Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Bedding Win model 70. Any tips?

Getting ready to bed my Model 70 Coyote with pillars and Devcon 10110. I have done a few rifles, but this is the first with the three action screws. Any advice?

Yeah - don't... But the first question is why the pillars? The coyote's stocks are solidly built. The only bedding that's most likely beneficial is the receiver from the forward edge of the magazine box to about 2" of shank/barrel.. Ensure the barrel's free-floated and go shoot..

Pillars are, IMHO, fully unnecessary..

No matter how solidly built a stock is, that doesn't mean that the bedding is done correctly, especially if it it a factory bedding job. Personally, I would piller bed it. That way you would be assured of having a stress free receiver.

The reason I piller bedded the only one I did was because it was bedded with hot glue.

The middle screw? Hmmm. I don't remember what I did with that one. I may have put a small pad of epoxy under the receiver at that point, so the center screw, when tighted, did not put undue stress on the action, but, I just don't remember.

I do know that I put the front and back guard screws in first, tightened them, and just barely tightened the middle screw.

If not supported, a screw can exert enough force to warp an action. Not much, but it is possible to do it.

I agree that the factory stuff is basically junk. It should be removed and bedded properly. Please tell me how pillar bedding vs. glass bedding ensures a 'stress free' receiver..

The majority of M70s are done this way from the factory.. You only have one M70?

You betcha...

Pillar bedding can be a good thing.. It can also create more problems if not done exactly right.. IMVHO it's worth it when the stock has issues such as weakness in wood, construction and or has cracks that needed repairing.. Pillars can make a so-so stock quite strong.. But in a Coyote model, it's just not necessary; again IMVHO...

If you decide to do the bedding watch the floorplate and guard spacing otherwise it may not stay closed upon firing. From personal experience.

Thanks guys. I got this one done last night. I feel that going the extra mile and doing pillars means I don't have to worry about humidity messing with things. Even if the Coyote stock is as strong as can be, I have removed it from the equation by adding pillars.

I ended up playing with this all afternoon yesterday. The biggest obstacle was the middle pillar. Kept messing with it til it was perfect. Yeah, the floorplate wasn't wanting to close properly, but I got it fixed up. Now I am trying to be patient and not pull it apart just yet. Wish me luck.

Ahh, the middle screw. If the action bedding is stress free than go ahead and bed the 2 pc bottom metal. After the bedding is completed and finalized, tighten the guard screws by order of front guard screw, rear guard screw and middle screw last. Tighten the middle screw enough to seat the TG, no more.

MtnHtr

Thanks Mtn Hunter. Always wondered what sequence was best.

"Please tell me how pillar bedding vs. glass bedding ensures a 'stress free' receiver.."

I am not familiar with the Coyote Model. I do not know whether it has a wood stock, laminated stock, or plastic stock, or fiberglass stock but to answer your question, glass or epoxy bedding material is only a thin layer of epoxy on the surface of the inletting.

No matter how carefully it is done, that is all it is. Over time, removing and replacing and re-tightening the guard screws can crush the wood or whatever is underneath the epoxy, something like a chocolate covered marshmellow. The chocolate is hard, but press on it with your finger and the chocolate will give, or break, and your finger goes into the marshmellow.

With pillers, the action is resting on aluminum studs, sandwitched between the bottom metal and the action. Tightening the screws, even if you bear down on them will not compress the wood, because the action is not resting on wood or plastic and remember, there is only a thin layer of epoxy re-inforcing the wood. If not using pillers, and if the wood compresses, then the epoxy moves with it, creating stress in the action.

If pillers are done right and fitted right, this won't happen. The wood could become soft and oil soaked, or even rot away, and the receiver would still rest securely on the metal pillers.

Even if the stock swells or shrinks, the action is still supported on the metal pillers. The stock could shrink 1/8 all the way around the action, and the pillers would still hold it in a solid position.

If the Coyote model has a laminated stock, all this stuff is is wood layers about 1/10 of an inch thick glued togather. It is not moisture proof and will shrink and expand, just like solid wood, although probably not as much.

I think the trade name for it is Dymondwood. A better option would be for the stabilizing agent to be forced into the pores of the wood, under pressure or a vacuum, but this is not done with Dymondwood--the layers are just glued togather, but under a lot of pressure.

Plastic stocks are the worst. You can tighten the guard screws and pull the tang or trigger guard down into the stock 1/4 of an inch. Do you think the action would be well supported and stress free if this happened?

