I have a Remington VLS that I bought second hand awhile ago. When I removed the stock to give it a good clean I noticed two pieces of aluminium (they are 1"x .5" and look like they have been cut out of a coke can or beer can and have been placed on top of each other for added thickness) placed abot 4" from the tip of the fore-end. Does anyone know what they're for?

[ 08-26-2002, 04:39: Message edited by: LazoG ]

Most Remingtons come with a "high spot" pressure point near the tip of the stock. The idea is the pressure dampens the barrel vibration helping the rifle shoot more consistantly. It sounds to me like someone was toying with the amount of pressure being applied. They either removed the high spot in the stock and started over, or they were experimenting with the position of the pressure point on the barrel.

I agree with Ol` Joe

Basically, forend tip bedding hepls when you have crappy action bedding.

Free floating barrels and dud action bedding don't go together real well.

Mike

Actually, many sporter-weight barrels shoot more consistently with a bit (up to 20 pounds or so) of upward pressure on the underside of the barrel near the stock forend. In some cases, this makes a barrel shoot better than if it were free-floated or fully bedded, regardless of the quality or lack thereof of the bedding of the rifle's action. Some people use a slice of business card for this purpose, but a piece cut from an aluminum beer can seems less likely to change the amount of pressure it applies.

So is my action bedded so badly that it needs these shims or should I just get rid of them? Are these rifles fully free floated?

I've been experimenting with loads for awhile now and can't seem to find one that shoots any good could the shims be the cause of it?

Eldeguello, you mention that the upward pressure makes sporter weight rifles shoot better, is this also the case for heavy barrel rifles like the VLS?

Would a HS Precision stock eliminate all these concerns with bedding and pressure points or just make my rifle look cool?

I've been experimenting with loads for awhile now and can't seem to find one that shoots any good could the shims be the cause of it?

Could be the previous owner was having fits trying o get it to shoot. He was playing with forend tip pressure in an attempt to make it shoot. He failed, he sold it, you bought it. Hope not though.

All may not be lost. Properly bed the action. Try it with with and without the shims. I have also used bits of cartridge box in the same way. Try moving the shims foreward and backward. If you still can't make it shoot put a quality barrel on it.

LazoG,

Let's assume that the scope and mounts are OK.

If the action is bedded properly and the barrel free floats and you can't get it to shoot, then the barrel is shit.

By the way, that applies whether the barrel looks like a drinking straw or a car axle.

Shims under the barrel, bits of paper, your sister's bra etc. is like trying to turn a turd back into food.

Mike

You're a lot better off if you can get your rifle to shoot without forearm pressure for one simple reason, consistency. It doesn't matter what type or brand of stock that you use for your rifle, they all move with different climate conditions. As long as that stock is touching the barrel, it doesn't matter how consistent your shimstock is, it's going to move with the stock and cause irregular amounts of forearm pressure, which will change point of impact from one day to the next. I'd lot rather have a hunting rifle that will produce 1MOA groups, day in and day out, rather than it shooting .5-.75 groups inconsistently from one point of aim to another. I think most would agree. The trick is when you free-float your barrel, you need to remove a lot of material in the forend. Less wood or glass, less movement. This doesn't mean that you need a huge gap between the barrel and forend. Normally around .030" is enough with a #3 to #5 contoured barrel at the forend tip. Where the majority of the material can be removed is directly underneath the barrel, where it can't be seen. That .030" gap should also be used on either side of the barrel too. Most factory inletting, that they call free-floating, is a bit overboard. Just don't get carried away with the dremel

I read an article some time back in Rifle mag. the author had a good shooting rifle and he wanted to make it a great shooter. he worked on a few things but the trick that shrunk his groups in half was putting some pressure at the tip of the stock. He used business cards for testing, his test was that you could just pull out one thickness of card. He then measured the thickness of the card shimms and replaced it with material that would not hold moisture, In is case it was plastic. The point was that the dampening effect of the pressure point was enough to reduce the barrel swing and improve accuracy. He had worked over all the other issues, action & bolt. Best of luck, JB

Mike, you do have a way with words BUT you're right!

I'd have used other wording but would ultimately conclude the same as Mike375. I just went through the same with a factory Win .338 bbl. I've since rebarrelled with a Lothar Walther and all is fine now. The pity is it took me about 230 test-rounds to realize. Well I guess, some learn faster than others (or me) .

