Pillar bedding

[TK 1985]

Hey guys, getting ready to do my first pillar bed. I've seen guys drill oversize holes and epoxy the pillars in, and I've also watched a lesson where the stock was milled out significantly and the pillars epoxied basically just to hold them in place while the milled out area was filled with your choice of bedding compound.
What are some pros and cons of each method? I'm assuming the latter adds more strength, but if you're using say, marine Tex or one of the metal based compounds, does it add significant weight?

 

[cahunter805]

Are you making your own pillars or did you buy some? Rem 700 action?I'd recommend fitting them to your action before anything else. Many pillars are generic and don't fit very good to the action. Once you check and get them fitted either method will work. Just make sure you drill/cut the holes centered and straight. Use a drill press or mill if you have them.

 

[TK 1985]

I bought them, yes they are not fitted but I'll be bedding anyways, pillars are basically there for an inflexible surface to torque the action screws properly

 

[tinkerer]

Epoxy is not so much a filler material as a hard surface. You don't need a thick fill, just enough to surface coat. Mill out enough for the action and pillars to comfortably sit in the stock without any binding.

Coat both the stock and action with epoxy (I like Devcon 10110, steel filled epoxy).

Insert action completely into stock so it is sitting at its final position.

Remove excess. Wait 4 hours, remove stock bolts and assure the action is not permanently glued in. Reassemble and wait for 24 hour mark.

Larry
Tinkerer

 

[TK 1985]

Yeah the video I referenced was the American Gunsmithing Institute course with Darrell Holland. He mills out quite a bit.

 

[maninthemaze]

Here is pretty good write up on stress free pillar bedding. It's definitely worth a read.

Stress-Free Pillar Bedding

The man in the video used to sell his instructional dvd's. His name is Richard Franklin. I purchased two of his dvd's before I pillar bed my first rifle. I tried finding his website to provide you a link, but didn't have any luck. I don't know if he took his site down and officially retired again. If I remember correctly, he just moved from West Virginia to Montana where he's originally from.

Anyways, hope this helps and good luck.

 

[TK 1985]

Yeah I've read that, good stuff. That is what I was thinking of when I said just drilling oversize holes, I couldn't remember where I saw it.

It is just two very different ways of doing it. Another thing is I'm using a synthetic stock, so milking out may give me more strength since I would be pouring in epoxy to replace the polymer?

 

[myers129]

I would install the pillars and bedding in one process. Best chance of a true stress free bedding job IMO. The franklin videos and tutorial are good, but nothing beats trial and error.

 

[maninthemaze]

I basically did mine just like the article and videos suggested. On my Manners stock, the supplied pillars wouldn't even fit the holes. I ended up turning them down some on my poor boy lathe (drill press and file). I figured that was the better alternative than drilling the holes larger on a composite stock.

Like in the video, I used electrical tape on the very end of the tang and wrapped the barrel several times to set the height and center the barrel in the channel. Installed pillars and bedding in one shot. Everything worked out great.

 

[Clark]

I make the pillar top radius slightly smaller than the receiver radius, so the pre compression of the pillar just fits all the way around.

I put spacers around the action screws when bedding, so the actions screws will stay in the center of the pillar hole.

Also with spacers around the action screws, in a separate step I put epoxy behind the recoil lug.

This is different from Mausers where I have steel touching the bottom of the recoil lug. In Rem 700 and Sav 110 recoil lugs, I only want epoxy touching on the back.