Glass bedding rifle stock

[woldson]

Just get a muzzle break job done;)

[JMortensen]

What good is a rifle with a broken muzzle?

 

I did shoot a 7mm Mag at a range once with a muzzle brake. The guy and I traded a few shots, he had just gotten his rifle and was told it "kicked like a .243". My .243 definitely kicked harder than his 7mm.

[grumpyvette]

muzzle brakes work best on very high velocity cartridges where the powder charge is a significant percentage of the ejected mass, leaving the bore, they are also loud, now Ive got a couple heavy caliber rifles with brakes, and they do make a difference, in felt recoil, but on a hunting rifle Ive never seen a huge advantage simply because you seldom take more than one or two shots at game in the field, under conditions where your very likely to be wearing a heavy coat, or padded shooting vest and youll have NO ear protection, youll seldom feel the single shots recoil but your ears may ring for hours

Edited May 17, 2009 by grumpyvette

[JMortensen]

Finally got a chance to go out and shoot my 581 with the new stock. I had to reposition the scope, and I hadn't fired the thing in probably 20 years, but I was still able to hit the paper so it wasn't too hard to dial the scope in from there.

 

While working on the stock I read online that standard velocity is better than high velocity at 50 yards because the high velocity bullets will slow through the sound barrier and that causes them to become unstable. I hadn't heard of this previously, so I brought some high velocity ammo that I had on hand, and bought some standard velocity ammo at the range to test it against.

 

I was talking about glass bedding this rifle, but after shooting it, I just don't think there is any need. It's not a one hole gun at 50 yards, but it did give me a 3 hole 5 shot group at 50 that was 3/8" to 7/16", depending on how optimistically you measure. I'm calling it 3/8". I also put 50 rounds into about an inch with a couple flyers here and there. I'm very happy. I think I would have been more impressed with the gun if I had shot the standard velocity ammo when I was a kid. It really makes a difference.

 

To test the difference I did a couple groups with the high velocity next to the standard on the same target. Left is high velocity, the top is a 15 shot group and the bottom is a 5 shot group. These were my last shots of the day so the gun probably had 200+ rounds through it at this point. Interesting to note that the high velocity ammo shot about 3" high and to the right of the standard velocity too...

 

Best group:

 

With tape measure:

 

50 shot:

 

15 shot groups:

 

5 shot groups:

[jt1]

Those are nice groups. Bedding it may help a little, then again it might not be a significant improvement. I would be tempted to leave well enough alone.

 

Most 22's are pretty ammo sensitive in my experience. What works well in one won't be worth a flip in another, you just have to experiment and see what your rifle likes.

 

jt

[JMortensen]

Those are nice groups. Bedding it may help a little, then again it might not be a significant improvement. I would be tempted to leave well enough alone.

 

Most 22's are pretty ammo sensitive in my experience. What works well in one won't be worth a flip in another, you just have to experiment and see what your rifle likes.

I guess I got lucky with the CCI ammo then. My rifle seems to like it just fine! Especially with the action fastened in the crappy way that it is, I think I'm going to agree and skip on the bedding on the .22.

 

I might give some thought to bedding my .243 M70 Winchester Lightweight. I'll have to get it out to the range and put a couple rounds through it and see what it does. I had one 3 shot 1.25" group @ 100 yards that hung on my wall when I was a kid, but I honestly think it was a fluke. I could never seem to get it down below about 2" consistently for a 3 shot group and I was handloading for it previously too so I had tried different bullet weights, powders, etc. 3 shot group is pretty weenie I think, but I used to stop there if I was doing well because if I shot any more it seemed like I'd suddenly have a 3" group.

 

The .243 does have a fixed 4x (cheap Tasco) scope on it. I had recently been thinking that a higher power scope would allow me to aim more accurately, but then I kinda figure that the center is the center, so 4x should be good enough to do better than I was able. Any input there?

[grumpyvette]

ITS not just the little22 rimfire rifles that tend to group better with slightly lower velocities at times,

one of my now passed on hunting partners used a 358 win caliber BLR carbine loaded with 250 grain speer bullets over 44 grains of IMR 4064 for many years to kill ELK, that load clocks 2270fps from his carbine, with lighter and faster bullets he could get 2700fps

but the 250 grain loafing along at a 2270 muzzle velocity was only traveling about 1750fps and 12" low at 300 yards but it still flattened ELK, and held 100 yard groups under 1" off the bench rest

Edited May 26, 2009 by grumpyvette

[JMortensen]

After screwing around with my rifle trying a different scope, a homemade electronic bore cleaner after dr hunt suggested it (details on how to make one here http://www.surplusrifle.com/reviews/copperout/index.asp), and free floating the barrel, I still was getting 2+ inch groups out of my Winchester M70 Lightweight in .243. So I figured the next step was glass bedding. I had been looking at bedding my .22 when I put a new stock on it, but I found the accuracy of that rifle acceptable and didn't bother with the bedding.

