Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles DIY bedding M77 (pic heavy)

Thanks it was informative.

Well if you squint your eyes and look at it sideways...it is a thing of beauty

TFF!!

Rollin here

Thanks Dave.

Good Stuff

Up, with the stickiness.......

Dave, great thread, great pics, great job.

Nice work Dave, and thanks for sharing. Heads-up on the use of linseed oil to seal the exposed wood in your barrel channel. I tried the same thing with a Boyd's laminate, and I had a bear of a time keeping the grain from swelling. The big problem was the presence of any exposed end-grain, which was really susceptible to water absorption. I re-did it with a Varathane and acheived the weather seal needed. Something to think about anyway.

Thanks VA & others for the nice comments.

and thanks wind drift for the tip. I'll get back in there & make sure i've got things sealed up tight.

my efforts with the one coat application of linseed could be the weak link, don't want that.

Sticky this please!

Well Dave I gave it a look when I got home from work. When I looked at it this morning I was half way awake. Its even uglier now

How long does it ussually take to cure before you can shoot the dang thing?

were you able to pop it loose?

I forget, what was the rifle again?? Please tell me it was that bb gun you have pictured in your toyota truck project pictures?

Gezz...well done...Love that caliber too...Last one, I did I used the pillars from Brownells,lot of work,but worked.Great job on centering the barrel...rifle

Thank you, pillars would be cool. Some of my savage rifles have them from the factory but they are more for looks than anything. They are more or less "no contact" pillars. Basically bushings that don't quite come all the way up through the stock far enough to contact the action.

Looking good!

Can't wait for the range report.

Mike

Dave -

Thank you very much for that photo essay on glassing a rifle. II've never done one but am a tinkerer and feel like I understand the process pretty well now. (For someone that has yet to do it...)

I am still a little confused by your explantion of how you pop the action loose. Maybe a photo or two showing how you hod it and break it loose?

Thanks again!

Yea it popped loose fine. It just wanst smooth an purty. Also noticed some air pockets. Probly redo it once I get some fresh acraglass.

It was on a Ruger Hawkeye .223. Not sure how you would go about bedding a tacticle bb gun though.

Its a Sticky!
Yay!

great post Dave. I think you found a new calling.

Northern Dave and gentlemen,

Thank you for a very informative post with good pictures and written so that I can understand it.

Just happen to have been studying up on bedding an old browning in a new stock and this really helps.

Thanks again,

WC

Someone done went & stickied it!

Hey bogger, that's a nice looking rifle. So your comments are just about the inside then right? ya didn't end up with a bunch of bedding gooped up all over the outside or nuthin right? You'll have to let us know how it shoots.

Coyote hunter, I was thinking about taking some picks of how I crack em loose.

Go to something sturdy like a kitchen counter or a reloading bench. Fold or roll a towel up to make a fairly dense pad, place that at the edge of the counter/table & leave it hanging over the edge a little to be sure you don't whack the barrel directly on the table edge. Then grab your rifle & hold it horizontal, right side up as you would if you were shooting it. One hand back at the wrist area of the stock (I like to hook my thumb over the tang area to help hang onto the action) Then with the other hand grasping the fore end from the underside, fingers gripping the stock only, not the barrel. You are basically trying to pull the stock away from the barreled action. Use the padded counter/table edge as a stop for your barrel to rest on. Your rifle is perpendicular to the counter/table edge with only the barrel actually on the counter/table edge. The Idea is to pull down with a few short pulls (like 3 inches of travel or so) Pulling downward on your stock's fore end & allowing the barrel forward of the fore end to hit the rolled/folded towel on the table edge. Start easy & increase the power of your downward pull on the fore end until you feel it pop loose. The thing to remember here is that you are not just tapping the barrel on the table, you are trying to pull the stock off of the barrel. Like them golfer dudes say about singing through the shot, same goes here. You want the barrel to stop when it contacts the table edge but you want the stock to keep moving down & away from the barrel. So pull through the point at which the barrel contacts the padded table edge. Once it pops, you stop with the whole barrel whacking & just wiggle the barreled action loose out of it's stock. (all of this effort with in reason of course. I�ve heard of guys having things stuck pretty badly & actually having to do things like freeze the whole rifle & give it a try frozen.)

Different actions have different shapes & different places for the bedding to flow into that may mechanically anchor your action onto the stock. This is why you must study the shape of the area you wish to bed & watch for grooves and or holes that the bedding may flow into in a way that it will not want to let go once it becomes solid.

That's why I showed these areas specifically, the recoil lug area & the tang. A lot of people bed between these areas, myself included (on certain projects) but more risk comes with that. The recoil lug & a very sparing amount in the tang area can typically be done very safely.

The most bang for your buck is up in that recoil lug area. A lot of lugs are really blocky & less shapely than this ruger. A lot of lugs run deeper into the bedding than this ruger does too. An M70 has a very robust recoil lug, simple in shape compared to this ruger but it runs deeper into the inletting. They can be a little tougher to pop loose. To me some of the easiest actions to bed are these M77's & some of the savages.

It's almost like savage thought of us when they made there recoil lug, It has a nice wedge shape to it, they seem like they were made to be glass bed.

Dave -

Thanks for the explanation - the part I was missing was that only the barrel was on the towel/counter. It's all clear now.

Again, an excellent post. I'm not ready to try spray painting anything, but I do think I'll bed a couple of the rifles and see how it goes. One will be my Interarms Mark X action in a Boyd laminate stock I bought for it, but bedding will have to wait until I get the 6.5mm-06AI barrel. In the meantime I have some Rugers and Remingtons to practice with.