What is the best way to bed a rifle?

1 Full bedding

2 Only bed the action, with floating barrel

3 same as 2 but with a pressure point in the fore-end.

I personally prefer a floating barrel.

What is the pros and cons of the different ways of bedding a rifle

I've had smiths in the past do the bedding but I have began to do my own lately. Done 1 rifle in #1 fully bedded to reinforce my nimble schnabel forend with a larger contour bb. and shoots its best grouping @ 1.25"(shooting NorthFork 225's) so now I will free-float it and expect it to be submoa's.

#2 I have done 2 thus far, a FN98 commercial .30-338 and all 3 shots are clover leaf @100yds with 240grn Woodleighs. The other rifle is a Rem. model 30 and with "irons" 2" @ 100yds( bum eyes) and getting the receiver corrected presently with bases aligned for scope. So I expect that to be sub moa's as well-would be very surprised if not.

Most will agree that free floating generally will give the best accuracies. good shooting

The glib answer of course is the way it shoots best. In all seriousness I ALWAYS fully bed from rear tang to forearm tip. I have NEVER had a free floated barrel rifle that I know of. I rarely have an accuraccy problem with this type bedding. Just lucky of course. Started plastic bedding back in the 50's with Devcon but have used Acraglas mostly since it came out. Of all the gunsmith jobs you can do I hate this one most. Filling a stock is second.

I start with the factory tip up-pressure, then go to free floating, then full length bedding until I'm satisfied. Each rifle has its own preference.

Insteead of full length free throating on the barrel, I glass the chamber area and free float the rest.

I bed with acraglas from 1 inch in front of the recoil lug back to the tang. The barrel is free floated and this works well for me. I don't know if one is bettter than the other but most people appear to prefer a floated barrel.

Jaco,

I to prefer a closely bedded action and free-floating barrel.

as long as the action is bedded, it will probably shoot better than unbedded. i nearly always full length, though one of my best shooting rifles has abarely a teaspoon of bedding in it, just behind the receiver screws.

jeffe

Most factory rifles benefit from action bedding. Free floating or pressure point is rifle dependent. The reason is that factory stocks are inletted with a certain "fudge" factor to allow for mass production. There is no one answer which is better. There are no cons.

My wooden rifles are "wood" bedded i.e custom stocks mated to my action, therefore no bedding needed. The only exception is one rifle which developed a crack by the magazine. This was repaired, the action bedded and it still shoots.

The only factory rifles I own are Coopers in 22-250 and K-Hornet. These are pillar bedded and floated. They both shoot well.

My custom travel (synthetic stocked) rifles started out free floated (by Kevin Weaver & Charlie Sisk). For grins I've also had some of them pillar bedded- did nothing for accuracy, started out 1/2in remained 1/2in.

The most accurate rifle I own is the one I mentioned before, pre war mod 70, 270 win. I've shot in the .12s. These were shot both pre crack AND post crack. (I no longer shoot groups with this rifle- it shoots better than I can, I only check the zero before hunting season & after every batch of ammo)

So go figure, the bottom line is there is no recipe. Try what is best for your rifle.

Frankly all bedding does is compensate for a sloppy fit. If you spend the money on a good barrel (I use exclusively Krieger) and a good fitted stock bedding is not always needed.

Thanks for all the replies so far. After talking to a lot of shooters and to gunsmiths I came to the conclusion that each have his own opinion and believes.

My personal thinking is that if you have a stable platform(read action) your rifle should shoot a good group, taking in cosideration that your ammo was developed for your rifle ( I reload). The second thing that comes to my mind is that the more you shoot the hotter the barrel becomes and that will change the charactiristics of the barrel in terms of the barrel whip, barrel vibration, callit what you want. To keep this reasonably stable a pressure point might do the trick. The caliber and the bullet weight will also play a big role in the manner in which the barrel behave.

Does anybody hnow of any tests that were done on the above aspects?

All my rifles are bedded. I recently got horizontal stringing on my 375 when I tried out a new bullet at high velocities, I never had that problem before. On inspection I found that the bedding was done on the action and only just past the knox formk. I have sanded it down so that only the action is bedded and the barrel is free floated from where it screws into the action. I will try it out ttoday or tomorrow, if the problem persists I will try pressure points.