#kineticperformancellc

At the request of a friend I reposted this from a post I made in 2014 on a forum we used. It was posted over several weeks of nickel and diming the project so I have edited it to remove all the extraneous commentary from the forum:

This project is way over-due but I am gone a lot and I have to work on things every few months as I can. I chose to call this project the Green Beanie (they will understand why) in tribute to the two men who have made it possible. Matt is a local retired guy who has a gunsmith shop up the road and gives me free run of the place to do things I don't have tools for at home. Mike is a friend, brother in arms, and an artist with metal: more to follow on that when I post the complete project. I don't get to see him as freely as I would like but he has been inspirational as a man and artisan. My wife bought me a Boyd’s Tacticool stock for my rimfire trainer an Christmas or two back. I really like the stock and bought one for this SML. The more I shoot the Tacticool the more I realize it is not quite right for me. The grip is too much and could stand some more taper from tang to wrist. The forearm is beaver-tailed and too fat for a psuedo-sporter. The Tacticool barrel channel is for a Varmint/Sendero channel and as a result left a unsightly gap around my barrel. I used a modified Douglas 5A contour on this gun so I taped the barrel and full-length bedded the gun so that when the tape was removed I had .040" of float from the recoil lug forward. To reduce the forearm I used a plane and cut the beavertail down parallel to the top edge of the forearm and all hard edges were radiused. Using the McMillan ADJ GameScout I am smitten with, I sketched the reduction in the stock tang/wrist area and began to work it down with a rasp (not a great tool for laminate as it is very "chippy"). I changed over to a cabinet maker file and orbital sander. The comb is too low to allow for a good cheek-weld using a 20MOA off-set base and low Night Force rings so I molded, cut-down, and sanded a cheek-piece from Multi-Cam Kydex with an American flag to keep in tradition with the rifle's theme. Once I had it close to completion I mounted it on the stock and drilled the hardware holes though the Kydex and into the stock. I am not anywhere near done but it was time to take a coffee break and eat second breakfast. I still need to clean up the bedding as well as epoxy in the cheek-piece bushings, QD Push-button inserts, and bi-pod m1913 rail bushings. When all the prep-work is done I will primer the stock, cut the stencils, and paint the entire stock to match the cheek-piece. Was this the easiest way to get what I wanted? Absolutely not. Ordering another GameScout would have been much easier but some of us are diseased. Tacticool stripped of textured black paint, drilled for hardware, bedded, and ready for shaping (note: you can see where the stock has cross-pins and you can't see it but at the bottom of the pistol-grip there is another plug where they epoxy a pin into the grip just like you should in wood vertical grip stock which checked off one item from my to-do list):

The bedding before clean up (the overflow was allowed so I had proud material to allow for the reshaping of the grip and to allow for a better fit of the ejection port cutout in the stock as it left a lot to be desired). The stock was ordered as an ADL since they don't offer a 40-X inlet and they only do a 700ML in a thumbhole so the mag box cutout was filled with cutdown carbon arrows (which I have broken while stump shooting with my longbow) and everything epoxied in place:

Rough sketch of grip reduction to occur and holes for cheeck-piece hardware (the comb on the Tacticool is too low for a 20MOA base with low NF rings):

Kydex cheek-piece (only .080" thick so as not to remove eye far from center-line of comb):

Tacticool in relation to GameScout which it is going to resemble soon:

You can see little pock marks where the trigger pin holes were filled to prevent a mechanical lock. They are ugly so I cut them out. Honestly, I don't know that it is necessary but it looks better. Since I didn't have Matt’s mill I used my drill press with drill press vise and a router bit. I line up where I want the recesses and use the depth stop on the press to make as uniform a cut as possible. I make a small cut, again and again, to the desired depth so that the bit doesn't walk:

I mentioned I wrapped the barrel with tape and full length bedded it to fill the barrel channel which was a gross mismatch for my contour. You can keep good tight wraps on the barrel shank and straight taper but the radius just forward of the breech gets little wrinkles and there are fine lines where the wraps of tape meet along the length of the barrel. So I put two wraps of tape the entire length of the barrel and took a strip of 150 grit aluminum oxide cloth, tightened the action down and cut back the barrel channel bedding just enough to remove blemishes then prepped it for paint. I also removed the proud bedding material along the top stock line where the ejection port cutout formerly was a poor fit:

Grip Reduction complete and blended with the angle of the tang:

I decided not to dish out the "thumb flute" (if you will but it is not a flute in the traditional sense but it is not the wrist either) as it looks awfully thin once the grip/wrist reduction was finished. Thumb-holes are thinner I believe but they remind me of an H-brace in a fence and I think they probably distribute the recoil force better. Regardless, I stopped once it felt good enough to quit.

I also epoxied in the brass bushings for the cheek-piece hardware. I use Loc-Tite 5-minute epoxy for things like this. They use a 10x32 machine screw and are available through Brownells:

A few weeks back I received my breech plug lapping tool. Today, while I was waiting on some epoxy to set, I worked the BP shoulder over. I used three different cameras trying to get a good picture. This is the best I got for my efforts and shows an evenly polished shoulder:

I off-set it to the upper portion of the stock because if you don't the gun will tend to tip away from you when slung because the barreled action and optic make them top heavy:

I learned that the hard way when I ordered them pre-installed on the McMillan:

The forward insert is 13" ahead of the trigger-guard and lines up with where the insert in the M1913 rail on bottom goes for the bi-pod mount:

It's time to paint the stock on the Green Beanie. I masked the bedding, recoil pad, and plugged the threaded inserts for the cheek-piece so we don't get paint anywhere I don't want it. I then used a paint and primer color that is a grey/tan/slate color with a slight pink hue. It is a good base color for a Multi-Cam type pattern:

While it is drying I took a piece of wax paper and taped it so that the taped over lapped and drew my stencils:

Once the primer/paint combo dried I faded a flat tan into it in patches. I don't know that you can tell in the picture:

To create light spots I lay in the decals and then paint over them in a dark brown as they should be grouped together:

The blue decals will be dark chocolate colored and are paired with the grey/tan color from the picture above. I just did the reveal on the match rifle skins and they are sitting next to the Green Beanie stock. My dark brown paint wasn't playing nice with the plastic of the skins so I am going to have to go back and add it in but the Green Beanie should finish up similar to those skins.

