Stock bedding observations

Grandhubert

Well-Known Member
I bought a Remington LVSF that I decided to turn into a bit of a project rifle and see what difference the various accurising steps actually make.


The rifle has now been recrowned and devcon steel epoxy and aluminium pillar bedded. The bedding compound shows that reasonable contact was being made at the rear pillar but that with the factory recoil lug/action/front pillar interaction the stock was not bearing down on the top of the aluminium pillar but on the very edge under the recoil lug to action Union. Basically the aluminium pillar as installed by Bell and Carlson was tilted ever so slightly so that the front ( where the recoil lug is) was ever so slightly higher than the rear (where the front stock screw goes).


This was promising as there would now be full contact without distorting the action as you tighten up the screws.

Unfortunately the torque screwdriver thing I ordered from MDMAbay has not arrived and so I just tightened the action screws up nice and tightly by hand.

The result was not day and night but very satisfying for reasons I will go into in a moment.

I should mention that the accuracy figures quoted in this thread are on the basis of three slow fired groups of five rounds each, "flyers" included!
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The figures before the bedding, three quarters of an inch to two inches, were improved upon in some cases but not others. By that I mean that most of the groups shot before the bedding were of the type were most of the shots cluster close together but one or two pull away from the main lot and open the measurement outs. The bedding eliminated this effect so that groups improved across the board by the amount of those flyers.

the effect of this was that the groups improved by roughly 25% across the board, a decent improvement.

the results were:

pre bedding figure first and then post bedding:

privi partisan 90 grain soft point; average velocity= 2950 fps, ES=92fps

1 3/4" ---> 1 1/4"

federal powershok 100 grain soft point; average velocity = 2980, ES=12fps

1 1/2 --->1"

Sako game head 90 grain soft point; average velocity = 3120 fps, ES = 12 fps

1" ---> 1"

norma oryx 100 grain soft point, velocity not taken

1 1/2" ---> 1"

norma semipoint 100 grain soft point; velocity not taken

1" ---> 3/4"

on balance it has helped improved consistency but has not turned this rifle into a tack driver with factory ammo in the heavier weights

i do not have much call for a bullet of less than 85 grains weight and so will not be doing much with bullets under that limit.

the next step is to gather some bullets and brass together and come up with a few home loads to try and see what sort of groupings can be coaxed out of the rifle now that the consistency is as good as it can be from the perspective of bedding and the crown.

i did also notice that this rifle has quite a tight chamber, compare to a tikka, blaser and sauer present at the same range session.

The next step is load development to see how far the groups can shrunk without a custom barrel and action blueprint, ie the expensive stuff.
 
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