Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing To pillar or not too pillar?

Im picking up my giirlfriends remington 722 tomorrow and im planning on bedding and fefinishing the original stock. Should I go to the trouble of adding pillars or just glass bed and float the barrel? If so, is it worth it to fab my own or purchase the pillars from brownells?

This is just my opinion, but I really like pillars because they provide a stress free platform for the action to sit on. Also they prevent crushing the stock over time. I think any bolt action rifle will benefit from pillar bedding, at least that has been my experience.

I have a lathe, therefore I made my on. If you have the equipment to make them, fine. If not, then they are available at Brownells.

Depends on how serious of a relationship you and her have. Actually I share 1234567's opinion. And I would go so far as to throw in 8 and 9's as well.

How does it shoot now? IMHO if it already shoots good you will probably gain nothing from bedding and putting in pillars but you could end up loosing accuracy from doing it.

I like them for several reasons but for sure, they don't hurt.

I use them in all of my rifles. They don't take alot of time to make and are worth it for the extra support, IMO.

I have been known to go one step farther with a wood stocked ADL. I take a rectangular block of aluminium about 1" long and cut one side to match the receiver contour. I then roll it over, reverse the boring bar in the boring head and cut a tit that extends down into the stock to replace the escutcheon.

I then bed the block. In this manner the screw cannot force the escutcheon up into the wood, the pillar is integral to the escutcheon rather than resting on it, and overall there is a greater dispersion of pressure over the wood when the screw is torqued.

I have considered something like that, and also the stocks equiped with aluminum bedding blocks.

The reason I prefer pillers is that it seems to be easeier to get a more precision fit of action on top of the two pillers, and the pillers are also sandwitched between the receiver and guard.

When using a bedding block, it still has to be bedded, the same as the action would without the bedding block. Either using a bedding block or bedding an action, there is still the possibility of uneven stress on the action. I think pillers are the best way of avoiding this uneven stress, because all you have to do is fit two posts about 5/8 inches in dia. to the bottom of the action. This is much simpler than fitting the bottom of the action to a wood or plastic stock.

Might look at www.erniethegunsmith.com for pillar bedding materials. I have used several of his kits, and if ya follow directions--it's a done deal. Just saying!
G

How much bigger should the id of the pillar material be than the diameter of the action screw?

I go .015 bigger than the screw diameter.

I put pillars into all of my hunting rifles despite the fact they are complete unnecessary. Standard glass bedding is perfectly sufficient as evidenced by the groups and the longevity of all of the perfectly accurate rifle that exist to this day without pillars. Benchrest rifles are a different story.

If it is completely unnecessary then why do you think Benchrest rifles are a different story? Don't you think that if it benefits precision rifles that it could possibly benefit the common rifle? Do you handload?

I have tried both ways, and although a good epoxy bed is quite good, it isn't as good as metal-metal-metal which is what you get with a proper pillar bed. I generally use a SS barrel drop to make my pillars. Many use aluminum. I know a guy who makes custom 10-22s and uses a brass one to free-float the action. They shoot fantastic so I can't argue!

I think if you could fine the right tubing, even carbon fiber would work.

For a while I used 6.5 Arisaka barrels to make pillars.

First, go ahead and shoot it the way it is. If it is acceptable to you like that, fine.
If it doesn't shoot as well as you think it should, then I would go ahead and pillar bed. If you are glass bedding anyway, it's not THAT much more work to pillar it.
AND--there's an easy-cheesy way to pillar if you are limited in tools -- brake line tubing. It is steel, and strong. All you need is a hand drill and masking tape (to sleeve the screws in the tubing to center them and the pillars).
Even tho I've access to lots of power tools, I've used the technique (Mausers especially, and to "unload" the rear action pillar on Savages) and have had no problems.
But like I said, if you are going to mix up a batch and do all the other work of bedding, may as well finish the job -- a good pillaring job gets rid of many gremlins.