Funny as heck. I went to the range today because of this thread.

Well, there you go. Different perspectives entirely.

To me, fiddling with the rifle and finding ways to improve it are a part of the joy of owning it. Finding out why it does this or that is just as interesting as any other aspect of owning it. To another guy, just shooting it--and with factory ammo, at that---might be all he wants out of it. Someone such as yourself...if I'm reading you right, you take it to someone and order up a program to optimize it, then you like to hunt with confidence and there's nothing wrong with that either. Guys have been known to buy a brand new Model 70 and take it to a gunsmith who removes everything from the action and builds a total custom rifle around it with all the precision machine work that can be done to it. If they can afford that and it makes them happy, fine and dandy. Some of us would rather see what we can do with our own two hands and see what we can learn along the way. Then there's the guy who buys a cheap single-shot that won't keep within five inches at 100, but he shoots his deer every year from 30 yards and he's happy as a lark.

The supply of different perspectives is inexhaustible.

Well I took the rifle over to a buddy's tonight who has a good torque wrench. We tightened the action screws to the same torque while adding some removable locktite. I'm going to try and make it to the range this weekend, shoot some shots to get the barrel ready and then try a few different types of ammo. We'll see what happens. If that fixes it enough so that it shoots close to 1 inch groups, I'll probably start developing a load for the gun...if not, it'll be whether or not to get a better stock and have it bedded. Thanks for all the good advice and sheer entertainment value along the way.

Good plan!

Like I think I said earlier, sometimes you just get a rifle that's a bit finicky, and it takes more work to find just that right load or factory load. I'd most certainly play with loads before I started spending big money on rifle modifications. I consider my Ruger 223 (completely stock, as purchased) to be finicky, but on the other hand I shoot all sorts of bullet weights and types in it, so I guess I've spent more time working up loads for that one rifle than any other that I've ever owned. I'm not really a patient guy, so I have to be in the mood to load and shoot.

as if there aren't some big ole egos on this side as well

[/quote]

Childish way of trying to get a rise. [/quote]


As if this isn't....

Which hunting rifle would be better after a little fall from a tree or a saddle??? Bedded or not bedded You are out in the rocky mtn hunting elk. Five miles from camp. Lean your gun against a tree for lunch time. Wind comes up an your gun falls to the ground. Would you want a bedded gun or not.

I would take a bedded rifle

Shoot Fire and Save the Matches Boyz!




POOF!

Yep...

Hows the crown look?

I didn't drop my non-bedded rifle. I fell on it, from off of a wooden stand ladder. Fell on rocks (small rocks, but still rocks). Didn't hurt the Leupold scope and didn't hurt the rifle or the POI. Bedding is nice, but it is not the be-all, end-all, gotta-have thing for your rifle. If you want it, fine. If you don't have it, it isn't a disaster. My two best shooters are my 220 (bedded) and my new 260 (Tupperware stock and not bedded). Most of you just wish you had rifles that shoot like that. And my Ruger Hawkeye, which shot a nice 1/2 inch group a day or two ago (I just measured it) is in that Ruger Tupperware stock and isn't bedded. I do think that if you want the last little tiny bit of grouping improvement you can get, bedding is a good thing, but I have a lot of accuracy improving steps to go through before I get down to that.

Take a crummy shooting rifle and bed it and you still most likely have a crummy shooting, though bedded, rifle.

I'll take this bet.

so let me get this straight, without calling anybody out but the case length has to be right,the primers have to be right,the bullet has to be just right right bc etc. the powder brand and the charge just right,the barrel right,the twist right, the crown, the length just right,the amount of cleaning just right,the break in just right,the trigger brand the weight of pull on said trigger just right,the scope mounts they can only be one brand all else is junk, the the rings,lapped, the scope just right are your just a rookie,the temp, the barometric press.,the wind,the rest has to be right,the length of pull,theres more but some wont bed there action cause it's not worth the extra effort that's some funny shirt right there, tightin those screws!!

McMillan 

Official Sponsor of LRH

 

Join Date: Jun 2011

Posts: 105

Re: Should I bed a Mcmillan fiberglass stock?

There are a couple of different issues being discussed here, and I would like to add something if I might. I think I have a unique perspective on both.

My guess would be 70% of the stocks we sell never get bedded. To this group I am sure the percentage is much lower be generally long range shooter want to get everything possible out of their rifle when it comes to accuracy. Unless you are buying a custom shop rifle or one that uses the squirt in thermoset bedding production rifles are not bedded. With plastic stocks the recoil lug is molded in, wood stocks they are machined in. In either case we can do as good or better a job of inletting the stocks than the mass producers. So, we say, your rifle should shoot as well or better than it did with the factory stock without bedding it, but, if you want the very best accuracy from your rifle, you need to glass bed it. It may not improve the accuracy much because we find that with most production barreled action and a McMillan stock, you can get very close to the accuracy potential without bedding, but you will never know how much that improvement is going to be until you bed it. A good clue is if your rifle is shooting 1 moa your improvement is likely to be very little. Very few productions rifle will shoot a lot better than that even if the shooter can. Any larger groups than an inch can give you hope that the bedding will make a bigger difference.

