Recoil Lug Bedding Tips

S

SEHunter

New member
After alot of research in the forum, i am planning on bedding the lug in my rifle. While i do not have any experience bedding a stock, i am reasonably capable of a fair ammount of diy type projects.

My gun is a Rem. SPS varmint chambered in 22-250 Rem that i recently dropped in a H-S Precision police/LE stock. I have ordered a timney 510 trigger and the bottom metal that H-S makes specifically for their stock but have not installed them yet. While i have the action out, i want to go ahead with bedding the lug with Devcon 10110 plastic steel.

With the aluminum bedding block in the H-S stock, is it necessary to carve out some extra material from the aluminum block behind the recoil lug, or will the Devcon work fine without any extra space added between the lug and bedding block? If there are other tips to making this project sucessful, i would appreciate that as well.

Thanks
 
Just coat the action and screws with release agent and put a small bead of Devcon behind the recoil lug and tighten her down. Do not try to modify the bedding block at all, it is a precision machined piece of metal. Anything you do to it will negatively affect it.
 
Let me ask this.. i hear that it is not desireable to have the sides, bottom or front (muzzle side) of the recoil lug make contact with anything once all is cured and the stock is torqued. Is the reason behind this simply ease of future removal and dropping in of the action to the stock?

What if i do not tape the lug at all and instead just coat it and everything in that area with release agent? Wouldnt this make a snugger all around fit at the lug?
 
You want clearance around the lug, you do not want it to bind. Just put a small amount of bedding compound behind the recoil lug and screw her down. Leave the gap in front of the lug, leave the spaces in the forearm, etc. More bedding compound is not necessarily better.
 
This is the only Rem700 I have bedded, the other one I did went into an Aluminum V block.

I cut the pillar concave radius on the top to mate with the receiver diameter. I put tape on the bottom and sides of the recoil lug, so there is only epoxy behind the lug and around the pillar.
 

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  • Pillar bed Rem 700 7mmRM High Tech Specialites stock Devcon 10-9-2012.jpg
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Recoil lugs need to have a slight taper to their sides so they'll easily come out of the epoxy bedding as well as provide good contact to reduce receiver twisting from barrel torque while the bullet's going down the barrel. Decades ago, when Rem. 700 round receivers were tried for magnums used in long range matches, they twisted loose to easy from epoxy bedding from barrel torque. Folks tried 1 to 2 inch long recoil lugs to stop that, but they didn't work. Gluing the receiver in a flat side/bottom sleeve fixed that problem. High power competitors borrowed this idea from benchresters doing the same thing for their 22 and 24 caliber cartridges having much less torque from the barrel.

The lug also needs clearance on its bottom so when the receiver's screwed into the stock, full contact on the receiver around the lug will be made and the lug's bottom won't stop against the epoxy below it.
 
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Here is a pic of a Rem 700 with tape on the front, sides, and bottom of the recoil lug to create the clearance Bart is talking about. After the epoxy sets up, the action is removed, the tape removed, and voila, clearance.
 
The clearance on the front and sides makes it easier to remove the action from the stock. The clearance on the bottom of the lug is so that the metal parts absolutely, positively rest on the bottom of the receiver, not rocking back and forth on the bottom of the lug. The taping job illustrated above is just right.
 
FWIW, the clearances are not just for easy action, etc, removal from the bedded stock - if the bedding is too tight there, and on the sides of the action, barrel/action vibration harmonics, and ergo accuracy, is usually negatively effected.

I've bought several used rifles (every now/then) at a deep discount because they were "inaccurate" - only to find they were tightly glas-bedded everywhere, most likely by someone who didn't know better.

A half-hour's work with gouges/files usually turned a rifle that was grouping 6"-8" @ 100yds (my "B4" groups) into an MOA or better hole driller (my "after" groups).


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Regarding:
FWIW, the clearances are not just for easy action, etc, removal from the bedded stock - if the bedding is too tight there, and on the sides of the action, barrel/action vibration harmonics, and ergo accuracy, is usually negatively effected.
Click to expand...
I disagree.

All my Model 70 Winnies and round, 4-lug Paramount receivers have been bedded in Devcon plastic steel with absolute minimum clearance. I put Simonize car wax on the receiver then rubbed it as thin as it could get for the release agent. My Winchester receivers had to be gently "rocked" back and forth to get them out as they were pretty darned tightly held. Accuracy with all of them has been as good as can be had for the life of several barrels.

I prefer zero play between the metal and bedding.

Regarding http://www.davidtubb.com/davidtubb/content/templates/common/pdfs/2000_concept.pdf

Here's a pix of David's machine rest his dad had built in the early 1960's. One of his T2000 rifles is clamped in it. Solid aluminum except for steel guide rods and V blocks in its 3-point support system. The sliding top cradle holding the rifle weighs about 40 pounds.

254765260_139624abd8.jpg


Winchester 70 based rifles bedded in wood stocks have been used in this same type of rest to shoot groups much smaller than the ones shown in the above article.
 
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