Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Bedding block prep for skim bed?

I am going to skim bed a H-S precision stock and plan on using acraglass gel. Has anyone had problems with the bedding compound adhering to the block? For those who have done this without problems, what did you do to prep the block before bedding? Thanks in advance for your help.

Never skim bedded a HS, but have done a few B&Cs with the aluminum bedding block. I've made it a habit to rough up the aluminum with some 100 or 120 grit oxide paper. Gives the bedding compound a little bite.

Used a dremel tool to roughen up the bedding block in a Medalist and bedded with devcon. Worked perfectly.

Rough it up a little with your dremel tool and make sure you degrease it real good. You will be ready to bed it.

I rough the bedding blocks up pretty good with a Dremel, then drill six to eight 1/8" holes at varying angles into the block so compound flows into the holes. Rough up the rear tang and degrease the alum. with acetone before bedding.

Good shootin'. -Al

Just curious, have you shot the rifle to check the accuracy before skim bedding? The whole purpose of an aluminum bedding block was to avoid the need for glass bedding. I fully understand why you want to do it and I to have been tempted, but my rifles that I have placed into B and C Medalist stocks shoot way below sub-moa and I am quite satisfied. In fact B and C states that glass bedding a Medalist stocks voids the warranty as it will interfere with the flexibility of the stock, although I cannot see how it would do any harm to skim bed it.

Not really sure that I WANT flexibility in my stocks...

Kind of interested in their thought process here. They put an aluminum block in their to stiffen and stabilize their stocks. Then they tell you they want them to be flexible?



FWIW, I have a few HS Precision (VS and PSS) stocks. Some are bedded, some aren't. I honestly can't tell the difference. I did get in to an impromptu, on the spot, shoot-one-group-and-winner-takes-all, contest with a buddy. One of my unbedded VS stocks, holding a factory/unaltered rifle and shooting out of the box factory ammo, turned in a .3" five shot group. Can't ask for much better.

I did get in to an impromptu, on the spot, shoot-one-group-and-winner-takes-all, contest with a buddy. One of my unbedded VS stocks, holding a factory/unaltered rifle and shooting out of the box factory ammo, turned in a .3" five shot group. Can't ask for much better. grin

So, did you win?

Thanks guys for all the responses.
Dolphin, To be honest, I have not shot this rifle in the H-S Precision stock and I have not bedded a stock with an aluminum bedding block before. The rifle is a Winchester Model 70 and the instructions that came with the stock state that they do recomend bedding the action to the stock. (I read somewhere that this is because of the flat bottom receiver.) Now you have me wondering if is should shoot it first, but I sure would hate to find out that I made it worse. Gary

Absolutely!

I showed him who was boss that day, and just so there was no question, I did it by a whole .007" just to really rub it in!

(And have refused a rematch to this day!! )

AND MAYBE SOME GOOD! But you are right- don't mess with a good thing until it goes bad... Or unless the potential for doing so is obviously there, like a receiver that bends when you tighten the screws...

Wby Mk V in .300 Wby Mag - skim-bedded last week on my kitchen counter. It ain't pretty here, but..... (blued receiver and stainless bbl.) it cleaned up fine. Neither the owner nor I were impressed with Weatherby's customer service recommendation that the owner's first option should be to buy a torque wrench to carry around with him to make sure the stock screws were "properly" tightened....(Dumb-azz probably isn't a real hunter.... IMHO) Since the rcvr was torqueing fore and aft in the aluminum bedding block, I thought I knew how to fix it....



The "group", i.e. string.....on the right is before skim-bedding the aluminum block area, along with enough extra poured into the lug recess to run out and bed acouple inches of the barrel as well. The group on the left is after, with stock screws screw-driver tightened as tight as we could get them. This rifle had never been taken out of the stock, and had gone from shooting very tight groups to walking them vertically upwards. In order from bottom to top on right were shots 1,3,2, all cold bore, after I had taken bbld action out of stock, cleaned it up, and reassembled it "screw-driver tight", but it had been doing the same thing before I disassembled the original factory settings, which were very tight still.

Firing after skim-bedding job was done at 100 yards, prone in the snow, across rolled up insulated Carharts bib overalls for rest, temperature about 15, cross wind about 5mph under bright sunshine. No particular care was used, simulating field conditions for caribou..... First string (on right) was shot straight downwind under similar conditions, before bedding.

Most likely with a proper shooting bench and real good care from someone better at it than I am, 5 shots would make one big or not so big hole.... I'm more interested in actual field conditions performance than I am in bench pretend anyway, tho bench shooting is a good control on possible operator error in the field...

I was less than impressed with the action/bbl/stock fit looks and amount of barrel channel free-float space to begin with, and now it is worse, with a quarter inch gap under the bbl at the fore end, and the barrel canting up slightly from rear to front. But it shoots now!!!! If it was my gun - and Stahli may choose to have me do this - I'd remove my "test-bed" job, take it out of the village to a friend with a milling machine and relieve that aluminum block recoil recess under and behind, and on the bridge behind the recoil lug recess and rebed it so the barrel drops back into the channel properly - but that's just for looks. The caribou and Oogruk just won't care.....