I am going to let the brown dry overnight and tomorrow I will do the last two coats. To get the mid fade you need a light loam green and a red brown color. The goal is about a 50-50 coverage running in stripes that have some fade to them. I run them at a diagonal so that when I come back for the next coat I can run the other direction (criss-cross) to achieve a non-polarizing effect:

Now that we have a micro detail in light grey/tan and dark brown and macro detail in loam green and red brown we need larger pattern stencils. Macro detail in place over mid fade:

And final fade is tan, olive drab green, and another weird but slightly brighter loam green:

All decals removed you have something that looks similar to Multi-Cam. It just needs to sit in the garage a while to ensure that the paint is completely dry and tack free:

The Green Beanie is finished. Quick Re-Cap: Remington 700ML with Hunter Bolt Nose Kit PT&G .187" stainless lug McGowen CM .442/.451", 1-24″ twist barrel in a modified Douglas 5A contour crowned at 23", threaded for a muzzle-break Trigger is blueprinted factory and adjusted to 2.25# All CM parts are finished in Graphite Black Cerakote Scope base is Murphy Ti 10 MOA (Devcon bedded, screws siliconed and torqued to 25 in*lbs) Boyd's Tacticool (modified and pillar/glass bedded)

Quick load test shows a preference for 300gn bullet:

In the past couple of days in particular and in the previous months I have seen where a number of guys have double loaded their smokeless muzzle-loader. I have seen it on a muzzle-loader board and received texts about it from guys who have read about it. Some got lucky and only bulged a barrel or escaped an exploding rifle without injury. Others went to the hospital for surgery.This is not a first nor it will it be a last but I have heard about it more frequently as of late. I want to discuss how this happens, what happens as a result, and how to prevent it because I was only issued two eyes, one face, two hands, and one life and want to maintain all of them as long as I can.

As a case study we will look at one of the recent survivors. He is a bench-rest shooter and self proclaimed expert for nearly anything rifled that fires a single projectile. His version of the story:

Last Tuesday I was shooting Deep Purple with my new Sightron 8x32x56 scope.  I proceeded to fire about six shots getting the POI just right! BTW, I love the scope and the reticle.  The click adjustments are very positive and audible.  So, having it zeroed "dead nuts on" at 100 yards with the 300 gr. SST type blem using a 6/65.8 Clays/H-4198 duplex, I decided to move out to 300 yards.  So using the second hash mark (which would have put me 4" high at 100) I fired a shot.  That shot hit 7" low and a couple inches to the right. Now here comes the fuzzy part..............I evidentially took the gun to my "loading station" ( the next bench) and loaded it.   Then put it right back up on the lead sled.  So now I am sitting behind the gun looking thru the scope, playing with the dials, checking which hash mark I would need to be on at 300.  Then I put the second hash mark back on the bull and saw that the center dot was situated in a rock above the target........so, I decided to "dial the dot to the bullet hit and see how many MOA I needed if I did not use the hash marks.  I then returned it back to the 100 yard zero and decided I would bridge the third and fourth hash marks.  This procedure took maybe five to ten minutes of playing around.  When I finished, I took the gun back to the loading station and loaded it---------------------------------------------------------THE SECOND TIME!  Another 72 gr. of powder and another 300 gr. bullet   Do Not need to hear about the witness marks!  They only work when you have reason to look at them!  In my mind, the gun had been fired and I needed to load it!   Well, you think CYCLOPS is a powerful gun?  672 grains of bullets and powder exited the muzzle at 3484 fps.  I knew right off what happened  as I saw the little wisp of smoke come from around the bolt. The module swelled  a bout .027" and was semi-stuck on the bolt.  I was able to just tap it off.   The primer was still in and very flattened.  I ran a patch down the bore and could feel the bulge about 4" forward of the recoil lug.  I tried to load another charge and bullet but the bullet got dead loose when it got to the powder column.  Even being a duplex, it would not ignite so I put it up for the day and shot my other rifle. Deep Purple was 29 1/2" long and now its 26" long.  I am getting good at doing these HIS plugs!   Like I said, witness marks only work if you look at them.  Lets just say that the fact my barrel was 1.250  in the area of the bulge, there was no safety issue.  Had it been a sendero or lesser contour, ...........who knows.  

How did this happen? He broke a sequence, did not have fail safes in place, and did not use (or look at if he had one) a witness mark. After firing his gun he loaded it, put it back on his lead sled to figure out how many “hashmarks”  (MoA was the word he was looking for but he never understood the Mil-Dot either) of hold over he needed to shoot a longer target than the one he just fired. Personally, I would have looked it up on my phone while I was behind the gun and ready to shoot. He then went back to his loading station and double loaded it because in his mind he had fired it. He also stated that a witness mark was not important. My imagination is not powerful enough to fire a rifle and you do need a witness mark. He was right about only one thing, a witness mark only does you service if you look at it. As a testament, this is the second barrel he has bulged. Over the years I have learned that when you lose respect for something dangerous it will usually remind you why it is dangerous whether it is guns, alcohol, or your pet tiger. Luckily, his gun did not come unglued, all that happened was a bulged barrel but doing that twice in a lifetime is twice too much since it can absolutely be prevented.