 

I did not pillar bed this rifle, just did the glass bedding. I did use the Devcon as suggested here and elsewhere. I hogged out the stock with a Dremel especially around the recoil lug so that there would be adequate room for the bedding to work. I left the rear of the tang area alone (you can see the glass in this area is so thin the wood shows through) and put 4 layers of electrical tape around the barrel in front. Then I made a dam from modeling clay in the barrel channel. All holes in the action and stock that weren't to be filled with epoxy were filled with clay. The trigger was removed as well. I waxed the action and barrel and anything that might get in contact with the epoxy with Kiwi shoe polish in a "natural" finish (no dye to possibly affect the color of the metal). The checkering on the wrist of the stock is REALLY close to the tang on one side of the stock, and about 1/8" away on the other side, so that made it pretty much impossible to tape the checkering off. I filled it with modeling clay instead, and that seems to have worked pretty well.

 

Getting the epoxy in the stock with the action was more difficult than I thought. I had to tape the action into the stock pretty tightly just to push all of the extra epoxy out of the stock. At first I pushed on the front end and the back end came up, then pushed on the back and the front would rise. Finally I taped the front end down, then taped the back end down, then cleaned up the spillage, then pulled the front tape, cleaned what was underneath the tape itself, then retaped it tighter and pulled the back tape, cleaned, retaped, etc. I ended up going back and forth 3 times, it was pretty nerve wracking because I didn't want to screw it up. Each time a little bit more epoxy would squeeze out. I think this would have been easier with Acraglas or some other media that is thinner. That Devcon is THICK.

 

Getting all the extra epoxy off of the top of the stock and the action was pretty difficult too. I had read somewhere online to use vinegar, so I did as much cleanup as I could with paper towels and then went at it with Q tips and vinegar, which does work pretty well. I dunked the Q-tip and then squeezed all the extra vinegar off of it, then used it on the stock and action. That took about 3x as long as I anticipated, but it worked.

 

After 24 hours the stock separated from the action and I only had three real problems. One was that I couldn't figure out why the bolt release lever wouldn't function. Turns out it was because I had some epoxy underneath the lever, I kept trying to remove epoxy to the side of the lever.

 

The second was that I had put a piece of clay in the slot where the bolt release lever sits and it had squished out and it ended up preventing the epoxy from hitting the stock in one spot, probably about 1/4" long. That's a bummer, but you really don't see it unless you're looking for it.

 

The last problem was a little more difficult to overcome. It appears that I moved the action back about 1/16" in the stock, and this was just enough to make it so that the magazine cover on the bottom didn't fit. As it was before you had to have the bottom plate moved as far forward in its slot as it could get and then it would BARELY clip into place. My theory here is that they made these pieces as long as possible to prevent rattling. The way the action is moved back in the stock now there just was no way it was going to fit. I looked at the rear screws to see if the trigger guard was off, but it is really set perfectly into its recess and when the screw tightens down it doesn't pull the trigger guard one way or the other. That being the case I didn't want to move the trigger guard back, so I ground down the magazine cover. It only took about 1/16" or so to get it to clear, but it was enough that I had to grind the divit in the end of the cover too to get the button to work. No biggee to me since the cover had just a hit of rust from a trip a long time ago when I got stuck out in the rain. So now I'm going to take the initiative and fix the rust and just reblue that one part to fix it permanently. If I had used the action screws to hold everything together while the epoxy dried I wouldn't have had this problem.

 

I also put a little Tru-Oil on the stock anywhere the wood got exposed, and buttoned it up.

 

I might get a chance to shoot it this weekend, looks like it may rain though. Can't wait to see what it does. I have some Hornady bullets that just came UPS and 10 of the Remingtons left, might see if I can find some lighter weight bullets at the range too.

 

 

 

 

[JMortensen]

Oops. Forgot to mention taping up the recoil lug. I put 4 layers of tape on the sides bottom and front of the lug. Very important to do that.

[jt1]

That looks nice. If the spot where the clay squeezed up bugs you, you can fix it, just go thru the whole process again, working on that one spot. It probably won't hurt a thing like it is.

 

Let us know how it shoots. Did you do anything to the tip of the forearm?

 

John

[JMortensen]

That looks nice. If the spot where the clay squeezed up bugs you, you can fix it, just go thru the whole process again, working on that one spot. It probably won't hurt a thing like it is.

 

Let us know how it shoots. Did you do anything to the tip of the forearm?

