I have read some excellent descriptions on how to pillar bed different actions and they all seem to mention two pillars!
On my cz 550 in 375 H/H there are an extra recoil lug that is placed in the foreend right behind the forward screw which goes into a sliding nut in a recess under the barrel.This extra lug is just laid down loose in the stock and is (probably) meant to contact the platform where the "sliding nut " is .The other lug is on the action just in front of the mag well.
The question is now ,should i try to put in 3 pillars ,one at each screw or should i only put in 2 at the action screws and then try to do some kind of "normal" bedding around the front screw.If i bed out past the front screw i will have bedded the barrel about 5 inch.out,is that OK?
How do i go about bedding a recoil lug that is not attached to the barrel. Maybe i could just as well throw it out or is that being stupid.
The reason for me to start bedding it in the first place was that when tightening the front screw i could really feel a lot of movement of the foreend,and it will not shot any better than 2.inch or worse with all the traditional 270 and 300 gr. bullets.It actually shoots best with a cast Rcbs 250 gr. FN at low velocity (2000 fps.)
When i bought the rifle i persuaded the dealer to swap the stock on my rifle with a much nicer piece of wood sitting on a Cz 550 in 416 rigby which is identical except for the cal. I now think that this change of stock could be the reason for my problem with accuracy . It will not shot any better than 1.5 - 2.inch or worse with all the traditional 270 and 300 gr. bullets.
Anyone familiar with bedding this particular rifle or anyone with some good advice please help me out.
I already have some epoxy super glue and Brownels acraglass .

oneshot,

I would love to see a good discussion on this one! I have spent a lot of time thinking about these rifles, but have never bedded one.

It seems to me like the forward screw/dovetail assembly is a "hold-down" rather than a recoil lug. I think it is used to keep the barrel down under recoil so that the thrust on the regular recoil lug is straight back. Does this seem to make sense with your rifle?

Thanks for the great question.

Don

oneshot,

How much area is there on the rear face of the forward "recoil lug" fixed to the barrel? Is there enough area for it to make sense as a true recoil lug?

I had hoped some of the old hands would speak up here!

Don

This is a case of better off not to piller bed the gun...Just glass bed it...you can handle that forend in three ways:

1. Toss the screw and glass it..
2. Free flot it. and/or remove it.
3. Use it as a recoil lug that just makes contact in the rear with clearance on the bottom, sides and front...

I believe you could also glass the action and leave the forend as is as long as it didn't bind anywhere...

As you see, you have a lot of options, and could, in fact, try them all and use the one that shoots the best group.

------------------
Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

Thanks Don and Ray
I havent been home since I posted my cry for help and I'm sorry that I have been slow with the feedback .It seems to me that the forward lug which is not attached to the barrel must have a function in absorbing the recoil. The "hump" under the barrel where the front screw goes in has a flat surface to the rear where it contacts the front of the removable lug ,this contact surface is only .15 inch so the barrel cannot be raised much if you want any affect from this system ,the barrel must almost rest on the top of the upper surface of the lug.
Ray could be right when he suggest tossing the screw and then bed the front.
But although the 375 s recoil isnt all that bad I still don't like to go without the lug which after all is 2.0 inch of steel with two "legs" planted in the stock (it looks like an "F" turned 90 degrees right) ,the CZ people must have had some good reason to put it there!.
I might go for Mr.Atkinsons suggestion # 3 combined with bedding around the attach point of the front screw.
Maybe by now you start to think that I'm being too scientific about this, but my idea was to establish a "standard" way of dealing with this particular model as I know that it is becoming increasingly popular and I know of at least one more 550 mag.owner that has been trying to figure out how to deal with these rifles.
It might well be that I have to try all of Mr. Atkinsons suggestions plus some of my own ideas before I get it right,I had just hoped that someone out there had already gone through all the trouble and Im still hoping for more replies to this thread.

If its a standard your looking for then perhaps you should consider slipping a recoil lug between the action and the barrel like a Remington and bedding the rifle in the standard manner of a Mauser , M-70 or Rem. 700...That works real well...Just make a mill cut where the threads and the barrel meet the action and put a 1/4" recoil lug in that space and screw the barrel back in remembering to keep the headspace correct...

