#pillarbedding

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.

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.