I wanted to know which one gives better accuracy? free floating the barrel or pressure bedding(end of the stock touching barrel with slight pressure usually using a pad or piece of foam between stock an barrel) Tell me your experience, accuracy gains etc.Im trying to make my ruger 77/17 shoot better.THANK YOU

All of my rifles are pillar bedded with free floated barrels.I find them more consistant in varying conditions than the rifles that I owned that had pressure points.

If the barrel is good and the action is correctly bedded then free floating is the way to go.

If the barrel is crappy and/or the action bedding is not good then pressure point bedding will often give better results. Hence factory rifles tend to be bedde with pressure point bedding. Although another reason for non free floating with factory guns is that the actions are often not lined up properly in the stock and if the barrel chanel is opened up then the barrel points to one side.

Mike

Floating has always worked for me; bedding helps too, but floating seems to be the most important. Good luck.

Harold Vaughn had an interesting piece in his book on this topic. He goes into quite a bit of detail on how it is hard to make a really rigid threaded joint. His explanation of forestock pressure is that it pre-loads the receiver-barrel joint, and reduces fliers as the whole thing heats up. Don't know if he's right, but he gives a good argument.

If I can't find a good load for a gun that has a free floated barrel and a glass (or Pillar) bedded action I trade it off and start over.

This has only happened once.....so I'm big on free floating no matter what the gun.

A lot will depend on the contour of your barrel - the heavier the contour, the more likely you can get away with free floating. A lot of (custom) gun makers also bed barrels full length - that can work well.
- mike

Most of the time I've been best off free-floating but I have one rifle that has always been best with a fore-end pressure point. Maybe I should have had the receiver threads recut or something, but since it shoots consistent 1/2" groups I can't talk myself into messing with it any further.

This is a question that has as many answers as there are rifles. It would be fairly easy to see how YOUR rifle does without butchering up your stock. Cut several washers from card stock (aka match books) and put these on the action screws between the stock and the action. You are in effect free floating the barrel (or pillar bedding it as it were). Try some groups with this set up. Then take the shims out and put a shim or two as needed to create a bit of up pressure on the barrel about an inch back from the end of the stock. Test fire this set-up. Of course, you want to try the rifle just as it came from the factory. Then you will have the correct answer as to which is best for YOUR rifle.
Start your testing for each set-up with a clean barrel and use the same loading throughout.

I think it's too easy just to assume that free-floating universally gives better accuracy. That's not always the case, especially with light sporter contour barrels. I remember a guy out at our gunclub who was having accuracy problems with a rifle, and because of this, he announced that he was going to hog-out the barrel channel and free-float the barrel. I asked him if the action screws were tight. He said he didn't have any idea, but, you guessed it, he went ahead and tightened the screws, and (viola!) his accuracy problems went away.....

LOTS of rifles get hogged-out in the quest for better accuracy (a one-size-fits-all BandAid fix, of sorts) when the only problem was a loose set of screws, a bum scope, a too-heavy trigger pull, bad loads, or even a bad barrel..........

On choice custom rifles with fine walnut stocks, I prefer that they be tightly fitted and NOT free-floated. Since good stockmakers know how to bed rifles properly, most rifles of this sort shoot very well, and besides, many rifles do best with a little barrel pressure of the right sort, a fact that gets lost in this unbridled era of "benchrest" rifle concepts -- concepts that are by no means universally appropriate when it comes to hunting-weight rifles that are meant to be carried.

Most fiberglass-stocked rifles with medium to heavy contour barrels shoot best free-floated, sometimes with just the shank of the barrel bedded and the balance of the barrel floated. But very light barrel contours often need to be fully bedded for best accuracy. For example, Melvin Forbes of Ultralight Arms fully beds his light rifles, and they do indeed shoot with superb accuracy.

With factory rifles, I usually try everything else before I hog the barrel channel out, because once you perform this surgery, there's no going back, and a hogged barrel channel never looks as nice and neat as it did before.

AD

It depends on the rifle!! Some shoot better (smaller groups) pressure bedded, and some shoot better free-floated. Most rifles will shoot more CONSISTENTLY free-floated, but will not necessarily shoot smaller groups free-floated. Each gun must be tried both ways to find out which is best for each individual rifle!!