thanks for all your help, im glad i asked the question, and came to the right place.
Do you have to use gunsmithing epoxies or are autobody grade products like duraglass good enough or do you not want to mess around with stuff that isnt proven,
I always use Brownells Acraglas for rifles as it's been in the market for about 40 years. the GEL version is easiest to work with.
And what type of aluminum do you use have you played around with different types annealed or not? do you know if a 2024 is better than say a 6061 or a 7075 ? and what about titanium, is that going to make a difference or is what we can do with glass and aluminum about as far as you can push it? i mean how much better than .5 MOA can you go?
I have not. Bell & Carlson uses 6061-T6.
One more thing floating barrel or bedded, in my last post i didnt ask the right question
A heavy bull barrel by itself resists vibration so it wont vibrate when shot, so that it cant hit the stock, so it wont affect the returnable zero of the barrel so bedding wont affect the vibration hence the zero of the barrel. A thin barrel needs to vibrate right? Thats the whole point of free floating. when a shot is fired the barrel moves about a little bit and if it hits the stock, it might not do the same thing everytime affecting the reapeatability of the gun, and the return to the "zero" the natural resting point of the barrel.
It's a matter of mass (weight). Barrels don't 'need' to vibrate, they
unfortunately do. If they did not vibrate at all we'd get better results. Picture a rifled hole drilled in a 2X2X2 foot block of homogenous steel. If the cartridge components were perfect (zero standard deviation) all bullets would go (hypothetically of course) through the same hole if fired in a vacuum.
If you ever get a chance mess around with some tuning forks. Much harder to get big ones to ring that small ones.
So they channel the stock out to give the barrel enough room to move about and zero every time.
Can't make flat statements like this. Free-floating is one way to get acceptable results
if everything else is OK. As mentioned I do not prefer to have free floated barrels on any of my rifles, sporters or varminters. I'm not a benchrester shooting super-heavy rifles, nor am I shooting an expensive custom receiver, I am a long range hunter playing with standard factory components mostly, but I may have a custom barrel installed on the occassional blueprinted receiver. I have worked with several sporter and varmint-weight, factory standard units that shot well under 1/2 MOA full-length (incl barrel) bedded. And they do it with a variety of loads when set up right.
It seems like bedding the action is always a good idea and depending on the barrel type you should free float ( or leave it that way, alot of the guns ive looked at are floating barrels) or fully bed the gun.
I bed them all full-length, that is, if I bed them at all. More recently I simply screw on a B&C Medalist or H-S Precision stock and get great results for the most part, if it won't shoot in one of those stocks I dump it. If it does (and the vast majority do) I can always attempt to improve it via epoxy bedding at some future date. This is more due to time constraints however. When I am serious I full length bed them regardless, especially if I want a wood stock like a thumbhole. No way I'd risk an expensive guided hunt or a once-in-a-lifetime tag on an non-bedded wood stock, laminate or walnut. That's one important variable under my control I'd want to eliminate when that first shot is make-or-break. Plus full-length bedding adds even more stiffness to the forend, and reduces/eliminates warpage if it's an extreme weather situation. I've been on several important hunts where there's one fellow in the bunch that misses a relatively shot for 'unknown' reasons. Bet this is one of them.
It seems like they both do a good thing, the barrel type should really dictate what you do, not bias of some sort.
Each rifle is a law unto itself. All we can do here is discuss theory. Then we have to reduce or elinimate every possible variable and experiment, changing only one thing at a time. I get the stock I want mounted in the condition I want it mounted in, mount an excellent scope with NO parallax at the yardage I am shooting, make sure all the screws are torqued where they need to be, trigger is adjusted correctly,
make certain there is no copper or other fouling in the bore and head to the range with about 5 or 10 different loads. If they are good loads in other rifles (personally, Noslers are my baseline as I love to hunt with them and they seem to always shoot among the best) and it still will not shoot, I become very suspicous of the barrel quality and/or receiver trueness.
Some rifles would shoot sub MOA U-bolted to a 2X4, others are far more finicky. What I am saying is that a properly bedded rifle reduces the error introduced into the entire system due to the stock. There's still at least a dozen or more potential variables possible for the average shooter to address.
Has there been any research on this if anyone knows of it id like a i link thanks
I discuss pre-hunt rifle
and shooter preparation online here:
StockysStocks.com (MBI, Inc.) prepare
Tons more online. Google it!
