Full-length, full contact, barrel bedding

[p-man]

I am just curious, way back when Acraglas was just coming out - I'm 61 and I remember reading about it as 14-year old 'apprentice' with the town gunsmith - Bob Brownell actually preferred (at the time) full-length, full-contact, barrel bedding. My default now is a full-contact bed about 1.5 inches ahead of the receiver and a glassed, but FREE-floated barrel channel the rest of the way out towards the muzzle. I am just curious, as to whether any of you have ever full-length, full-contact bedded on hunting rifles what were the results. Your experiences/thoughts?

 

[Preacher]

I for one, do not want any of my barrels touching any part of the stock...

 

[tome]

I tried it years ago on a hunting rifle in a wood stock that was a poor shooter..bedded the action and barrel channel..not much improvement..was a waste of effort

 

[p-man]

Not disagreeing with you because I feel the same way, but in some schools of thought the premise is that SOLID full contact does serve to damper barrel vibration/oscillation - some factory rifles still use pressure points at the fore end to do this.

 

[gotcha]

Same results as "tome". Mauser 10X action, hunting contour, laminated stock. Ended up removing BBL bedding & installing two small screws at end of fore-end to apply slight upforce on BBL. Groups went from 2.5 in. @ 100yds to about 1.5" @ 100 yds. Probablely should have re-crowned the BBL. But my son-in-law thought it shot just fine. So he now owns it & has been hunting w/ it for about 15 yrs. Acraglass might work on a VERY rigid stock/fore-end. I've learned to use a stiffer BBL, float it, & tune the load to the BBL harmonics. The sum of our experiences often cause each of us to yield differing results. Not saying this is the ONLY way or that it would be successful for you If Brownell were alive today I'm not sure he'd make the same recommendation?

 

[tome]

the only reason i bedded it to start with ..was in the rain you could almost watch the stock swell..enough to bear on the barrel...so i tried full length bedding,,wasn't much use

 

[tenring]

Back in the fifties when I started shooting (don't ask) the rage was to bed action and barrel channel very tight without any synthetic materials. Some rifles shot well with full contact, others did not. Then the idea of full floating the barrel came along; then glass bedding action and 1" ahead of breech; and even further down the line, bedding about an inch at the foreend tip or in front of the recoil lug was popular. At one time or another, I tried all these methods, and none of them worked all the time. Back in the seventies, for several years, Remington designed a high spot in the wood at foreend tip. Same story; some improved, others did not.

Today, I glass bed the action tang, and recoil lug only. Barrel channel floated all the way.

PS - You don't know what hell is till you try to remove fiberglass from a barrel channel.

 

[p-man]

Tenring, I identify with you - let the 'kinds' experiment and get back with us - maturity counts

 

[Willoughby]

I rescued a old savage varmit rifle in .308 at a pawn shop
I allways teardown & Inspect before shooting
it had the barrel completly bedded -full length
it was the 1st time I'd ever seen this done
I allways bed the action & float the barrel
I winced at all the work this riflle would take
but just outa curiosity - I took it out & shot it
its an amazing peice of work!
it shoots .5-.7 moa consistantly
one 500 yrd group mesured just over an inch
many 500yrd groups under 3 inches
so needless to say
all of my rifles run free floated barrel's
all but this one........
maybe the old school guys were onto something...
all the pre 64's stocks forend were screwed to the barrel & most of them shot well
anyway I aint changing this one

 

[jrm850]

About 25 years ago, one of the first rifles I ever bedded, I did a full length job on a .270 Interarms Mauser that was probably an inch and a half type grouper. It was in a glass stock that looked like it could have been a Brown. First bedding with no tension might have made it worse than it was to start. I ended up skim bedding the forend several times while hanging my trigger weights off the barrel and torquing the action screws normally. Somewhere north of 4 lbs of upward pressure we started getting some nice looking round groups, a couple of them hovered around the half inch size. I talked to the owner recently and he said he doesn't shoot it much anymore, but it still shoots great. It was way to much effort to ever do it again but it was a good learning experience.