One other thing. When you tighten your stock screws down, one screw shouldn't torque the receiver down much after the other is tightened. I personally don't think it matters which you tighten first, as long as you do it the same each time and the receiver sets in the bedding FLAT, with appropriate clearances and bearing, of course. This was not the case with the above WBy, which was riding too heavily on the bottom of the recoil lug, apparently, and not sitting flat in the bedding block. Which ever screw got tightened first, the other would go about 2 turns from coming snug to tight, and visibly warp the receiver down.

If either screw goes over 3/4 turn from " just coming snug' to fully tightened, I bed the entire receiver in so it is flat, no matter how well the original is shooting just to remove any doubt and ensure consistency. Maybe it's just me... but I like mine to come tight in 1/2 turn or less. Most do it around 1/4 turn. As does this WBY now. I plugged the front screw holes with disposable ear plug pieces, forced the receiver down into the epoxy until the bottom of the recoil lug was down as far as it would go, then, still holding the receiver down flat in the stock, tightened the rear screw down until I just felt resistance and the beginning of receiver movement, backed it off a hair, and let 'er set up that way. A half inch of run-out into the bottom barrel flute insures that thing isn't going side-ways either, tho I did give the sides and front of the recoil lug the usual tape-strip worth of clearance.

I have a Ruger 77OM that in the original wooden stock would consistently clover-leaf the first 3, but 5 would go out to about 5", due to fore-end pressure and barrel heating. I took a sheep at 330 yards and a moose at 40 yards 3 days apart with it, thought about it for a year, then glass bedded the entire receiver, trigger guard areas, opened up and epoxy column bedded the screw holes for good measure with free-floating barrel still in the now-modified factory wood stock. It doesn't clover-leaf the first 3 anymore, but it will now put 3 or 20 into the same 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches, cold bore or rapid fire, even after the stock/action are disassembled/reassembled for cleaning. YMMV but I'll take an unimportant loss in field-practical accuracy for consistency anytime. This '06 sports a 17 inch bbl, and I've since taken a dozen or more animals with it, including a one-shot kill on a caribou at 356 long paces...

I would definately shoot it first.

The lug area cut-out on the HS and BC are usually quite large. If nothing else, I would bed that area...

The whole idea behind "skim" bedding is to flow epoxy into low areas to take up some slop in the fit. When used in conjunction with a solid aluminum bedding block it is more therapeutic than anything. Actually, some folks go to great extremes to carve away aluminum in order to get a good layer of epoxy in place thinking it will provide good support when what they really accomplished is the opposite.

The best prep you can do with an aluminum bedding block is to make sure that as little epoxy as possible flows between the action and block by making sure the action bears evenly at both ends, and without inducing stress. The sole purpose of the epoxy is to keep the action from shifting laterally, and with the aluminum block, it shouldn't take much epoxy to fill in any voids.

But to answer your question, the only prep to the aluminum block I do before applying any epoxy is hit it with a little 60 grit and acetone. I haven't had any problem getting anything to stick. FWIW, I've never seen a need to drill holes into an aluminum block to help anchor the epoxy. You should never need that much.

I've bedded 3 of my H-S precision stocks and noticed no difference in accuracy at all. H-S will also tell you there's no need for bedding.

Great advice Malm, that's why it is called "skim bedding". When you are putting bedding material in and it increases the amount of freefloat by 1/4" like a poster said, you know that wasn't skim bedded at all. I also agree with some here and say "if it isn't broke don't fix it". Shoot it and let the rifle tell you if it needs further mods, especially with a good stock like the hs precision or a micky. Now if you were talking factory plastic stocks, that is a different story all together

Here is an update. I just finished bedding the stock, did not shoot it first and here is why. With the tang seated firmly on top of the stock, there was at least a 1/16 inch gap between the top of the bedding block and the bottom rear of the action. The flat behind the recoil lug is in contact with the bedding block but you can see that the accraglass is slightly thicker toward the rear. Obviously the bedding block was not set level front to back in the mold when the stock was made. I Could have removed some material under the tang and lowered the action into the stock but then would have had to recontour and repaint the top of the stock behind the tang and possibly the bolt handle cut out. It is not that noticable the way it is, but will have to see how it shoots now.

It works. -Al

A properly bedded rifle is a good thing. I bed all mine, whether or not it has a bedding block. I've seen enough that weren't straight so there is no discussion at my place about what to do.

Interestingly I bedded a Remington 5R for a young man recently. The rifle was new and never fired. When I unscrewed the front guard screw and it was farmer tight, the barreled action "sprung" out of the stock. The tang was too low so the receiver area and 2" in front of the lug were bedded as well as the tang. No movement after that, waiting to hear how it shoots.