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.
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.....