Additionally, if this happens to you my personal opinion is that barrel is compromised and needs to become a tomato state. His solution was to cut back past the bulge in the barrel and reinstall. That’s not a good idea as steel has a plastic limit and a double load is probably pretty close to getting you there which means it is more susceptible to future failure. Just because a structure doesn’t fail immediately does not mean it’s not prone to doing so from being weak and over stressed; just look at the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. It was under built, over stressed, and already had cracks. It was totally fine until it wasn’t and then it fell in the Mississippi. I am not going to continue to run 50-60Kpsi through a barrel I know had an integrity compromise.

You may be asking, “So what?”, this has never happened to me. Point is it can and will when you take it for granted. I used the example I did because lots of people look at the bench-rest crowd as the epitome of rifle shooting (I don’t but they have driven advancements in equipment that have benefited everyone) and a guy who has shot 15K rounds of SML down range should have a process down. As I was told by a mentor at work in regard to negligent discharges: there are two types of guys who use guns (use them everyday, not casual hobbyist shooters), the one who have had a negligent discharge and those who will. The casual shooter is always a little afraid of a gun because they don’t spend enough time with it to ever master it. I can see it at the range all the time, that little creeping lack of confidence that causes them to give things and extra look. The guy who lives with a gun does not do that. The problem is that eventually confidence will override competence and you will fall back on your lowest level of training. It is never quite as crushing for the casual shooter because that lowest level of training (or confidence) is never very high. Either way, it normally turns you into a very safe shooter because you become hyper-aware. A double load is the same way, you have either had one or you are waiting on your turn but you should do everything in the world to ensure your number doesn’t come up.

I do not think that Smokeless Muzzle-Loaders are the right choice for a casual hunter and there are a few essential rules to avoid a double-load if you decide the SML is for you:

1. Shoot alone or if you have others on the range ask them to give you a minute of uninterrupted attention to your task. If they cannot give you that courtesy stop what you are doing immediately and resume what you are doing when they go away.

2. Treat every gun as if it loaded. Do it every single time you touch it even if you have no doubt. Have a process that ensures your safety by proving or disproving that it is loaded. The first thing I do when I pull my SML out of the case is remove the bolt. The bolt does not go back in until the rifle is loaded. I do the same thing when I fire it: bolt comes out and does not go back in until it is loaded. The reason I do this first is that with the bolt removed I can point the rifle skyward and see light through the vent orifice in the breech-plug. If I have to walk away from the rifle for any reason, the first thing I do is pick it up and point it skyward looking for that light. This is the equivalent of conducting a press-check or clearing a center-fire gun. You do that every time you pick up a rifle, shotgun, or pistol. Right? Do it with your SML.

3. Come up with some sort of sequence and organization that supports your sequence. I pull my bolt from the rifle and place it on the far right side of the bench as I am looking at it. As soon as I pull the bolt out of the gun I turn it upright and place my funnel in my break and place the ramrod in the barrel so that the T-handle is sitting flush with the top of my break (this serves as my unloaded witness-mark). I am now ready to start a load procedure.

For me everything is bagged separately: bullets, powder, primers, wads, etc. I have a box for expended powder vials and primers/primer modules. I lay them out on the bench in the order they are loaded: powder, wads (if used), bullets, then primers. I then pull out one of each for the shot to be conducted and lay them in the same order used. I never load by grabbing stuff out of bags as I need it.

Now that my rifle is in a no-fail safe condition and my load is staged I am ready to make the rifle ready to fire. I remove my ramrod from the barrel and take control of my rifle. I uncap the powder vial, pour my powder through my funnel, then replace the cap on the vial and place it in the expended box. If I am using a wad, I place it in the funnel and ram it home on top of the powder column. Next, I pull my funnel from the break and wedge my bullet in the end that sits against the muzzle then reinsert it into the break and turn it until the bullet indexes to the rifling and the bullet seats in the muzzle. Lastly, I use my ramrod to push the bullet home through the funnel until it makes a positive stop with the powder and my witness-mark is flush with the top of my funnel. I remove the ramrod and funnel then place the rifle into my bench-rest setup (if I’m using it) or place it on bi-pod if shooting prone. I take my bolt and insert the primer/primer module and move into my shooting position. The last thing I do is place the primed bolt into the rifle and place it into battery. This sequence ensures that everything that should have been removed is removed and everything that belongs is in place.

If for any reason I have to stop mid-sequence I place the ramrod back in the barrel before I step away from the rifle. When I come back to the rifle I immediately look at the ramrod. If it is not sitting flush with the top of my break it means something is in the barrel or your bullet is not fully seated (which also causes bulged barrels). I will then remove the rod and point the rifle skyward to confirm there is either light or no light and reference that to what I have left on my loading table. At that point I am safe to go back into my loading sequence where I left off.

As soon as I fire my shot and ensure good follow through, I open the bolt and remove it. I take it back to the table, remove the primer and place it in the expended box, then place the bolt back on the far right side of the table as I’m facing it. I then retrieve my rifle and start the sequence over gain.

Some bedding jobs are bad. It is totally possible to induce stress into a bedding job even if it looks clean. It is also possible to functionally bed a gun but your work looks like hot garbage. Having seen what right looks like it is time to share what should not be accepted as quality work from a gunsmith.

This is a stock bedded by Soltis Rifles on a full custom build that ran the customer about $5000 which as I have said before is entirely too much for a rifle built on a Remington 700 action. The stock has pillar bedding which is a little hard to see because the gunsmith painted over the bedding. I personally would not do that because you already have a 100% metal to epoxy fit. Why would you paint over it, changing that fit, and possibly allowing paint to build up in the recoil lug recess? Anyhow, it was functional and it shot fine but it looks awful.