The custom stocked 270 I have would on the third shot drift (1 1/2") to the right and up and only get worse as the barrel heated up. So I free floated the entire barrel channel and glass bedded the action - results showed some improvement - no more drift - but groups were not as tight as I like (1" or so). So last week I added some bedding compound to the forward 2" of the stock and stuck the barreled action back in there to cure. At the range last weekend - holy cow - 3 shots with 150 gr NBT with 55 gr of SC4831 were together in a nice little 3/8" cluster - no drift at all. Can't yet speak for the other loadings with 130 and 140 gr bullets. I did the same approach to a 338 Ruger 77 I have and same impressive results. I will tell in time if the impact point changes due to warpage - but somehow I think that will be minimal if the stock is well finished and sealed on the inside. This approach with the forend probably does not generate much upward pressure on the barrel - no weights were added - but it does control movement.

Some rifles respond very well to some upward pressure in the forend, and DO NOT SHIFT ZERO!! For example, I have a Mauser in 6mm/284 bedded this way, and it has a Myrtlewood stock. If there is ANY WOOD in the world that is prone to swelling, shrinking, and warping due to atmospheric conditions, this is it!! This rifle, made in 1964, has "lived" in Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, Insdiana, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania. It was zeroed in 1964 with the Leupold 7.5X scope in a Redfield Jr. mount, which it still wears, and has not changed more than 2 or 3 inches from its original zero since then!! This rifle consistently groups five shots into the same ragged hole at 100 yards, and I doubt it would shoot better if free-floated. Some barrels are no doubt better free-floated, and some are NOT, AND UPWARD PRESSURE IN THE FOREND DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY CONVEY A "WANDERING ZERO"!!

The ONLY barrels I free float are heavy barrelled target/varmint rifles. Everything else is bedded tight with some pressure. I've never owned a synthetic stock (and that's only half that story!), and have never had any problem with changing POI or zero wanderering with good wood.

The shims in the fore-end are WAY too big. Use strips about an eighth inch wide and half inch long placed at about 45 degrees from the center-line about an inch behind the fore-end tip, if there is one.

In order for forend pressure to work the rest of the inletting HAS to be *right*. It's very difficult to do and not many do it well.

Freefloating barrels are a cheap and easy way to get consistantcy......but it's usually consistantly not quite as good as it *could* be......unless the action, stock, and barrel are set up for it.

I know thats blaphemey to most shooters now days, but one things for sure. Most shooters have never seen a well bedded rifle and freefloating DOES help a bad bedding job, so freefloating continues to be done.

The reason that most folks find that pressure bedding and not free-floating barrels is the way to go is the fact that a lot of barrels out there are not properly stress relieved before being finished. Even the large contoured barrels suffer from this, but are not as noticable on paper when they do move. Free floating a barrel is not an excuse for a poor bedding job. If done properly, it provides a much more reliable, consistent shooting platform. This isn't a new idea by any means. It's been used for a long time with excellent results. We've never put a rifle together yet that wouldn't shoot under a MOA with the bargain brand factory ammo, and we never pressure bed.
Everytime you fire your rifle, that barrel is producing a whipping action that will contact the stock. The more you fire the rifle, the more stress it's putting into the stock. Common sense will tell you that the wood or plastic is going to give before that barrel does, hence changing the amount of pressure that is on the forend tip. There isn't a stock that has ever been made that won't move under different climate conditions. It doesn't matter if you have the worlds best sealer in 50 coats, it will still move. The laws of expansion and contraction of materials dictates that this will happen even in the most dense steels, let alone a piece of wood.

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Now I'm really confused.

Thanks anyway.

Lazo

Lazo,

Try this to unconfuse you.

Go to a rifle range that has plenty of bench rest shooters. Don't even worry about their benchrest guns, which by the way will all have completely floating barrels.

Ask them about their non benchrest guns and if they are free floating. I will give you $100 for every pressure point bedded rifle and you can give me $1 for every full floating barrel. If you can travel the whole of America and then Australia next, you will be broke at the end

After you have done that, contact some of the gun makers like HSPrecision that offer some pretty tight grouping guarantees and you will also find they are not into pressure point bedding.

This is not to say that some shooters have not had better results from pressure point bedding. But if they have, it will be for one of the following reasons.

1) Crappy action bedding.

2) Crappy barrel.