 

[Larryh128]

Acraglass can be removed relatively easy with the CAREFUL use of a torch & stiff putty knife. USE a respirator though, it is pretty nasty. Just heat it enough to soften it.

 

[NO-GO]

Two years ago I bought an FN Mauser custom 25-06 with a Bliss Titus barrel, full bedding with a metal adjusting mechanism in forearm. First shot good, second about inch out, third about two inches out. Removed adjuster, opened barrel channel, except first two inches. It will now shoot 3/4" groups 100 gr mk's, I do not know what changed in 50 years, but find it hard to believe that whomever built the gun would have accepted that from a custom gun. I probably paid to much for it at an auction, but a nice old fun gun to shoot. It does fun things with P'dogs.

 

[Valar]

I am building a shilen barreled 243 at the moment on a 700 action. I am going to try bedding the receiver and first three inches of barrel chamber area before the taper starts. I will see how it goes. This is prefered method in John Hinnants book?

 

[xs hedspace]

Bedding a wood stock with full barrel contact will expose the rifle to variable forces on the barrel, depending on the humidity. I bed the receiver ring/recoil lug, tang and about 11/2-2" of the chamber end of the barrel, then float the rest. Watch out for future warpage, though, it can make the floated barrel touch in damp weather, if the space under the barrel is not enough. Make sure you seal the barrel channel with the same finish as the rest of the stock, so moisture penetration is the same all around.

 

[opsoff1]

Years ago I fell into a minty Win 70 FWT - schnabel foreend - gorgeous wood. When I took the action screws out, the bbl/recvr just about leapt out of the stock - there was that much forend pressure. This was done by way of a raised wood pad that was machined into the stock's bbl channel about 1.5" back. I promptly removed it and had a fairly quick free floated barrel. When I shot it - the meaning of regret became very apparent - it didn't group - it "patterned" (5-6" @ 100) Needless to say - it went back in the safe and became an entry on the "Gunsmithing Projects List" Note to self - test fire first.

 

[sarge ret]

Re: full length bedding

sporter/big game hunting
this is usually found on high quality custom and semi-custom bolt rifles. my three dakotas are bedded full length as is my mark moon custom.

floating is beneficial/needed for cheap wood and has become "the thing" without most knowing why.

cheap black walnut absorbs water and walks all over the place. might add some plastic stocks are not much better. hence, a need to overcome the problem of cheap low quality materials.

a properly bedded high quality barrel in an equally high quality straight grained stock of the finest english walnut will shoot well. what's well? big game caliber using big game bullets such as accubond, barnes tsx 1/2 min for 3 shots. i find a 8-9lb sporter chambered in a "big boy" caliber such as 340 wby, 300's or 7mm's too hard to control for more then 3 shots. then again i never saw an elk that would hang around for 3 shots.

my 330 dakota hasn't moved a 1/2 minute in the last 8 years and the composite group is well under a 1 1/2 min. composite group the single shot cold barrel shots overlaid which i've kept over the course of several years.

btw...first shot cold, clean barrel is in the group. i wouldn't tolerate a rifle which will not do this.

target rifles:

my match rifles are bedded under the barrel for 2" or so with the barrel channel wide open for cooling.

i had a fowler double lug m1-a with the barrel floated just like a bolt gun. zero constant and all the m-14 bedding problems went away.

tactical would also be floated


fred

 

[TEXMAG]

For my target rifles I glass from the tang to be recoil lug and leave the barrel floating if the stock is ridged enough it doesn't slap the barrel under recoil. On my hunting rifles I glass the action to the lug, float the barrel, then I make my own pressure point around a inch from the front of the stock. I hang weight (10lbs) to the front swivel post and let the epoxy dry until its tacky then i lightly rubb graphite into the epoxy and let it dry. I make the pressure pad about 1/2" wide and make sure it doesn't apply force from any other direction, meaning that the pad only contacts the bottom of the barrel and doesn't imped it from moving left to right or back and forth. If I can make the forend of a stock touch the barrel by squeezing with my thumb and finger.I will put a pressure point in the stock.