To me the biggest issues in this picture are that when the magazine well was opened up to accept the Surgeon bottom metal it was obviously done with a Dremel or other rotary hand tool and that the bedding is sloppy. If you look at that mag well cut it is as wavy as can be where it was just hogged out.

You can also see a large void in the bedding beside the front pillar as well as a large portion on the top of the pillars. This occurred because there was not enough epoxy applied to completely fill out the footprint (other reasons for voids are improper mixing and application). What I find especially appalling about this is the guy had to have seen it when he pulled it apart and then painted the camouflage pattern over it. When you mess up work and you are charging a customer for it, it is your responsibility to fix it. That stock should have been re-bedded.

You can also see the barrel pad was just allowed to run into the channel, uncontrolled, and no attempt to clean it up was made. I’ve already beat that horse to death. It is still wrong.

I have already said it at least once but, Dremel makes ugly really fast. This is a prime example of what Dremel work looks like and that is unacceptable on a $5000 rifle; or any rifle unless you do it at home and you are cool with the way it looks. Good gunsmiths do not do inlet work with a Dremel. I cannot say for sure why that Dremel work was done, or when it was done, since everything else was painted over. Either way, it looks like hell.

The next bedding job is from Bad Bull who originally bedded the gun and the forearm bedding by Hankins Custom Rifles who converted the ignition system (you can see it on his YouTube channel if you look up “Bad Bull Muzzleloader Conversion”) for a friend of mine because the 2-piece plug system from Bad Bull is poorly designed and gas cuts quickly. That gas cutting destroys the plug, will eventually cut the barrel, and caused accuracy and precision to go out the window.This hybrid became known as the “Bad-Hakins” because of several years of repair time and additional cost between the two gun shops for a gun that he was never happy with due to poor workmanship.

What we have here is a prime example of voids and un-dammed epoxy. There also appears to be Dremel work (albeit better Dremel work than the example above). You can see the original bedding from Bad Bull underneath the action. What you can’t see is it does not run the full length of the action; it is a spot bed of the receiver ring and the tang. I cannot say that does not work but it is only half a bedding job. From what I could tell, it was functional but it looked like an amateur did it and if you look just ahead of the pillar you can see where it looks like a Dremel got away from someone. Hankins bedded the barrel channel and installed a ramrod when he did the barrel work. You can tell it is a dissimilar material (Devcon vs a straight epoxy) but given the whole situation I do not really care; you do not always have something to match or may not know what it is in order so that you can match it although you will have a good idea if you do a lot of bedding. A complete bedding job is the only way to guarantee true continuity.

What I would care about if I had paid for this service (from Bad Bull or Hankins) is the way that it looks which is a reflection of the effort and attention to detail put into the work. Compared to what we know is right we have a lot of deficiencies here. There was no measure in place front, middle, or rear to control flow of the Devcon. This necessarily means you have to mechanically clean it up (mill, scrapers, Dremel, etc) or just leave it as is which is what happened and looks unfinished. If you look at the barrel pad, just ahead of the recoil lug, you can see a long line of voids which resulted from improper application of epoxy.

In this detail shot you can very plainly  see how the epoxy was allowed to run were compression pushed it and that no attempt to clean it up was made. Now, here is where you must look closely. Direct your attention to the hole for the ramrod, then look to the upper right and upper left of that hole. You can see two darker oval shapes. Those are vents in the forearm. Go back to the video and look at the stock. Vents, right? NOT ANY MORE! They are plugged with Devcon that you could actually see from the outside of the stock. That Devcon should never have been allowed to flow into those vents. Instead it was just slathered over the ramrod tube and the barreled action bolted in to form it. If there are any questions, that is not the right way to do that.

Here you can tell that some Devcon was cut away, likely to allow the ramrod to pass freely into the tube that was bedded into the tip but I don’t know for sure. You can tell though just like the other views that no attempt was made to control the flow of Devcon nor was an attempt made to ensure it was even or finished. It just has a wavy look like the edges of a smashed Peanut Butter and Jelly samich.

The right way to have fixed this forearm (or any forearm you want to fill) would have been to completely fill it so that it matched from lug to tip. If you do this you are going to add weight to the forearm. Acraglas will add less weight than an epoxy with metal in it like Devcon I only use Devcon where compression is high since that is its greatest advantage over something like Acraglas. The way you keep weight down with any fill job though is to add Hi-Bond Q-Cell micro-spheres to the epoxy mix to reduce the density. Then you come back in and fix your inlet just like you would on a brand new stock. In the case of a barrel channel you wrap the barrel in tape to give you the float you want then when you pop the barreled action loose you come back in clean up the channel. By the time you come back in with emery cloth to clean up the inlet very little of the epoxy is left and it is a mirror image of the barrel contour. That is to say, it looks well finished.

This is not traditional bedding as discussed above but there is a point I am going to make about pride, customer service, and workmanship. This is a Manners T4A with Mini-Chassis.

Since we know what needs to be fixed from the last installment we will move onto what right looks like. This is not a how too (I can do that later), just an explanation of what you should keep and what should be returned if you have someone ship you garbage work. As stated before, an ugly bedding job may be functional but when you are paying at least $225 for the service from a professional the the job should look like it was professionally executed. What I mean by this is that everything should be tightly finished, without blemishes/voids, and should be straight lines or semi-circles; there was no mention of squiggly lines, arcs, etc because there is no place for them in fit, finish, or function.

