Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Vintage Remington Varmint Special wood stock

This is a '70's era Remington Varmint Special wood stock that came in for pillars. Normally, I like to do the final bedding but having done some work for this gentleman before, I'm confident in his bedding abilities. It has some history as you can see, including an attempt at bedding the forward receiver ring and recoil lug with AcraGlas Gel.

Anyway...here's a few pics:

Typical older wood stock compression. You can see the imprint of the floor plate hinge area in the wood. Holes have been milled with a sharp 1/2" end mill with a tooth angle specifically for wood, not metal :



At the back, there's a chunk missing from the trigger mortise....not uncommon on the older 700 wood stocks:



The AcraGlas Gel is lifting from the stock due to poor surface preparation. The owner will knock all this and the recoil lug area out, prep it properly and bed it with Pro Bed 2000:



Pillars getting ready to be epoxied in. I normally like to use 5/8" pillars on the 700's but went with 1/2" on this one as the front of the tang area is pretty narrow. These older wood stocks can surprise you and when a razor sharp end mill is plunging down through old wood...it's not the kind of surprise you want. Pillar I.D. is 5/16". The installer tool is something I made from a piece of aluminum round. There's a small step on the end that's 5/16" diameter and the shaft O.D. is .475. Works good to guide the pillars in:



All better now. The pillars were left .015 above the floor of the bottom metal inletting to provide a solid fit for the bottom metal. The owner will also bed the inlet to the bottom metal. Done this way, the bottom metal will be well supported and not flex and deflect when the action screws are tightened....which will stress the action:



Good shootin' -Al

Nice work and write up.

Al, my Varmint Special in 7-08 is tight as a tick. Mag box is bound and barrel is not even close to a free float. It shoots really well but I am compelled to free float and pillar bed it. I will let my local guy do the pillars. Rifle is in fantastic shape

Thanks for the write up!!

Al are saying he will bed the area between the bottom metal and the bottom of the stock? Approximately. 015 thick then to fill between the pillars I assume?

Yep. The bedding will be a bit thicker once the wood is prepped. -Al

Pillars are a tight fit in the holes that you need a tool to seat them? Are you using glue as well to hold them in place? Never considered making them that tight but more i think about it, the better I like it.

The tool just makes it cleaner to to guide the pillars into place. Pillars are always epoxied in place...you can see the relieved areas cut in the pillars to help hold the epoxy.

At times, I'll cut the upper and lower band of the pillars for a light press fit to keep them centered. Other times, I'll make the upper and lower bands smaller than the milled pillar holes so there is a 'ring' of epoxy around the upper and lower band. Stock material is the main thing on this step. And depending on the stock and action, a large bodied pillar with flats milled is sometimes done.

The biggest issue I see with screwed up jobs come from the pillar holes not being cut truly straight and true....which is why I do them on a mill. You can't use the factory holes with any sort of guarantee as they are commonly off in both planes.

The second big issue I see is the action screws contacting the inside of the pillars....a big no-no. I make the pillar I.D. 5/16" and use a sleeve glued in the pillar with a 1/4" I.D. to center the screws while the bedding epoxy sets up.

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

If you're going to do the bedding yourself, make sure your local guy gets the pillars in there straight and true. Everything else builds on this step. If he doesn't do it on a mill, keep looking until you find someone that does.

Done correctly, the barrelled action should literally fall out of the stock when the action screws are removed.

The Varmint Specials really respond to well done pillar bedding.

Good shootin' -Al

Looks good. My preference has always been to cast fiberglass pillars but I reckon the end result is much the same. I know popular opinion favors the aluminum option.
Probably the most accurate factory rifle I ever saw (excepting some 40XBR's) was a Remington Varmint special, 308, in the factory stock but bedded. This rifle used by Al Mirdoch, of Calgary, held, for several years, the Canadian Light Varmint, 200 yard group record. (a .189", as I recall).
A few years later, I won a twin to this rifle as a prize at a match. I bedded it, then took it out and tested it. The first five shots, using my usual 308 load, went into .325" at 100 yd. It didn't shoot quite as well as Al's rifle but it served me well in hunter class matches. They were great rifles. GD

GD: Over the years, I've worked with a bunch of different pillar materials looking for something with the lowest possible expansion coefficient. Before settling on aluminum, I used a bunch of G10 and even some tungsten tubing. In the end, the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze, especially with the tungsten. By changing my bedding material and how I bedded over the pillars, I've proven (to myself, at least) that high quality aluminum pillars are the way to go for long term durability.

And as you know, not all aluminum alloys are the same. Some of the extruded stuff contains too many impurities for example. For me, 6061T6 or 7061T6 actual tooling stock is what gets used. There is quite a bit of what's loosely termed and marketed as '6061' out there....but it's actually extruded that happens to fall into the 6061 spectrum.

Just my 2 cents worth. Still won't get you a cup of coffee at Wall Drug on the other side of my State, though.

Good shootin' -Al

Great pie at Wall Drug too!

As an aside, how does bedding affect resale on these. My VS 7-08 does shoot well as is and is in excellent condition but boy would I like to try for sub .5 MOA

For a real treat, try the peach pie at Al's Oasis on the West side of Chamberlain.



Though I don't follow collector pricing on stuff, I'm sure an unaltered version is what a collector would want. The 7-08 Varmint Specials are second only to the 25-06 Varmint Specials in production numbers. BTW, the 25-06 Varmint Special was the only chambering ever available in a long action Varmint Special. All the Varmint Specials (incl. the 25-06) were 24" barrels.

I've got a new take-off 1978 Varmint Special barrel here in 308W. The chamber is pretty surprising as the throat is short enough that even the 1.00" jacketed bullets I make will touch the rifling with .100 of the bullet still in the case neck. The neck is also nice and snug at .340. No doubt as to why the 308 Varmint Special were shooters!

Good shootin' -Al