Right now, I only have one Model 70, and it is not the one I piller bedded. Due to uh, finiancial considerations, I had to sell the others I had.

IMVHO, piller bedding is the best bedding system ever developed, but, it has to be done right, and the action has to rest securely and stress free on top of the pillers. You can't have the front receiver ring resting securely on the front piller, and have to bend the tang of the action down 1/8 inch before it touches the rear piller, and expect it to shoot well.

Glass bedding, no matter how precise, is no stronger than the wood under the layer of glass. Wood is even weaker, and plastic weaker yet, when it comes to compression, and the wood under the glass can compress. Preventing compression of the stock material is one of the prime reasons to piller bed.

I have a rifle that I built in 1962. It has a Douglas Barrel, an FN commercial Mauser action, and kind of a fancy wood stock, and I glass bedded it when I made the stock. It is chambered in 7 mm Wthby. Magnum. From the start, it would group into about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches. This was fine with me. This was the early 60s and most factory rifles would not group this good.

It would group a little better than this, but to do it, I had to seat the bullets out too long to work through the magazine.

I glass bedded it because this was my first venture into stock making, and when I finally got it to where the bottom metal and action screws would line up, the barreled action would almost fall through the inletting for the action. Not to mention that the barrel, if I pulled it all the way down, would have come out of the side of the foreend channel about 8 inches in front of the trigger guard. I had a full fore end on one side of the barrel, and no wood at all on the other side.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I read an article about piller bedding. Since I like to tinker with stuff, I decided to piller bed it. I made my own pillers and took it to the range.

I shot three shots, but I could only see one hole on a rather large target. I thought, well I wonder how much trouble it is to un-piller bed a stock. I walked to the target, 100 yards away, and found it was only one hole, but the one hole was the three shots, overlapping. The group measured either 5/16 or 3/8 of an inch, I can't remember which, but it was the smallest group ever shot with this rifle in over 40 years.

Thinking that group was a fluke, I went back and fired several more three shot groups. The first group was the smallest, but the others were close. None were over 1/2 inch.

Please understand something about pillar bedding, glass bedding and action. As long as you have wood under or between the action and screws, you will still have movement. Just like in a barrel channel with glass between the barrel and barrel channel you will still have movement. things change with the absorption and loss of moisture. You can remove all the wood and pillar bed, you can hollow out the barrel channel of wood, fill with glass and stop movement. You can use a bedding block for the action. Just remember as long as you are dealing with wood you will have movement. Of course you can get away with it by going to a laminate or all glass stock. You can have a stock pressure soaked, but that adds a lot of weight.

My point exactly..

Agreed.. But the compression factor is miniscule when dealing with a new, solid walnut or well-made laminated stock.. To obtain any substantial degree of compression, the action screws would be torqued to unreasonable specs.. Torqued correctly compression will, to any real measurable degree, be non-existent.. Older stocks, especially with cracks and/or oil soaking issues will obviously benefit.. Besides, most owners rarely remove the actions from the stocks once they're assembled..

Unless the rifle's to be used in BR competition or similar target venues, OR if the existing stock is subject to the issues above, it's just not necessary..

I've installed pillars in maybe a half dozen rifles over the years, being extremely careful to ensure the install is perfect, with the action squarely on the blocks and no interference from any other part of the stock... For the most part, the groups that resulted were no better than a simple glass bed.

Like 3sixbits stated above, it's still a wood stock.. In certain humidity conditions, it can twist ever so slightly, rendering the pillar blocks no better that glass bedding.. Only way to stop all possible movement is to have a steel cage built inside the stock so the wood is merely 'siding'...

But whatever.. I'm not trying to flog a dead horse here..

"But whatever.. I'm not trying to flog a dead horse here.."

I'm not either, but you seem to be talking about under the best of conditions, with good, solid wood or fiber glass. I'm not. The rifle in the example given above is over 40 years old, and may or may not be oil soaked.

New doesn't necessarily mean better. Factory rifles are machine inletteted, and even some custom gunsmiths are not too proficiant when it comes to hand inletting.

Your experiences does not follow mine. The rifles I piller bedded have all shown an increase in accuracy, but on a hunting rifle, not really needed. 1.5 MOA is plenty good enough for me. I was just surprised at the inprovement I got, groups averaging 3/8 inches.