The picture below shows a McMillan stock bedded with Devcon 10110 Steel Putty ready for clean up. A couple of things to note: 1) Flat pillars were used to avoid point loading and the bedding completely filled the void up to where the pillar sits tangent to the action. 2) The skin of the bedding is a good, tight, smooth fit because the substrate was properly fit prior to bedding which allowed for even thickness all around. 3) The barrel pad ahead of the recoil lug is blocked off for a finished appearance. You can see lines that run perpendicular to the barrel channel. Those were made by placing a strip of Gorilla tape under the barrel, sticky side toward the barrel channel. A second pieces gets wrapped around the barrel to oppose the one in the channel. This is done so as to create a fracture line where the bedding material can be easily cut and trimmed to give a finished look instead of an uncontrolled puddle look. Uncontrolled puddles are one of my biggest peeves from people who charge for bedding jobs. It looks unfinished and reflects their professional pride.

This is a Boyd’s stock I reshaped and bedded with Pro-Bed 2000 using brown dye to match the camo paint job I intended to apply. 1)Working top to bottom you can see a barrel channel that mirrors the barrel contour and this stock has .060″ of clearance even though it is relatively slim for an SML: rifle with scope weighs under 10#. 2)When you get to the barrel pad you can see how the tape I mentioned above was employed to create a flow stop and a clean line where the bedding stopped. 3)The biggest difference in this bedding job is the use of a straight glass epoxy compared to a steel epoxy and the use of radiused pillars instead of flat pillars. If you have radiused pillars installed look at the two high sides and see if they are flattened at all. If they are, you have improperly machined pillars that point load and it could have been avoided if they had been test fit and lapped. 4) All show-lines and and clean up cuts are either straight or semi-circle. Nothing was left unfinished or trimmed in such a way as to look like I was drinking beer and running a Dremel (friends don’t let friends Dremel gun stocks because they make ugly happen really fast).

This is another McMillan but this one used radiused pillars like the one just above and Brownell’s ACRAGLAS GEL. If you want a smooth, shiny, glass like surface in your bedding you want ACRAGLAS GEL. Nothing finishes as well. The takeaways: 1) The barrel channel closely follows the barrel contour but I didn’t use a barrel pad because you don’t really need to. 2) There is no uncontrolled overflow and there are no voids. 3) All clean up cuts are neat and straight.

Last but not least, a final McMillan with Pro-Bed 2000 but I went back to flat pillars because they are easier to make. 1) Closely fit barrel channel that follows contour with .050″ float. 2) The barrel pad was controlled and trimmed for a neat finish. 3) Epoxy dyed to match paint job and absolutely no voids in the bedding. 4) All clean up cuts are straight and neat.

If you have a blind magazine or a single shot your front pillar can be a stand alone point of attachment instead of hanging an exterior escutcheon like some smiths glue on. It avoids the weird button look if you countersink a pillar instead and fit it flush with the contour of the stock belly.

When properly executed a bedding job looks like it belongs to the rifle. It closes up any gaps that the in-let suffered but is even because you removed the unevenness before you applied epoxy. It matches the color scheme and offers clean transitions. A well finished stock is a happy stock.

I almost labeled this section the ugly but that is not really what this is. An ugly bedding job can be functional, so it is not really bad except that it is unacceptable, especially from a “professional”. A stock that doesn’t fit your metal is ugly but, worse, it is bad. A rifle will never shoot to its full potential if the stock to metal fit is not perfectly stress free. 

Never assume even the best stocks, whether factory supplied or aftermarket, are actually ready to go drop-in inlets no matter how they are marketed. With the exception of V-block chassis like the Manners Mini-Chassis (which I think is the cat’s meow but even then I have had to have them fixed a little) I will bed everything to ensure it has a good fit. Now I have to qualify that statement because even as a little boy doing something just because I was told to was never a good enough reason. What we are looking for here is, “Where is the stress in this system?” Without the answer to that question your bedding will never be as good as it should be because it will either not be properly centered, bedding will not be even and uniform, or you will induce stress into your bedding because you failed to eliminate it when you started jamming epoxy in the stock and bolted it down.

When you first buy a rifle the first thing you should be doing (new or used) is disassembling it, cleaning it, properly reassembling it, then testing function. Honestly, if you bought it at a store you should have identified a lot of this before purchase. If you bought it online you should be giving it a once over before filling out your 4473 and taking it home. If there is any bind you will feel it. If there is uneven or off-center inlet you will usually see it (barrel channel is most common). Sometimes an inlet is so crooked it shouldn’t be fixed, the stock should be returned but sometimes you can work around minor errors. If the inlet is off you will often have a hard time getting action screws into the  action threads easily without finagling. You will also have to finagle the action into alignment if the in-letting is too large which is just as bad (unless you have ordered over-sized inlet for the purpose of epoxy bedding) as too tight in regard to performance potential. When you take it apart and when you put it together you are getting your first snapshot of how well the stock fits your barreled action.

Leveling the stock is like leveling sights and is where I start for general snapshot:

Level shows McMillan installed pillars are not straight and is the reason assembly was difficult:

I say I want the snap shot because it helps me figure out where to go next. I will usually deal with a barrel channel first because I am either going to free-float it or I am going to full-length bed it. Either way, I am taking material out of it. I am taking material out in either case (and from around the action when I get there) for the sake of uniformity and to relieve any torque the forearm may impart on the action by means of contact with the barrel. Free-floating it up front allows me a more honest assessment of how the action fits the stock in-letting.

I generally do this with emery cloth if the barrel channel is pretty close to where it needs to be. If there is a lot of work to be done I will use a cutting tool made for barrel channels (that you use like a plane), next clean it up with scrapers, then go to emery cloth. If I am working with a gun that already has a finish on it I tape the barrel with at least two layers of masking tape to prevent damage to the metal finish. As I remove material, I may add layers of tape to increase the diameter of the barrel channel until I have the amount of clearance I want.  When using the emery cloth you must be careful to pull straight up and down and not at an angle or you will round off the top of your forearm inlet. I keep snugging up the action until it is sitting tight in the stock and the barrel has the desired clearance.