But in 99% of these cases the fix will be not be a real fix.

My advice would be to get your Rem 700 and throw the Coke tin shims in the bin. Then have the rifle the bedded and free floated.

That provides the ideal platform. If accuracy is not then satisfactory there could be problems with the barrel, the scope mounts, the scope or your loads. Barrel problems could be the barrel itself or the chambering of the barrel or the muzzle needs recrowning.

Pressure point bedding is like being grossly overweight and solving the problem by moving to a neighbourhood that has no hills and all the shops are close by as well as buying a bigger set of pants and of course getting involved in vigorous activity like watching TV and listening to the radio

Mike

Most of my rifles have the barrel touching the stock. Some have the forend touching the stock for the entire length of the barrel. Two of these rifles are my favorites and have proven themselves. One is a M-52C with the heavy barrel. This rifle has been used for both postition shooting by two top level shooters for decades. This is a proven rifle. Anyone could fill cyberspace with all the capacity it has of words saying that this M52 Winchester is not accurate and it would not matter.

The other rifle is a old M-70 that is also a factory bed system that has a screw holding the barrel to the stock. This rifle stays sighted in and shoots excellent groups.

There are a lot of good ideas around. The ones that work have been done right.

Now that J. Belk and Don Martin have spoken on this issue, (as I had hoped they would), there's no need for further comment. But I'm glad I wasn't crazy to believe that the idea of some upward pressure in the forend WAS NOT just a means of compensating for poor action bedding!! It turns out that it is just the opposite-that free-floating is done for this reason!!

OK that was a very convincing post Mike. Thanks for putting it right into perspective (that $100 to every $1 argument gets me every time). I've decided to remove the shims and compare loads. This may sound dumb but how important is it to retension the screws on the stock to the corect specification? You also comment on scope mouts effecting accuracy, how so(probably another dunmb question)?

Thanks again for the replies

Lazo

[ 08-28-2002, 17:19: Message edited by: LazoG ]

Lazo,

This will be more than you want but here goes

There should be plenty of typos here

Before going to your other query, one last word on pressure point. If you could do it perfectly and all else was equal, then in theory it should be better than free floating because it would have an effect like shortening the barrel which in turn produces a stiffer barrel. In spite of Mr Eldeguello's comments, the main time pressure point bedding shows up as an advantage is when you have a poorly bedded action. In addition for factory guns is the cosmetics beause the factory only has to worry about the barrel fitting into the stock.

I am 100% sure that Jack Belk will agree with me when I say that if you free float the average factory gun and neatly and equally enlarge the barrel channel, that when the rifle is reassembled the barrel will be off center.

With screw tension, scopes and scope mounts, once you have a knowledge on why a gun will be accurate or inaccurate, then the ansers to those queries will automatically come you way.

When you fire you gun the barrel vibrates. The object is to get the bullet to leave the barrel at the same point of the swing of the barrel.

The best wway to think of it is to scale everything up and slow everything down.

So let's assume you have your rifle mounted on a swivel and the rifle swings from left to right and then right to left and so on. We will also assume that if you looked through the telescope while this was going on, then the cross wires would move 10 feet across the target in the distance between far left and far right. In other words if you fired the gun at the far left of the swing and then fired again at the far right of the swing, the bullets would be 10 feet apart.

Now if you tried hit a target at 100 yard, then you would have time your shot. If wanted to get a reasonable group at 100 yards you would have to pull the trigger when the gun was in the same postion.

Now let us assume that you get yourself in to the swing of things and you are hitting the tin can everytime at 100 yards. So far so good. However you will only continue to hit the tin can provided the gun maintains the same rate of speed when it swings from right to left and back again and also the gun will need to swing in the same direction each time.

However, the swivel on which your gun is mounted is not perfect. So there is some variation in the rate of swing and the direction of swing. Maybe instead of swiveling in a horizonatal motion there is a bit of up and down as well.

What a good barrel does is the counterpart of your gun swiveling at almost exactly the same speed and in the same direction for each shot.

However a good barrel adds something else to the equation. If we come back to your gun and its swivel mount, we will assume that the table or bench that the gun is mounted on is not real stable. So when you are shooting I come over and lean on the bench which means the whole thing moves and you miss.

A good barrel is also like having your gun/swivel setup mounted on a very stable bench so that when I lean on your bench it does not make so much difference to where the shot lands.