I do not think you can take a rifle that shoots 6 and 8 inch groups, or a rifle with a shot out barrel, and piller bed, glass bed it or any type of bedding and turn it into a MOA rifle or better.

I do think that you can take a very accurate rifle, or a rifle that has the potential to be very accurate, and piller bed it and see an improvment.

At one time, I had an Anshutz free rifle, with a one inch diameter 28 inch barrel. The barrel was free-floated, and the action was glass bedded (by me), and not piller bedded. The groups it shot, from a rest and with match ammunition were unbelievable. It was very capable of shooting a perfect score on a 50 meter ISU target, time after time.

One day, I got to thinking, a mistake I sometimes make. I thought that heavy, floating 1 inch 28 inches long barrel was putting a lot of strain on the action, and that if I gave it some support at the forearm tip, it would take some of the strain off the action, improving the accuracy from outstanding to much better.

I put a few layers of cardboard from a cartridge box under the fore end tip, to give the barrel some support. The groups went from groups to patterns, like with a shotgun with buck shot.

I removed the cardboard, and the rifle went back to it's usual small groups. That has made me a believer in floated barrels, on any type of rifle, although logic would tell you that a heavy barrel might need some support to take the strain off the action.

1234567,

What you are describing w/ the Annie is not messing with the bedding nearly as much as it messing with the harmonics of the barrel. Yes, I am sure the bedding played some role in its in-accuracy, but .22lr can be super finicky to harmonics, that is why the tuners work so well on them. My Annie 54 that I have set up for BR wears two tuners on the bbl and they can really mess with the way this thing shoots.

As far as the argument for/against pillars, you can chalk it up to "different strokes, different folks". I see both sides and prefer the pillars, while some guys (even really good gunsmiths like Redneck) don't see the point.

I got the bottom metal on this thing finished up. Hopefully will get out this week and see how much it helped. This thing would shoot 5 through one tiny hole if I messed with tension on the action screws every time I went to the range. Just wouldn't stay there the next time out.

The middle screw on the Model 70 never was intended to do much more than hold the front of the trigger guard in place. Nonetheless, I always like to try and make it a part of the bedding to as great an extent as possible. In truth, there can never be too much surface around the middle screw because of the proximity of the mag box in front of it and the sear behind it. Add to this the bolt stop cutout on the one side and there just isn't a lot of surface left but I try to make the best of what there is.
I do believe in pillar bedding and have been pillar bedding stocks for over thirty years. I am not a real fan of aluminum pillars, however, and prefer to cast pillars of Acraglas. The front and rear pillars for the M70 are roughly 5/8" in diameter while the center one is about 1/2".
The bottom metal should be bedded so there is about .010" space between the trigger guard and the hinge plate and the magazine box. GD

Son-uv-a-gun. I thought I was all alone out here in preferring cast-glas pillars to the metal jobs....

Greydog:

Just curious, but why do you prefer cast Acraglas pillars to machined aluminum?

I make my own from a hardened aluminum, T something or other. I am not wild about the flat top and a round receiver, so I made a jig that cuts the end of the piller so that it fits the receiver radious.

Just my opinion, and the reason I asked, is I think aluminum has more compressive strength than Acraglas or any other type of epoxy or plastic.

Steel would be stronger yet, but I think aluminum is plenty strong enough.

According to Jack Belk, end grain wood is stronger than any composite material, and that may be a fact, he is one of the most knowledgable gun builders I know of..

When I bed a wood stock to a Win. M-70 rifle I only want cantact on the rear of the recoil lug, One or two inches of the chamber area of the barrel and contact of the tang..Most m-70 will shoot when bedded in this manner..I start by bedding them tight and trying them out, then leave some pressure onthe forend and then cut that out..I stop as soon as it shoots an inch. This seems to work and then you know how your rifle wants to be bedded.

I won't get into an arguement with the composite stock crowd as it won't do any good...But the fact it if you use well cured and properly dried wood that is properly inletted then you don't need piller bedding, nor do you need plastic...Look at the hundreds of old English rifles in big bore calibers that are out there and still shoot great...and yes it is the more expensive route to take..

I have hunted all over the world, in all kinds of weather, with my custom rifles and have yet to have a problem. I wonder how many custom rifle builders of plastic guns can say the same.

If I were a guide in Alaska then I would probably build myself a SS rifle with a cold lifeless plastic stock as upkeep would be much less and I could treat it like a wrench and not worry with it, I wouldn't even bother to paint it or I would spray paint the whole thing.