Some guys don’t like big gaps but I want enough to ensure there will be absolutely no contact with the barrel during normal use. I put that number at .050-.060″ ,as a minimum, and more is not wrong if you have enough forearm to support it and don’t mind the way it looks. Tom Manners of Manners’ Composite Stocks shoots for .100″ of clearance and on a beefy stock I think that is pretty ideal. I have never had an issue with a Manners’ barrel channel hitting the barrel no matter what I was shooting off of from bipod, to rested over logs and rocks, to steel or concrete barricades. Either way, that dollar bill you have seen guys slide between their barrel and stock to test float does not mean jack. It is nowhere near enough float regardless if you intend to leave it full-floated or full-length bed it.

Once I am certain that my barrel is not in contact with my forearm and that I have no other glaring issues, I will wrap the barrel with tape at the shank and the tip of the forearm to center it in the barrel channel. I coat the action with in-let black (a transfer ink) and bolt the gun into the stock and tighten it down. If your stock is dark, use in-let gold (or bright lipstick just don’t get caught). When I remove the action screws and pop the action out of the stock it leaves a black footprint in the stock in-letting where there is actually stock to action contact.

McMillan KS stock with in-let black showing actual contact with action:

Often you will see that there is very little, and uneven contact, as seen in the McMillan stock above. I then remove those black spots just like a stock maker would with a wood stock blank. I re-apply the in-let black and bolt the gun together again then repeat until I have even contact. Why go to the trouble you may ask? I want my bedding material to have an even thickness all the way around and that cannot happen if you have high spots in the substrate you wish to apply bedding compound to. If you allow the fit to remain unchanged you will induce stress when you bolt that stock on. It’s like trying to make a flat table with warped lumber; it might look flat and straight but there is a slight bow that is fighting to return to its original shape.

Stock with evenly floated barrel, action substrate fitted, and ready for epoxy:

Some folks have peddled bedding blocks as the solution to all bedding issues. Other people have bought that story and perpetuated that fallacy. I recently bought a left-hand Remington 700 Varmint as a donor to build  my dad a Smokeless Muzzle-Loader. The 700 Varmint (and its long action brother, the Sendero) came from the factory with H-S precision stocks which have a molded in aluminum bedding block. The issue with the type of hemispherical bedding block used by H-S Precision and Bell & Carlson is they are surfaced (vice V-block which suck the action down into a wedge) but do not provide full contact. I am not saying that the blocks are not accurately made, just that they do not adequately fit the actions (the notable exception being the KMW IMB that uses a hemispherical interference fit).

The problem is that a lot of factory actions are slightly warped from heat treat processes. Polishing/finishing compounds the problem. Newer actions are often tumble polished and come out more even. Older actions were hand polished on a wheel/belt which left them a little more inconsistent in surface dimension (one reason the rear bridge often needs bedded in regard to a scope base). As a result, action to bedding block contact is severely compromised.

If you look at the H-S Precision bedding block below you will see there are exactly five points of contact where the inlet ink transferred: front receiver ring either side of the action screw (1&2), left side between mag well and trigger well (3), at the tang on the right sight, top by trigger well (4), and the left side of the tang where the guy who painted the stock ran a heavy coat of paint over the tang portion of the block (5).

It is also clear that contact is uneven and disproportionate from side to side if you look below at the close up of the front receiver ring.  The left side makes contact for half and inch and the right side makes contact at single, small point. The recoil lug well also shows that the lug makes about 50% contact which means that either the receiver face or block is out of square.

A quick glance at the barrel channel showed that the barrel was not centered. Since the bedding block is molded into the stock you cannot really realign the bedding. I know I said you want more clearance than a dollar bill but if a dollar will not pass the channel then you most certainly need to remove material. I could not get a slip of paper to go past the tip of the forearm. A quick wrap of the barrel in tape and a five-minute job with emery cloth cleaned up the barrel channel enough to allow me to evaluate the factory barrel (had to decide if I was selling it or keeping it for a trainer action) but does not have a full .010″ float. I will fix that when I get the muzzle-loader barrel installed however, floating the factory barrel took groups from a little over three inches to half that with cheap plinking ammo.

When I first became interested in rifles (seriously interested in rifles where it kept me awake at night) I was about twelve years old and long range hunting was just becoming an emerging interest in the shooting world. Some guys had been at it for a few years but it was finally making the news stands in outdoor publications. Precision rifles were a product of voodoo magic that only came together with precision metal work, pillar/glass bedding, custom hand-loads, and animal sacrifice. Only a couple of these witches could get it done with predictable success: David Miller, Kenny Jarrett, Speedy Gonzalez, etc. That legend persisted for five years or so, perpetuated by gun writers, until more and more small custom companies broke into that scene. It became more common to see the sub-MoA unicorn. Then the DIY guys figured out that you could actually make a lot of factory guns shoot really well with a little bit of work instead of forking over $3000 for a custom gun: trigger job, bedding job, proper scope mounting, and good ammo. Of all these fixes, the one that requires the most practice and attention to detail is bedding and happens to be one I often see botched by home hobbyist and hack gunsmiths. Bedding is a particular rifle  passion of mine and one that infuriates me when I see it done poorly, especially when some poor fella paid a premium for the service (since the going rate starts at about $250 for a pillar/glass job). With some background on why we bed, what right looks like, and (more importantly) what wrong looks like you can avoid some of the pain myself and others have endured.

