If that's all you found, it does not explain the basic problem.
The basic problem is that you have two large peices in the traditional rifle, the wooden stock and tbe metal barreled action. The two must somehow be welded together with great consistancy, a problem that is bigger than it may at first seem.
Remember that recoil starts at the moment of ignition, when the bullet is still in the barrel. All the rearward force of this ignition travels back through the metal work, then must be tranferred into the wood work and then into the shooter, who is knocked back a little by the recoil.
Since this movement starts before the bullet even leaves the barrel, the goal of accurately and precisely landing the bullet on the intended target is dependent upon all three parts of this system (four if you include the ammo), the metal work, the wood work and the shooter him or herself, being as consistant as possible between themselves from shot to shot.
The contact and attachment between the metal work and the wood work is one of the areas that all too often is a weak link in this system. Very often, there is indeed movement between the two systems and this leads to poor and eratic results in whole shooting process.
For example, in the rifles I know best, military and sporting Mausers, the barreled action is attached and transfers force to the stock at three points: at the front of the receiver, where there is a lug that overlaps the wood (on military rifles, there is a square metal "cross bolt" to help absorb that rearward force) and at two points where bolts screw it down into the trigger guard and stock, usually with about 40 to forty five pounds of pressure on the screws. The big military cartridges create lots of force and if any of these three points are not in near perfect fit to the metal work, the barreled receiver will in fact jump around in the stock and the rifle will be a very poor shooter. The fit betwen the metal work and stock might seem very firm to the hand, but still be rather loose and slopy when subjected to the forces produced in shooting the cartridge.
In additon, military Mausers normally bare on the stock at the forend and are held there by a band. This is O.K. as long as the fit at this point is good and consistant in what it does, but this is often not the case. The barrels on sproters can be either bond by a band, "free floated" (not touching in the barrel area), bare fully on the wood all the way, or be "pointed" (baring on two little bumps at the stock forend), and still shot just fine as long as consistancy is produced from shot to shot.
Even if a wood stocked rifle was originally beautifully bedded by a master stock maker, the bedding can still go bad over time. Wood stock warp, ruining the best of original work. Wood stocks also get oil soaked around the receiver and start to rot in the contact areas, making it impossible to get a good and consistant fit between metal and wood.
Synthetic and laminated stocks may eleminate most or all of the warping and rotting of traditional wood stocks, but they still need careful bedding. Manufacturing processes are not precise enough to bed rifles to the level of fit between metal and wood that is required to produce a highly accurate rifle.
I have decribed the basic problems in bedding Mausers properly. Other types of rifles present different problems and need different solutions to be bedded in a satisfactory manner.
Today we have these marvelous glass bedding techniques. They are relatively cheap and if done by someone who understands the problems and is experienced at solving them, they produce marvelous results. They are basically just letting something that is squishy and then hardens sufficiently do the the work of making a near perfect fit at the critical spots. This takes a lot of the old fashioned wood workers craftsmanship out of the equation, but the person doing the work still has to know what he or she is doing.
If a rifle does not shoot as accurately as you know it should, bad bedding is one of the first villans to suspect. It is relative cheap to redo, compared to restocking or just throwing the rifle away, and it very often solves one of the biggest parts of the rifle's problem.
, Art