"According to Jack Belk, end grain wood is stronger than any composite material, and that may be a fact, he is one of the most knowledgable gun builders I know of.."

Can't argue with that. I know end grain wood is very strong, but that is not the purpose of piller bedding.

The purpose of it, and for using metal, is that wood will expand and shrink, and over time, can become oil soaked and spongy. The aluminum pillers still support the action, regardless of what the wood does or which way it moves.

Over time, if you take the rifle apart very much and I know that some do and others don't, the wood can compress and put stress on the action. Take an oil soaked stock, and if you exert enough pressure on the screwdriver, you can bury the bottom metal into the wood.

The cheap plastic stocks are the very worse. Each time you disassemble one, it takes a little more effort on the screw driver to get the bottom metal tight. I have seen pictures of trigger guard tangs buried into the stock from constantly having to tighten the screws. Wood would probably hold up much better under these conditions, unles it was unusually soft or oil soaked.

The reason I push piller bedding is because I tried it, several times, on rifles that grouped well. In every case, accuracy improved, even on rifles that gave good accuracy to begin with, so I know it works.

Yes, I am amazed that the wood stocks on the older English doubles have stood up so well. I can't imagine how much stress a .600 Nitro would put on the wooden parts of a stock, but I have never heard of one breaking or of the side locks coming loose.

Look at the older bar in wood actions on heavy recoiling rifles. Common sense would tell you that this would't work, and would come apart after one or two shots, but there are bar in wood rifles that are still sound and that are over 100 years old.

Even properly dried and seasoned wood can shrink and expand, ruining that perfect inletting job. I have also found that it is much harder to glass bed an entire action and have the bedding so uniform that there is no stess on the action. It is much easier to support the front and rear receiver rings on pillers and end up with even force and no stress on the action.

Look a highway bridges. They are supported on concrete pillars. Can you imigine the effort it would take to precision fit a bridge span into a solid hunk of concrete, and it would only take one hot or very cold spell and all your precision fitting would be for nothing.

Of course, I don't see a way you could piller bed a double rifle, or even a single shot break open, or a Ruger No. 1, or a Winchester 94 or Marlin 336. What I have written here would only apply to a bolt action with front and rear guard screws, and I think that it is the most uniform way to bed a bolt action rifle there is.

A skilled workman can do very well by bedding in wood, or even glass bedding, but I think pillars are just a little bit better.

I had actually given some thought to making the pillers from a very hard and stable wood, such as Lignum Vitae, or Iron wood or some of the others because of the end grain compressive strength. But then, I got to thinking about the expansion and shrinkage, which is the real reason for piller bedding, and gave up on that idea.

I live in Georgia, where it is very humid. Some of my acquaintences shoot trap, and some of them take extended trips to Arizona to shoot trap. When they get back, you should see the gaps and loosness in their gun stocks after spending some time in dry Arizona. That is going to happen going from Alaska to Arizona and back, and propably to some parts of Africa as well.

Ray,

Darcy Echol's work trumps Jack Belk's work any day of the week.

And Darcy uses pillars in his "plastic" rifles.

And we all know Jack Belk hated synthetic stocks with a passion, so he was bias'd from the start just like you.

Btw, how's your brother Clair Rees?

MtnHtr

I would like to point out that over the many years I've put into the M-70, The most common stock problem that needs attention has been the area behind the recoil lug. This is where I have found the most cracks in wood stocks to occur. The solution and prevention has been to make a trench across the flat and to cut a piece of quarter inch all thread to fit into the trench going all the way from side to side. Pour in bedding compound and work the all thread in. Let stand and finish with the bedding of the action. I will add, the rear tang should be under cut, and bedded, using your favorite bedding compound.

As to the paper or plastic question. I love both. I just still can not get over the miracle of synthetic stocks. For a hunter there just is no better when it comes to a worry free solution. The gyrations we used to go through to answer the problems of a wood stock are just crazy.

If the rifle will not see the day to day torture that we take rifles into, here in Alaska, well then, make mine a good piece of English walnut.

Remember the commercial abut the "Heartbreak of sirisases"? It kills me to look at a well built and beautiful rifle rot before your eyes when you are hunting around salt water.

Of the several different makes of plastic I have used, I have had no reported problems or any of my own rifles.

I do know this,when it comes time for a show and tell, I don't drag out plastic, unless asked. Wood has a magic for me, a well laid out blank with the unique grain pattern, that just does not get any better than that.