I had my first two guns bedded when I worked in gun shop during high school. The first was a Remington 700 BDL 7mm Rem Mag. The second was a Remington Custom Shop rifle called the Custom KS; imagine a “custom gun” that comes in an un-bedded McMillan stock (before they switched to Bell & Carlson when they were bought by Freedom Group). The Custom KS was bedded by our resident gunsmith who said he would float and bed the rifle and I let him since guys in the shop raved about his work. I only paid $90 for the service (employ discount) and got back a gun that was spot bedded at the recoil lug and tang. I remember pulling the stock off of the gun to clean it up and seeing un-dyed epoxy bedding that just ran where compression pushed it. It was ugly and looked unprofessional despite the fact that it was probably functional. The gun never shot well and it went down the road. Either way, that was the last bedding he did for me; he truly was a master of fitting recoil pads and I haven’t seen better pad jobs since but that didn’t help me at all. Luckily you only have to be a teenager once because you don’t always learn a lesson the first time.

At the recommendation of another co-worker I tried another guy (gun store owner, “gunsmith”, and competitive shooter) up the road in Ft Worth. The 700 BDL was to be pillar bedded but when I got it back it had one pillar up front, glassed (again with un-dyed epoxy) into a spot bed of the recoil lug. There was no pillar or glass bedding at the rear and the “smith” dismissed it as not necessary. He had no intention of fixing it and as an 18-year old kid I didn’t fight him on it since he had to know what he was doing.  At that point I determined that the convenience of a local guy was not an advantage, it was a gamble at best. I like things to be done properly, just once. The first time.

I decided that mailing out work to reputable smiths was the only sure way to ensure I got back a good product. I also decided it was time to learn to do it myself and began to bed every stock I could get my hands on until I got it down pat. What I’ve learned is what to do and what not to do. I have also, by virtue of learning to bed well, learned never to accept second rate work from smiths because “reputable” (read recommended) smiths will sometimes turn out less than stellar work. Always consider the source because that can eliminate some heartburn in your life when somebody with low standards or little experience with quality guns vouches for some guy who likes to put guns together but actually does poor quality work. True professionals and craftsmen do not turn out junk. If you pay for bedding (much less an entire rifle) use someone who has a great reputation anywhere rifle people meet and talk guns because custom rifles are too expensive to take risks. Those names sound like: Long Rifles Inc, John Beanland, Eddie Fosnaugh, Nat Lambeth, Alex Sitman, Joel Russo, etc. It doesn’t have to be those exact guys (although each of them is phenomenal in regard to workmanship and customer service) but I’m not looking for a part-time-gun guy to charge me hundreds to thousands of dollars for slipshod work. Been there, done that, not going back for seconds.

So far we have determined that developing a load with the lowest standard deviation in muzzle velocity is important since with “no wind” models it translates to fewer high or low misses. We have also determined that under ideal conditions 100fps may be worth as much as a small boost in ballistic coefficient; at least that is the party line in some SML circles that “know” a lot about long range shooting. Up until now we have modeled ideal conditions. That is to say, bluebird skies and no winds. Unfortunately, in my experience, those conditions never present themselves to me during the late fall and winter. It is usually cold and windy where I have hunted so we are about to take our chosen loads head to head with the conditions they will face when it counts.

Wind is the great equalizer. It is hard for everyone to deal with and it is the only thing that we can’t account for with a good ballistic solver because it is the only thing we cannot say for sure that we actually know. We can use a laser range finder and know the range within +/- 5yds which is not a huge deal. We can use our phone or Kestrel to get all the atmospherics (temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity). With those we we can calculate the deterministic variable of drop. Since we know we don’t carry enough velocity to shoot much beyond 400yds with the light bullets and about 500yds with the better heavy stuff we don’t have to worry much about spin drift or Coriolis. Both are very minimal to imperceptible at those distances. Wind on the other hand makes all the difference in the world and your phone or Kestrel  cannot give you a definitive answer as to what the wind is doing, just what the wind is doing exactly where you are.

Winds are like fluids. They ebb and flow. They roll over the ground, speeding up, slowing down, pushing up, pushing down. They swirl. They gust. Winds have gradients that are higher above the ground than they are at the ground. It takes a lot of practice to get a handle on them on a flat range with good indicators like flags and the funny little flowery, spinning things BR guys use. It is even harder to master in the field where your indicators are are natural effects (grass, trees, dust, etc) and perception (feel) or mirage.

There are two ways to ensure success while shooting in the wind. The first, and best, is to shoot in the wind often. Never shy away from the range because it is windy. You will not shoot the little groups you enjoy shooting but it is like I said about shooting groups compared to MoA targets: Who cares? The goal is to make good, centered, repeatable hits on demand. That only happens by shooting in difficult conditions until difficult becomes routine. That will take a lot of practice and a .22LR or a .223 Rem will be a good way to sort it out since the cost of SML bullets and the price you will pay in recoil may be prohibitive. That said, find a way to shoot in the wind as often as you can.

The other approach is to improve your gear. You pick a bullet that offers you the least amount of drift at your maximum range, in the worst conditions you expect. While it is absolutely true you cannot buy skill you can buy bullets that improve your odds despite your skill level. Velocity cannot always best wind despite that common myth. That is what we propose to determine with these WEZ analyses.

We will give ourselves the benefit of the best rifle and load combo we could muster as well as an accurate laser rangefinder. Assume we have a rifle capable of .5MoA groups on demand (although that is only likely with 3-5shot groups, not the 10-shots we tested), an MV with a standard deviation of 7fps (so if you are a Smooth guy you need a Veggie Wad), and we know the range because we own a quality range finder. One gun will have a 275gn MH at 2900fps, one a 300gn MH at 2800fps, and one will have a 344gn BOMB at 2750fps (my personal LR load although it can be pushed faster).

We will rotate these guns between three shooters in medium difficult wind conditions: one a casual shooter (LO confidence) who can guess wind at +/-4mph, one a regular enthusiast who gets out often but doesn’t have a lot of experience or training (MED confidence) who can guess wind at +/-2mph, and one who shoots a lot in competition and/or has very good training (HI confidence) who can call wind at +/- 1mph. This is representative of what I see on SML forums based on what I glean from range reports. Having worked in a gunshop and range for close to 10 years prior to joining the Army I think this is a fair representation of shooters in general.

