Thread: Pillar bedding

Interested to hear some views on what you use for pillar bedding

Do you prefer pillars with a concave top ?

Do you have the tops of the pillars bare and flush with the action, or slightly lower and covered with epoxy ?

What do you use to make pillars ? Alu, stainless, which grades ?

Any other lessons learnt or tips you want to pass on ?

A decent stock and bedding shouldn't require pillars?????

I use 1/4" x 3/8" aluminium tubing which is readily available from any aluminium supplier. Cut the two pieces to the correct length and roughen the outside surface for good adhesion from the bedding compound. Square ends are perfectly OK. Drill the stock bolt holes out to 3/8", prepare the stock for bedding using a gouge chisel, tape the barrel and action to give you the correct clearance, apply release agent to the barrel, action, trigger guard, and action screws, and wait until dry before mixing and applying the bedding compound. Apply grease or Vaseline to the areas of the stock where the bedding compound will overflow. Ideally the pillars should be about .020" (half a millimetre) longer than the distance between the action and trigger guard to avoid any stock compression. Trim the bedding compound with a small knife when it is about the consistency of plasticene. This makes the trimming up much easier.

Goddamm , where have you been all my life gundoc.

Is that you Rod? Welcome to the forum

Originally Posted by outdoorlad

Is that you Rod? Welcome to the forum

Tis me indeed! I have been down here just over two years now, enjoying 'retirement'.

Dean Maisey makes some nice pillars. 10.5mm dia. He made them to length for the front and rear screws on my Sako 75 action.

I counter bored them to 7mm, and wrapped dummy action screws in tape and release agent to make them a push fit and the centralise the screw in the pillar.
I think pillars are a must when bedding an action into composite fill.
I screwed the pillars hard to the action and after setting barrel channel clearances and tang depth, I set them into the stock with bedding compound.
I then did the normal bedding process by double taping relieved areas, building plasticine and foam dams, and used Kiwi shoe polish and Graphite dust ( from a locksmith ) as a release agent.
I used Devcon 10110 as the bedding compound.



B

But now that you are running the pinnacle of bolt action design those pillars are completely redundant

Welcome to the future!

I bedded a 595 with no pillars, taped clearance where needed,made headless action screws and filled her up once set popped out and run a drill down the action screw holes for clearance on them, went from no load would shoot even close to moa to no load I tried would shoot over half moa and ones it liked were more like quarter moa for 5 shot groups and I cant even shoot very well.

Originally Posted by ebf

Interested to hear some views on what you use for pillar bedding

Do you prefer pillars with a concave top ?

Do you have the tops of the pillars bare and flush with the action, or slightly lower and covered with epoxy ?

What do you use to make pillars ? Alu, stainless, which grades ?

Any other lessons learnt or tips you want to pass on ?

I should point out that pillar bedding is only needed on soft wood stocks (eg; beech, American walnut) to prevent wood compression which can cause the action screws to loosen up. English/European walnut (juglans regia) is usually OK with just standard bedding. Synthetic stocks generally do not benefit from pillar bedding, except for those that have foam cores. Most plastic synthetic stocks show an accuracy improvement with standard bedding when the first 2-3" of the barrel are supported and floated from there forward. Dams need to be used to prevent wasting bedding compound in the fore-end cavity.

Originally Posted by Proudkiwi

But now that you are running the pinnacle of bolt action design those pillars are completely redundant

Welcome to the future!

Sshhhhh