recessed pillars

[earlcurtis67]

I have a factory savage laminate stock that I want to bed, problem is the pillars are recessed in the stock enough that they do not contact the action at all. Is there a simple fix for this? To get the action to sit down on the pillars and make room for the bedding material I'm thinking I would have to remove more material than I would like. and maybe the action center line would be below the edge of the stock
maybe I should drill out the factory pillars and reinstall new ones? thanks fellas.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

If the pillars touch the bottom of the bedding does it matter? Id redo it but if its not a job you do all the time im sure youll never know the difference

 

[Steve Ladino]

Is there room inside of the existing pillars to insert a two diameter sleeve thru the top of the pillar? Where the larger diameter will rest on top of the low pillars and in turn raise the height of the pillars to whatever height you want and still provide room for the action screws. If not then drill out the pillars slightly to allow for clearance around the action screws, a lathe would come in handy here or work them down chucked in a drill press using a file.

 

[BoydAllen]

The pillars do not need to touch the bottom of the action. Just make sure that you relieve around the tops of the pillars so that you will get a good interlock between the pillars and the bedding that you add. Also, rough up the pillars, and use a bedding material that is of high quality, that sets up good and hard. I would remove as much wood as I could around the pillars so that you do not just have a skim bed.

 

[earlcurtis67]

The pillars do not need to touch the bottom of the action. Just make sure that you relieve around the tops of the pillars so that you will get a good interlock between the pillars and the bedding that you add. Also, rough up the pillars, and use a bedding material that is of high quality, that sets up good and hard. I would remove as much wood as I could around the pillars so that you do not just have a skim bed.

Forgive my ignorance but isn't the purpose of a pillar to give the action a solid base?.... or am I over thinking this

 

[BoydAllen]

The purpose of pillars is to make the stock incompressible in the area of the action screws so that tightening them will not distort the bedding by compressing the stock. There is the additional benefit to the higher torque settings that pillars allow, which is particularly good for round actions of increasing the unit loading at the stock and action interface which increases the traction of the action which reduces is movement in the stock that would be caused by recoil and torque. This becomes more important when larger calibers and heavier bullets are used. I have a good shooting .222 bench rifle, tight neck hart barrle and the works, that was pillar bedded into an old 40X rimfire prone stock using custom pillars that we made on a friends lathe. The tops were large and the bottoms sized to fit under the trigger guard. (old 722 style bottom metal) I intentionally dropped the tops of those pillars below the action perhaps 3/16, glued them in the stock leaving their tops clean and then bedded the action using Devcon plastic aluminum. The rifle shot very well. Back in the day, it was common to cast pillars into a stock with Devcon aluminum putty and then skim bed over that with the liquid Devcon plastic aluminum. That worked as well as metal pillars, and better than metal pillars that made direct contact with the action. George Kelbly once told me that back when they were first experimenting with metal pillars that they found that they got better results with at least of skim coat of bedding over the tops of the pillars, better than with metal to metal contact.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

With the surface area under a floorplate i dont think pillars are necessary but still put them in just to say its "pillar bedded" and to use that high dollar score high jig i bought

 

[earlcurtis67]

Thanks for the advice Boyd. I'll give it a shot. Normally I use grey marine-tex but for this I'm gonna try devcon

 

[Sniper338]

The purpose of pillars is to make the stock incompressible in the area of the action screws so that tightening them will not distort the bedding by compressing the stock. There is the additional benefit to the higher torque settings that pillars allow, which is particularly good for round actions of increasing the unit loading at the stock and action interface which increases the traction of the action which reduces is movement in the stock that would be caused by recoil and torque. This becomes more important when larger calibers and heavier bullets are used. I have a good shooting .222 bench rifle, tight neck hart barrle and the works, that was pillar bedded into an old 40X rimfire prone stock using custom pillars that we made on a friends lathe. The tops were large and the bottoms sized to fit under the trigger guard. (old 722 style bottom metal) I intentionally dropped the tops of those pillars below the action perhaps 3/16, glued them in the stock leaving their tops clean and then bedded the action using Devcon plastic aluminum. The rifle shot very well. Back in the day, it was common to cast pillars into a stock with Devcon aluminum putty and then skim bed over that with the liquid Devcon plastic aluminum. That worked as well as metal pillars, and better than metal pillars that made direct contact with the action. George Kelbly once told me that back when they were first experimenting with metal pillars that they found that they got better results with at least of skim coat of bedding over the tops of the pillars, better than with metal to metal contact.

This and what dusty said. Your pillars should not touch the bottom of the action. Look at some bedding jobs perfessionally done befor you do it...

 

[Eddie Harren]

I always try to make my bedding jobs look "perfessionally done".

 

[butchlambert]

I always try to make my bedding jobs look "perfessionally done".

They not only look professional, but yours are "perfessionally" done.

 

[earlcurtis67]

If you were pillar and bedding a stock from scratch how/when would you set the pillars so there would be epoxy between the pillars and the action. On the last rifle I bedded i glued in the pillars then epoxy bedded the action (pillars touching the action)
Would you put some kind of a shim between the action and pillar then glue in the pillar ( .040-.050 or so) then inlet the stock so you would have about an .080" thick bed, keeping in mind not to raise the center line of the action I would tape/shim just forward of the lug and at the rear tang so the action height would be set when I set it in in the wet epoxy. The pillar shim would of course be removed at this point.
Been thinking about this today and that's what I came up with, maybe I'm missing something??

 

[Dusty Stevens]

I bed only the pillars first- gluing them in and just pretending to bed the action. Then when im making clearance in the stock i grind the tops of em down then bed it. Or you can screw em to the action and do it all in one pass thats how you get the look of the pillars sticking out in front and back of the screws when its done