I got a hair up my rear about wanting to do a DIY rifle accurizing project recently and I finally got around to drilling the holes needed to install pillars in my wood stock. The pillars i ordered are not adjustable and appear to be short. I'm not sure what to do. The cheap side of me says remove material from the bottom of the stock until the bottom metal touches the pillars, but is that ok? OR is getting new pillars, somehow, that stick out just past the bottom of the stock the proper way to do this?

Also, any additional pointers and tips fro pillar and glass bedding an action is appreciated.

I'd be tempted to superglue or epoxy in a few washers on the bottom end to make up the shortfall.

What rifle are you bedding?

Dude! I was totally thinking about doing that but I thought it would be too much ghetto rigging/redneck engineering to do that and it wouldn't be proper.

This would be a Remington 700 30-06.

You can get custom made pillars for that gun on eBay. Nice stuff back when I did mine.

Check out Ernie's site below where you can order the pillars and he has good instructions as well.

link

Do it right, toss the short pillars and get some new ones.

You should also bed the action while you are in there. Read up on it.

I was able to sweet talk someone at my office to make me custom pillars. I know the lengths that I need to make the pillars fit flush to the bottom of the stock inletting.

Question:
How much longer should I make it? I've heard flush and I've also heard slightly longer by about 0.010-0.020".
I have a choice between aluminum and plain carbon steel. Which would y'all pick?

I would choose the slightly longer option. Ten thousandths additional length ought to be plenty.

Aluminum or carbon steel? - That's a tough call. Probably aluminum as it is one less thing to worry about rusting on you.

My son tells me that there are corrosion issues where dissimilar metals meet, which would favor carbon steel. I've never seen any corrosion on aluminum pillared rifles that I've owned though. - Rifles with the Hogue rubberized stocks for example.

Make it slightly proud. Aluminum, so you can remove metal easily. All my pillars are aluminum.

thanks for the input guys. In case you're wondering, I'm getting them made out of aluminum and decided to go 0.015" longer. I figured slightly longer is better slightly shorter or even with inletting. i put a little spacer/washer and was still able to cycle without any issues. I can't think of anything else that longer pillars would possibly have a negative impact on.