I didn't do anything to the forearm. I wanted to try it like this and the plan is to bring a stack of business cards to the range and add a little pressure and see if that helps.

 

In retrospect I probably shouldn't have taken the wood on the stock as far back as I did. You warned me of that but I was worried about the effectiveness of a really thin layer of epoxy on the sides of the action.

 

Unfortunately the Mortensen family came down with the stomach flu (I haven't gotten it yet, so tonight may still be my night to puke my guts out, yay) and it's been raining a bit here, so no shooting this weekend. Next weekend is supposed to be sunny, so I suppose it will have to wait until then, unless I can get to the range after work one day during the week. I'm itching to test it really bad.

[JMortensen]

Bedding seems to have done the trick. I tried again today and shot another box and a half of ammo. I didn't realize the scope would be off, so I wasted a couple wondering why I wasn't hitting the paper then had it boresighted and started shooting some in the 1.5 to 2" range. Then I put 3 business cards between the stock and barrel to give some pressure on the fore end. In doing so I found out you need to boresight again after you add pressure and shot a couple rounds into the dirt. After a quick boresight I shot a run of 3 groups within 1.5" with a best group was 1.125" using Hornady 100 gr BTSP ammo. I think any improvement over that is going to have to come from handloading.

 

I'm pretty pleased with the increase in accuracy, but more importantly in the consistency of the gun. It seemed like it was hard to even get sighted in before because one shot would be an inch low, then next an inch high and off to the right, and the next right on and left. After adding the pressure to the fore end it really seemed to settle in on a point of aim. Now I just have to glass the pressure point onto the end of the stock.

 

I also met a guy at the range who had a 10/22 all done up and he let me shoot it a bit. I shot a 5 group about 1.25" at 100 yards with it. Pretty impressive for a .22.

[waddiejohn]

So, did I understand that you, in effect, created relief around the recoil lug by taping it off?

We always wanted a very tight fit in that area. When we did a thread and chamber job for a customer we would guarantee an inch or better group size at 100 yards if we could free float the barrel. We used car wax as a release agent. It was blue and that made it easy to see where you put it. The bedding compond of choice for us was Micro-Bed. It was made by the Micro Sight gun sight company. I think they are gone now but it sounds like Accra-Bed might be the same stuff. It smelled like a Phenolic Resin compond.

We would relieve the area around the recoil lug and the tang screw but leave the rest of the wood in order to locate the metal in it's original position. If we were making a stock for the customer we'd usually buy a semi-inlet or take one of ours to a duplicator and have it turned then add any custom touches or use plastic wood on a stock to mold a model for duplication. We'd inlet to proper debth then relieve the areas to be bedded.

Once we were down to the final ten percent of inletting we'd apply "Inletting Black" to the action, then using "Inletting Action Screw" as a guide we'd very carefully set the action into the stock and tap it with a rawhide mallet. lift the action out and remove very, very small amount of wood using very, very sharp wood chisels or scappers.

The "Black" would be applied with a shaving brush every time the action was removed from the wood. It also had to be thinned with oil so that it was not so thick as to give a false reading.

Typically, on a high powered rifle we'd bed the areas mentioned and the chamber area of the barrel. This method was very successful. I served a one year apprenticeship then work for that shop until the owner decided to move to Alaska and only one rifle ever came back. After we verified that it indeed would not group we called Douglas and the asked us to ship the barrel back to them for analysis. It turned out that when they profiled the barrel they got the breech and muzzle ends mixed up.

This is turning into a long post. Sorry, but how else do I get there?

Adding pressure to the forend is something that Remington used to do on their wood stocks. If you ever pulled one apart you'd see a bump machined into the forend that apllied upward pressure. I was told (I think it was at a Remington seminar, but not absolutely sure) that it was about twenty pounds of upward pressure.

The problem is that wood warps, so twenty pounds today might be twenty five or fifteen tomorrow. Guy's would bring in the previously accurate rifle that no longer was all of a sudden and we'd bed and free-float then it would be accurate again. Of course it could be the crown too and there isn't always a way to tell without some fancy equipment.

For finishes we used either True Oil, hand rubbed mostly then sanded and polished with automotive white rubbing compound, or we'd use Deft's spray on Urathane if areal "shinny" finish was requested.

I didn't look at the youtube thing, so I can't comment, but I use masking tape on the wood just in front of the pad then use twelve inch disk sander and Opti-visors to take it down. If you look closely at most professional jobs you'll see a few thousanths of pad raised around the stock.

I'm not saying my way is the only way. My mentor was trained at the Denver School of Trades in the 1960's and I started with him in the 1970's so a lot has changed I'm sure.