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

As a rule when bedding the BRNO ZKKs in 375 I did go ahead and bed the barrel out to and including the auxilary lug. In reality the action has sufficient lug as to handle the 375 recoil with no problem but I usually bedded the forward lug anyway as it was expected. These rifles always shot very well. Regards, Bill.

Here's oneshot's sketch of the rifle. The x in a circle is a (rear) crossbolt. Hope this helps kick off the discussion!

Don

[This message has been edited by Don G (edited 08-25-2001).]

My advice was:

Steel or aluminum pillar at rear.

"Poured pillar" at action lug that goes to the flats fore-and-aft of the lug. Bottom of action lug floated by using a tape spacer during bedding. (If you have access to tools you could machine a forked pillar.)

Fully bedded from tang to 1" in front of barrel lug, including the "F-Stop", which is permanently bedded into the stock.

Exception is the bottom of the barrel lug and sliding nut, which must also float.

The forward screw is left just less than snug. It only serves to keep the barrel from rising above the F-stop in recoil. You may need to use loctite blue or thread sealer to keep it from working out.

This would be a fiddly job, requiring at least three stages of bedding.

1) Crossbolt.

2) Rear pillar and F-Stop. Bed the rear pillar and the bottom of the F-stop to set final height and angle of action and barrel.

3) The normal full-length bedding.

Don

I do it all in one shot. I am happy using poured pillars at both ends of the action. For the barrel lug, I glue it to the barrel with a shim on top of it between it and the barrel. I push it up tight against the recoil surface on the barrel. I glue it on with 5 minute epoxy on the top surface only and let it set. I don't make any effort to degrease since I really don't want it to stick that well. I then bed the whole ting into the stock. On removal the plate remains in the stock and it is a simple matter to remove the paper I used for a shim. Hopefully there are no bubble or voids and I have a nicely finished bedding job after about a half hour of clean up! Regards, Bill

Bill,

You have a lot more confidence than I do. I do it it stages so I can check the fit about a dozen times as I go along.

With my luck the 5 minute epoxy would turn out to be invincible!

Pure fear on my part -- and my time is free.

Don

Thanks again Don and Bill.
it`s really nice to get a lot of competent inputs and at some point or another I will have to decide exactly how to do this.It could probably be done in many ways and still be allright.
I will probably do it in steps but I kind of like the idea of lightly glueing the front lug to the barrel so that it will stay in the right position during the bedding proces.A metal pillar will be installed at the rear action bolt ( because I had already made one ) and this pillar together with the front lug should act as 2 stable points before pouring a pillar around the action lug and bedding the rest of the action.As don suggests it is probably best to leave the front screw a little less than snug but it would be easy to experiment with this when shooting after the job is done.
Bill: you wrote that the rifles shot very well, could you be more specifik ? was it sub MOA. If I understand You correct the barrel is resting on the auxillary lug after the bedding job and the paper shim was only used to make it easyer to separate the lug and the barrel?
Within the next couple of days I will try to go from theory to practical work and hopefully by the end of the week I will have found out if it works and I`d better hurry because on September 1. duck, goose and pigeon hunting season starts and then i will be out shotgunning for 3 days and then off to work for about 10 days. By the way we have no bag limits in Denmark.

Regards
Oneshot

To me a rifle that shoots very well is shooting at or around the MOA mark for a heavy hunting caliber. More importantly it hits where you expect it to consistently.
A stock Lee Enfield that shoots very well is doing 2 Moa. A winchester lever 30/30 about the same. A 22-250 is doing .5 or better.
When ever I am shooting something in the 375 and up class I find that I can shoot a couple of good groups then watch groups size increase as I keep shooting!
I have not seen a BRNO 375 that set up right shot badly.(that would be 2.5 MOA+). Regards,Bill.

I would suggest not to pillar bed, or bed on the barrel. The reason for this is that a pillar bedded gun chambered for a heavy round like the .375 will loosen its stock screws to fast. If you still want to pillar bed I would suggest a poured pillar of a softer material like acraglas.
For best precision it is usually easiest to achieve this with a free floating barrel, because as the barrel heats up it will expand lenghtwise, and thus it will not make proper contact at the barrel bedding, or it can even put tensions in your barrel, making groups go wild, or you can get different point of impact.