I disagree with your analogy of using large pillars that conform to the action surface from real-world hands-on, experience in bedding all kinds of Remingtons with just brass tubing. I do my own machine work and have my own rifle range to 3oo yards. If a barrel is not shooting in the 2's and lower, it becomes a varmint hunting barrel. The larger pillars that are contoured to fit the actions are actually for marketing purposes and pride of ownership. The public's perception of what is needed is very often far from the truth, but if enough people repeat something, it becomes gospel Truth.
The 22 PPCs, 6 PPCs, and 6 BR's that I have bedded using just simple pillars from copper tubing have shot extremely well. My first 22 PPC was on a 40x, bedded in the Remington 40x BBR stock. On the first registered match, I shot with this 22 PPC, my agg for five- five-shot groups was .189 and the warm-up five-shot group was .069. The old German Gunsmith was well known for building benchrest rifles and no idiot.
We learned a long time ago, metal on metal produces strange harmonics(action resting on the pillar), so a tad bit of bedding material on top of a pillar should be protocol. Of course, the same thing applies to Al bedding blocks in stocks, but some will shoot very, very well in spite of no bedding. I bed every stock of mine that has a bedding block before I ever fire the first shot.
The Devcon product has varied so much in quality, I ditched the product for Grey Marine Tex, so have thousands of others.
