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Pillars then bedding, methods?

Chad said, when he worked at Nesika, they used pillars like these. Thay attached them to the action, set the action in the epoxy, and after it cured they milled the little ribs off the pillars so they didn't contact the receiver.
www.longriflesinc.com

1.350 Bedding Pillars

LRI's stainless steel bedding pillars are designed to be completely captivated in the stock and offer several unique solutions to challenges faced by others. Being made from 300 series stainless they are impervious to corrosion in any condition suitable for a firearm. The machined head fully...
www.longriflesinc.com
 
AlNyhus said:
Agreed, Mike. The entire 'bedding shrinkage' is something that with modern compounds isn't really an issue. In the rare cases that bedding does exhibit some movement, the likely cause is the stock material itself shifting around and moving the bedding compound with it. I fixed just such an issue last season for a local BR shooter...the material under the bedding had shifted. A good pal just had the same thing happen to his LV rig, only it was a glue in.
Click to expand...

Wonder who that belongs to?

The gun shot great for about 50 rounds. When I removed the barrel to try another, the gun never shot the same even when I went back to the original barrel. I went through the whole thing as best I could, measuring this and checking that. I swapped scopes and still no love.

That’s when it hit me that the issue was most likely with the stock. My hunch was correct. When I cracked that first barrel loose, the glue in failed.

This is the total thickness of the fiberglass below the bedding on my LV. Not much bedding material either. When the action was unglued the whole area was spongy. It’s in the process of being reinforced, re-bedded and re-glued.
 

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jimmymac said:
Wonder who that belongs to?

The gun shot great for about 50 rounds. When I removed the barrel to try another, the gun never shot the same even when I went back to the original barrel. I went through the whole thing as best I could, measuring this and checking that. I swapped scopes and still no love.

That’s when it hit me that the issue was most likely with the stock. My hunch was correct.

This is the total thickness of the fiberglass below the bedding on my LV. Not much bedding material either. When the action was unglued the whole area was spongy.
Click to expand...
Yeah...as we talked about potential issues with that gun, things just kept leading back to a bedding issue.

Through the years, just imagine how many barrels, scopes, etc. have been replaced on rigs when the true problem was a badly done glue in, epoxy failure, stock failure and/or a combination of these. :oops::eek:
 
AlNyhus said:
Yeah...as we talked about potential issues with that gun, things just kept leading back to a bedding issue.

Through the years, just imagine how many barrels, scopes, etc. have been replaced on rigs when the true problem was a badly done glue in, epoxy failure, stock failure and/or a combination of these. :oops::eek:
Click to expand...

Or how many new guys were convinced that the problem was them instead of an issue with the gun.
 
Kelley McMillan used to have a saying about what competitors in different shooting sports blamed as the cause of poor shots. I think in Silhouette it was wind, in Palma it was mirage. But in Benchrest, the shooters blamed themselves. ;)
 
Just as a ramble, some years ago I bought a beautiful used Panda LV gun in 6PPC. The seller was upfront and told me it had been through several owners and nobody could get it to shoot. It came with the barrel on the gun and two others that "...weren't any good, either." I back tracked through the previous owners and talked with them....the number of scopes and barrels this gun had been through was staggering. The most common comment I kept hearing was that the action had to be at fault. I headed home with white elephant gun, two extra barrels and enough brass to choke a horse. I put a clothes iron on the scope rail and in about 3 minutes the gun just fell apart. :oops: I converted it to a pillar bedded bolt in.

Somehow during the bolt in conversion process, Swedish virgins must have slipped through the moon light, into the gun room and massaged those three barrells with magic oils and elixers because they all shot like crazy after that. ;)
 
AlNyhus said:
Kelley McMillan used to have a saying about what competitors in different shooting sports blamed as the cause of poor shots. I think in Silhouette it was wind, in Palma it was mirage. But in Benchrest, the shooters blamed themselves. ;)
Click to expand...
Thats why I cant stand the old saying "its the Indian not the arrow". In BR its mostly the arrow. At least in LR. If you give a guy the best shooting, best tuned rifle on the property theres a good chance he will win or at least come close. You cant win without a damn good rifle and tune. The only time an average rifle can win is when its real windy.
 
The expansion along the length of the action across temperature changes is more concerning than radial expansion in my opinion. Devcon has a CTE of 48 ppm/degF. 416SS is 6.5 ppm/degF. Across 100 degrees (I regularly shoot across that large a temperature swing through the course of a year) and an 8-inch long glue in, the differential is .033 inches ( (48-6.5)x100x8 /1000000). If you have a tight fit between your screws and the hole in the pillars, that expansion will cause binding and strain on the stock and action and cause bending . Likewise if you bed the recoil lug tight.
 
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Not that I know anything, but I’m in the camp that you don’t want the pillars touching the action, you want bedding over them. To me, having bedding over the pillars should make everyone happy. For those who want that pillar touching the action and bottom metal for strength, well that bedding is at least as strong as that aluminum pillar. The way I see it, whether the action is sitting directly on the pillar or it’s sitting on steel/aluminum reinforced epoxy, the epoxy is bonded to the pillar so it shouldn’t make a difference if the action is sitting on the pillars or not. Picture the epoxy bedding on top of that pillar is essential just an extension of that pillar, if that makes sense. The benefit of the epoxy over the pillars is when that bedding shrinks, or the stock under the bedding shifts you’ll have more of the action in contact with the bedding than just the tops of the pillars, as others have pointed out. Another thing, you can do a skim bedding job a lot simpler when you let bedding over your pillars. Final thoughts, the glue ins fix these problems if you can do a glue in.
 
This post made me think ( I know, dangerous) more about bedding and how it behaves. Bedding is attached to the stock and if the stock distorts due to ambient conditions, then isn't this going to distort the bedding as well? Maybe not as much as the stock alone, but not zero either. On the other hand without bedding, if pillars have a secure interface with the action such that the barreled action is essentially free floated in the stock then changes in the ambient will not stress or affect it? Just thinking out loud!
 
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