so it gets a bit herky to get it to come together in the epoxy and get the little 'shelf' above the rear of the action bedded correctly the same time the rear of the action sets up. The shelf is seen ahead of my finger...action was just popped out and this was pre-cleanup. The action needs to slide forward when you release it from the bedding so as not to distort the shelf, too. Some of the release agents mentioned at times on here will fail miserably at this point.



There's a lot of work in getting one of these right but here's a couple pics for you to ponder. By the way, the rifle belongs to my good pard Randy Robinett of BIB Bullets.

Good shootin' -Al

Brownell's advertises both the original AcraGlas and AcraGlas Gel as having .1% of 1 percent shrinkage rate. Given the amount of Nylon in the Gel, though..... The Nylon in the Gel can be a valuable asset for bedding certain areas, though.

A rule of thumb when considering a compound that's not commonly known and used for bedding is to get on the mfgs. site and research their technical specs for it. If they don't list a shrinkage rate...that's the first red flag for using it as a bedding compound. In general, stick with known good stuff and don't use any home brewed release agent or Brownell's horrible poly vinyl blue glop. Paste wax or mold release wax is the best.

At one time I did many of the pillar bedding jobs for a well known accuracy 'smith that built high end hunting, varmint and Benchrest rifles. As such, we were always trying different methods and bedding compounds....many not available to the general public. With a private 300 yd. range on his premises and an indoor shooting house to shoot from, we could test 365 days a year. One of the compounds we tested was a ceramic epoxy used in the satellite industry. It was incredibly stable but actually became too hard* when it cured and induced a few other issues that I hadn't expected. A-B-A testing confirmed the suspicions. Our own personal rifles were the test rigs for this experimenting. If it didn't make the cut on our stuff, it didn't make it to a customers gun...whether it was a light weight sheep hunting rig, long range 'dog gun or a full tilt Benchrest rig used in registered IBS and NBRSA competition. You could say I'm a 'Survivor' of a fair number of bedding experiments!

For what it's worth.... -Al

*One popular bedding compound used today that exhibits the same characteristics.

Eggzackly


It shrinks just a hair over time. Have had to re-bed three rifles because of that. My accuracy gunsmith buddy tipped me off to that

Is Acra Glass available in Canada or do you get it direct from Brownell's?

Any other options from this side of the border?

Bingo, you get it.

As a composites guy who goes through hundreds of gallons of epoxy I will say this:

Plastics or resins alone, have poor strength against the compression of action screws or hard recoil.

You need modulus, a long strand substrate. Mixing powdered aluminum into brittle epoxy, is about as effective as mixing powdered dog sht.

The resin base needs to be flexible, and chemical-resistant.

When making structural bedding compounds resistant to gas and oil in a marine environment, i always use kevlar pulp. It is light, and absorbs resin slightly better than fiberglass pulp. The strength against heavy action-screw torque and heavy recoil, is untouchable by all these store-bought garbage compounds.

The kevlar pulp i use, is the same used in high-performance brake pads, race clutches and friction discs in performance-built automatic transmisions.

Aluminum pillars and aluminum bedding blocks in composite stocks, are a band-aid for dog-sht composite work by the various stock makers.

Why is that? I see pillars as a very good alternative to a much heavier solid fill bottom.

There's a bag of aramid Kevlar pulp here from a clutch manufacturer for drag race stuff that I'm involved with. I've used it in the past to tune up resins on my home brewed bedding compounds.....really brought them around.

The carbon fiber in Pro Bed, gives me what I need right out of the box.

Good shootin' -Al

I have also used chopped up, degreased, steel wool to reinforce epoxy but I like the fiberglass better because it;s common and easy.
SuperCub,
I have always bought Acraglas from Brownells. There isn't a ready source for anything in Canada anymore! GD