That said, the greatest enemy for most shooters is they don’t know what they don’t know. I cannot tell you how often I hear some guy asking about shooting deer at 500yds when he has never even shot a piece of paper at 300yds. If you are shooting a .300WM or something similar that is not overly difficult even for a guy without a lot of training but we are shooting low to fairly low BC bullets at slower velocities which means knowing wind effects becomes very critical.

Consider our first scenario where our rifle shoots a 275gn MH (or similar) bullet over 78gn of IMR4198 at roughly 2900fps and produces 1MoA or better groups every time it goes out. We are deer hunting a field we hunt ever year, from a comfortable blind with a solid rest. A good buck steps out of a treeline into the beanfield at 455m/497yds. We know how far it is because we have hunted here for years but we check it with the range finder anyway. We again confirm against our drop chart and see this is the absolute furthest shot we should be taking based on what we got from our phone’s app.

Here’s the rub: our phone says winds are at 5mph (Kestrel’s don’t measure wind inside of a blind) but that is at the local airfield so we take an educated guess based on what we see around us.

Shooter #1 (Regular Joe)

Shooter# 2 (Range Regular)

Shooter#3 (Rifle Junky)

That is a significant difference in success based on ability to read wind. It would stand to reason that spending more time at the range with someone who can teach you would be the best course of action to ensure higher success. The most probable course of action though is that we will try to buy success by improving equipment (probably a bigger scope but shouldn’t be). Let’s say that we take a friend’s advice and try a better bullet even though it will be a little slower and will kick a little more. If we had had the better bullet things would have looked a lot more like this:

300gn MH (or similar) over 73gn H4198 for 2800fps all else equal to the last scenario.

Shooter #1

Shooter #2

Shooter #3

We now have two out of three shooters inside of our 90% threshold by a simple upgrade in a bullet. It was not as apparent in the previous blogs because there was no wind. We also were showing max ranges for each combination before and how each bullet reacted to changes in velocity deviation and form. Now when we combine them and pit them against each other it all comes together.

Finally, lets say that three shooters have known each other for a while and while the two junior shooters have not had the range time to get as good as Shooter #3 but have at least mimicked his choice of gear because of the advantages he says it offers and had it at the onset of this story.

344gn BOMB over 90gn of IMR3031 for 2750fps, all else being equal:

Shooter #1

Shooter #2

Shooter #3

The heavier, harder kicking, higher BC is clearly the champion. It beat out the speed demon 275gn bullet as well as the welter weight 300gn bullet. It didn’t make the average joe a long range expert but it moved him up a lot closer to 70% than the nearly 60% he started out with using the light and fast bullet. The big boy also got there with more velocity and energy and in the hands of the two better shooters could have been used further.

Last time we studied the effects of muzzle velocity deviations and their importance to hit probability. In regards to sheer hit probability we saw that a single digit SD (like what is seen in good handloads) gained us an additional 100yds over an SD of 15fps (like good factory ammo). I also said that a low BC bullet will be more affected by velocity deviations than a higher BC bullet. Using the same AB Analytics WEZ we will compare bullets to determine what the payoff is.

We will make the same assumptions as before: shooter and rifle can shoot within 1MoA, has a Kestrel to record atmospherics, can read wind (or has no wind), and knows precisely the range to the target.

To keep this as apple to apples as possible we will use Parker bullets since Bob makes more styles of bullets in more weights than anyone else in his Ballistic Extreme (BE) and Match Hunter (MH) lines. Having shot quite a few of them over the years I know the BC’s are pretty optimistic but we will take them at face value for the purpose of this test. We will consider the 275gn BE, 275gn MH, 300gn BE, and 300gn MH. All velocities were pulled from pressure traces and we will model 7fps and 15fps SD’s for all.

The 275gn BE is a very popular bullet among guys who shoot muzzle-loaders. I think it is probably the most popular bullet out there for guys who are serious about muzzle-loaders because they tend to shoot well and kill well. They can be shot fast and the recoil is not bad. The problem is they are about as aerodynamic as a shoe-box. Until the 275MH came out several custom builders advocated them as the ultimate long range SML bullet capable of dispatching deer to 500yds.That is someone trying to sell you a product instead of success. The truth is it only retains enough velocity to be effective to 410yds under PERFECT conditions and past about 300yds gets blown really badly in the wind. The 300gn version is identical in form, just slightly longer and heavier and only gets to 382yds with 1800fps. Neither has ever been a long range proposition despite what anyone has claimed.

275gn BE, MV 2900fps, SD 7fps, 90% hit probability under ideal conditions 732yds

275gn BE, MV 2900fps, SD 15fps, 79% hit probability under ideal conditions at same range

300gn BE, MV 2800fps, SD 7fps, 90% hit probability under ideal conditions 732yds

300gn BE, MV 2800fps, SD 15fps, 78.4% hit probability under ideal conditions  at same range

The MH line of bullets is significantly more aerodynamic than the BE and are a superior design for increasing desirable flight characteristics. According to AB Lab’s research for every caliber length increase in the nose of a bullet you reduce drag by some 19%. That is to say that just changing shape can make a huge difference in aerodynamic performance. The 275gn MH carries that 1800fps to 465yds (50yds increase) and 300gn MH to 492yds (110yds increase).

275gn MH, MV 2900fps, SD 7fps, 90% hit probability under ideal conditions 765yds

275gn MH, MV 2900fps, SD 15fps, 80.9% hit probability under ideal conditions at same range

300gn MH, MV 2800fps, SD 7fps, 90% hit probability under ideal conditions 765yds

300gn MH, MV 2800fps, SD 15fps, 79.8% hit probability under ideal conditions at same range