In the case of the barrel, the counterpart of me leaning on your bench from time to time is different fouling conditions in the barrel (clean barrel, dirty barrel) and variations in loads.

Now to the bedding and screw tension. The bedding is like the very ground that our shooting bench is mounted on. If the ground starts moving about then we are in trouble. In fact we tighten its mounts in all sorts of different ways. But if everything is nice and solid and fits properly we don't need to worry about how much we tighten things down.

In fact a well bedded rifle that has the screws backed of just a little bit while shooting a group, will continue to group. In a well bedded rifle the action screws will also stay tight.

A well bedded action is like a table with nice even legs on nice level ground. Putting weights on the table or altering bolt tension for bolts that hold the table to the floor will not alter the postion of the table. Crappy bedding is a table with uneven legs or a table on uneven ground. Thus putting a weight on the table will alter its position when you have uneven legs or uneven ground.

Just as the table with uneven legs or a table on uneven grounmd can move about if you lean on the table, so it is with your rifle's action when the bedding is not right. In fact it moves about with each shot which in turn effects how the barrel vibrates.

I don't know if know what is involved in bedding, but if not it basically involves matching the action to the stock by use of epoxy resin. Basically, epozy resin is put into the stock and then the rifle assembled. A release agent or wax is out on the action so that you can get the rifle apart when the epozy cures. The action is all uneven like a table with uneven legs so what we are doing is making the floor match up exactly to the table legs. The "floor" of course being the stock.

Now to mounts and scope.

When your fire your rifle, the accelaration during recoil is so great that the mounts flex and insides of the scope jump about.

Now none of that is a problem if everything returns to its original postion after the shot is fired. With mount or scope problems things do not always return to the original their original postion after the shot is fired. If things do not return then it means when you fire your next shot you will in fact be point the barrel in a slightly diferent position as compared to the previous shot. Thus the bullet lands on a different part of the target.

If we now come back to out pressure point bedding to finish up. You will remember in the analogy I used for a vibrating barrel we had your gun mounted on a swivel and that from left to right meant 10 feet of bullet movement at the target.

What pressure point bedding can do is the equivalent of reducing the amount of swivel. So lets say it reduces it from 10 feet to 6 feet. What this will mean is that if your bench is not mounted very well I come over and lean on the becnh while you shoot, things will not be as bad if the swivel of the gun from left to right is only 6 feet instead of 10 feet.

In addition, pressure point bedding also adds some mechanical support.

But if we stick with the swiveling gun analogy, while pressure point bedding is the equivalent of reducing the swing from one side to the other from 10 feet to 6 feet, it allows for a varying degree in speed and exact direction of the swing.

Hence pressure point bedding helps when you have crappy bedding. With proper bedding you don't need the interference it causes.

By the way, with regards to action screw tension, a quick check on how good bedding is, is to back of the rear screw completely. A properly bedded rifle won't change much. A poorly bedded rifle will usually do two things.

1) Change point of impact.

2) The groups will improve for a few shots.

Hope this has been of some help for you and not a hinderance.

Mike

Sort of did a little homework here on the expansion properties of steels, wood and carbon/graphite elements (synthetic stock). The unit of expansion is the unit of lenght change per degree F change. Stainless steel is 10.4 X 10-6(minus six) inches, wood is 2.1 X 10-6 and carbon graphite is 1.5 X 10-6. So, steel is by far the leading source of movement with changing temperatures (environment or heat from shooting). Wood fibers expand when wet - but if there is no path for moisture to impregnate the wood then no warpage - water itself doesn't do anything until it freezes - then it expands unmercifully. Stress would increase with contact between the moving steel and the relatively unmoving wood or graphite - I can appreciate the importance now of a properly stress relieved barrel - but see very little difference between wood or carbon/graphite stocks. Wood will yield more than graphite over time from recoil and compression (tightening screws) but glass bedding of either type of stock should pretty much make things equal.

rifleman1,

I don't know about smaller calibers like 222 etc but for larger calibers, say 7mm Rem through to 416 Rem an fitted with match grade barrels of Number 5 profile, I feel the stocks that give the best accuracy and this order are:

1) The rubber like synthetic stocks as fitted to Rem 700 Stainless. I am fairly confident the M70 ones will also be the same but I have not seen nearly as many tried, whereby the barrel, action scope and mounts was all properly set up.

2) Wood.

3) Fiberglass.

Mike