Now to the really important part, pillar bedding. I think I can speak to this issue because my father, Gale McMillan was the originator of the practice. It came out of necessity and had nothing to do with accuracy. In the early days of fiberglass stocks, both Brown Precision Stocks (the originator) and McMillan stocks were made using the lightest material we could find. As a result both had a similar problem. Brown used polyurethane foam to blow out the cloth against the mold and because they molded their receiver area and barrel channels in, there was foam under the action. We used a very light filler made of epoxy resin and micro balloons. With both stocks you could crush the material between the receiver and the trigger guard by tightening the guards screws. The more you tightened the more the receiver would move and the more your shots would wander. 
To solve this problem my father would drill the guard screw holes out to 3/8". He would wax (Johnson's Paste wax! Still the best mold release on the market when it comes to bedding) the screws up and then let the bedding material fill in the hole around the screws during the bedding process. BTW he used Duro Steel filled Epoxy until they added concrete to the mixture for some unknow reason and it no longer was suitable. In an effort to find a substitute, a friend and customer who own a Marine Supply and Boat store told him about Marine Tex. he was also the first to use Marine Tex for bedding........back to the point, afterr the bedding material set, he would drill the holes out just slightly bigger than the guard screws so the pillars were made of bedding material but they were dense enough to stop the receiver area of the stock from compressing.
Eventually we found aluminum pillars to be easier as just as effective so we switched. Word spreads fast in bench rest community and some everyone was pillar bedding.
Today we refer to it as state of the art. But, technology and materials have changed over the years and all but our EDGE Tech (we actually make them with aluminum pillars)and bench rest stocks (Gale was th first to glue a benchrest action into a rifle and toady a great number of benchrest rifles are still built that way)have a dense enough material in the action area that using normal torque settings on the guard screws the material will not compress at all. The Marines tested the stocks we made for them under 100 ft lbs of torque and the got less than .0001 compression on the receiver area. Of course we built those stocks to be Marine proof, we recommend 45-50 in lbs on the guard screws.
One last thing, pillars do one thing and one thing only, stop compression. They don't increase accuracy or reliability and they don't allow you to remove and replace the barreled action any more often without degradation of the bedding. If a McMillan stock is bedded properly using a good compound, like Marine Tex, pillars are unnecessary. So why do we use them? Because it's state of the art, and that is the way people expect it to be done.

I hope this helps.

__________________
Kelly D. McMillan
http://www.mcmillanusa.com/



Yeah forget all that. I'd venture a guess firehose and his buddies weren't aware of this. Yawn......keep on posting you'll do it last or never and keep wasting components. Oh and BTW who measures for runout and what have you found is acceptable?

For the record Kelly McMillan is the poster and his father is Gale McMillan.

......and for those that have rifles with pillars that won't shoot properly scratch the pillars down and skim bed over the pillars with a tight lug. Thank me later.

Read what he wrote A good clue is if your rifle is shooting 1 moa your improvement is likely to be very little. Very few productions rifle will shoot a lot better than that even if the shooter can. Any larger groups than an inch can give you hope that the bedding will make a bigger difference. He seems to be saying If your rifle shoots one MOA or better don't bother getting it bedded!

Then don't bed yours it is yours! I want all mine bedded without exception. But they are mine . Most that want all heir rifles to be all they can be want theirs bedded but no one is twisting your arm. Just tighten those screws.

Nope. But that's OK. Keep arguing consistency is not a good thing. You'll be lucky to get one load to shoot. Action screw gets loose, retighten then you don't have same POI nor same "accuracy". I have multiple rifles that shoot to the same POI after removing and reassembling. No stress on the barreled action, etc., etc., etc.

You think gunsmiths, BR shooters, USAMU, etc do it just to say they do? If you think so no amount of proof is going to help. Go ahead and take pics of the couple of good groups you get and then when you shoot crappy ones toss them in the trash and claim the barrel needs cleaning, screws need to be retorqued, might check the crown, blah, blah. Yeah that's the ticket.

Accuracy is based on many things. One of those is consistency both with the rifle & components. Straight ammunition. You measure runout and how it affects your rig? If it's not consistent you wasted hundreds on measuring equipment. If it's crooked you know it can be straightened to very good effect don't you?

You just don't or won't understand the concept.

Just make sure the loose nut on the controls is not an issue. That would be terrible.

Like I said earlier in this post, most folk don't actually understand bedding. Good to have the article by McMillan handy.

Well, I finally made it out to the range to put a few bullets downrange after tightening the action screws. As recommended, due to having just cleaned the gun, I shot 4 times with some cheaper ammo and the "group" was probably 4 inches...this made me nervous that I hadn't made any headway towards getting the gun to shoot. After letting the barrel cool, I shot a group with some Win Ballistic Silver tips and it grouped just over an inch! That was a great relief. Next I shot a group with some Fed Trophy Copper and it was even better at right about an inch group! This was also shot in a 10-15 mph direct crosswind. That was all I needed to decide that now I can start developing a load for the rifle and might buy a Bell and Carlson for it as well. Thanks to everyone on this forum who posted good advice on how to fix this problem.

See, all that fuss over nuthin.

Yup, turns out the action screws were the issue. I'm probably gonna get a B&C stock for it now in the next couple months to drop some weight for backpacking.