I haven't done much of this kind of work since about 1980 but I'm currently building two .22-250's for a friend and myself.

I apologize for talking too much.

Waddie

[JMortensen]

If you look around the common method to do the recoil lug is to tape the sides and front so that it is only tight on the back. The reasoning that I've read for this is that the barrel will supposedly bounce off of the bottom and sides if it is tight, and you want it to be firmly against the back. Whether that is true or not is for someone else to test I suppose. I saw it in so many different places that I didn't question it.

 

I have the barrel free floated now, and it definitely shot better with some pressure on the end. I don't know of a way to prevent the wood from warping, but I suppose if I glassed that area and had a problem with accuracy later on it would be pretty easy to dremel it out again and re-glass it.

[waddiejohn]

Just goes to show I guess. I've been out of it too long perhaps. I've never heard of taping the recoil lug. That's what prompted my reply. I'll do some research. It might be some to have fun with.

[waddiejohn]

I did a search and found a couple of sites right off the bat that said to tape the recoil lug as you said. I wonder if you might remember where you read the theory behind the idea. I'd really like to know the history and science behind it or if someone just thought it up and tried it.

I will certainly have to give it a shot, (pun intended). Doing it that way would certainly help the action come out of the stock easier. With a fully encapsulated recoil lug they could be a bear to seperate even after the initial seperation.

[JMortensen]

I did a search and found a couple of sites right off the bat that said to tape the recoil lug as you said. I wonder if you might remember where you read the theory behind the idea. I'd really like to know the history and science behind it or if someone just thought it up and tried it.

I will certainly have to give it a shot, (pun intended). Doing it that way would certainly help the action come out of the stock easier. With a fully encapsulated recoil lug they could be a bear to seperate even after the initial seperation.

I checked the 4 or 5 sites that I referred to most, and wasn't able to find the bit about the recoil lug bouncing off of the bottom. I did a LOT of reading online because I didn't want to screw it up, sorry I couldn't find the one site for you.

[waddiejohn]

Thanks for trying. I think I'll see if someone at the NRA might have tech knowledge on this. I also heard that there is a benchrest rifle builder locally. If I can find him maybr he'll tell me what his current practice is.

[MAG58]

In my experience in 500+ yard shooting, taping the lug really does not see it's usefulness until you get some rounds through the firearm. This becomes especially necessary for those looking to fire their weapon at a temperature other than that at which you bedded the stock at. When the weapon is fired, the entire gun starts to vibrate, with centers at the two peaks of pressure the barrel experiences as the bullet travels down the barrel. when this happens, the entire action will vibrate. And even though the action is bedded in the stock, if the recoil lug has no room to vibrate a little, it will most surely make room, and when this happens, odds are it will slowly move the action out of where it was placed when the action was first bedded. This will tend to royally mess up all that accuracy. This may not be the exact reason that Jon used the tape but it is the reason that I do when I bed my stocks now, as this is how i now bed my 308 (as after about 1000 rounds the accuracy was gone) and my 300WM, for also the same reason.

 

~Bob

[waddiejohn]

This is all very interesting. I'd like to know when the tape idea came about. The last bolt gun I built was in 1980 and I did it the way we did back then which was the way Roy Dunlap did it in the fifties. I wonder if they are more accurate now than then.

Guns are weird animals anyway. Some things work that shouldn't so I try to keep an open mind. I once rebarreled a 1917 Enfield for a helicopter pilot out of Davis Monthan Air Force base. Made a 300 Win. Mag. out of it. It shot half minute using the old way of bedding. Anyway he told me to keep his old barrel which looked like a sewer pipe inside from shooting corrosive ammo and the rest of the stuff from his conversion and I threw it under my bench where it layed for a year or so.

Finally business was slack and I was bored so I rethreaded the old barrel and cut a new chamber in .30-06 and installed it on a Ted Williams FN Mauser action then did the finish inletting on a Bishop stock. I installed a Redfield peep sight and a Lyman ramp front sight. The barrel is 19" long and it kicked pretty good with just the plastic butt plate on it.

Just for kicks I loaded up some 180 grain Sierra SPBT bullets over 52 grains of 4350 and went to the range. At 100 yards, five shot groups could be covered with a dime and you could do it all day long. I used to get a kick out of going shooting with friends and showing how well it shot then showing them the barrel. It shot about an inch at 200 yards, but I never really went out any further.

I finally shot some lead bullets through it and it has shoot worth a darn since. It is sitting in the gun safe waiting for someday. If that day ever comes I'll play with it some more.

 

MAG58, I believe time and ammo are the real test as you have said. When your accuracy went away after your 1000 rounds, I take it that you just rebedded your rifle using the tape and it was restored?

 

Thanks for the info,

John