After trying a bunch of tweaks with a rifle that showed spotty accuracy I put rubber bands under each end of the action around the action screws. In just one range test it's now shooting much better.

What's the story on rubber for bedding? Mike 375 made a short comment on it not long ago saying that it worked well.

Here is a thread on BRC about it rubber bedding

Perhaps you should go back and read that thread again.

They are talking about dampening vibration of the “barrel†with a hard rubber substance at the forend tip of the stock...NOT putting rubber bands under the action.

Winchester at one time used a rubber like bedding on the recoil lug of their M70. I don`t know if they still use it but The first time I took the action out of the stock on two of mine the bedding came loose. The smith I bought one of them from said the first thing he did on them was rebed as everyone he took apart did the same. He didn`t have much good to say about the stuff.

Savage99, here's my theory to explain your results. Your action or barrel was in a bind or not setting uniformly in the stock. The rubber bands raised the barreled action enough to remove the bind. (Bind may not be the exact word I'm looking for but it's close enough.) The same thing happens when you test barrel float by putting a plastic card under the action to raise it.

While rubber bands or your wife's credit card under the stock help to indicate problems (and cut your wife's spending), neither makes good bedding material.

quote:

Originally posted by Rick 0311:
Perhaps you should go back and read that thread again.

They are talking about dampening vibration of the “barrel†with a hard rubber substance at the forend tip of the stock...NOT putting rubber bands under the action.

Perhaps you should go back and read the thread again where it says "I restocked an A-Bolt with a factory Eclipse thumbhole. When I removed the original plastic stock, I noticed it was rubber bedded. This was a boss equipt rifle, and alittle research turned up that the rubber bedding is an integral part of Brownings patented Boss system.
So using a rusty nail as a really hi-tech durometer, I checked every rubber type compound in my garage. The match, "Shoo-Goo"(very tough and stiff).
I Bedded the new stock with this rubber, and although I never fiddled with the Boss device, the rifle shot fantastic once I worked up a load in a standard fashion. So it appears that the rubber bedding didn't hurt a thing in my unscientific view.

I don't know the story or history of this type bedding. But it could be easily removed if it didn't work out."

quote:

Originally posted by M Pursell:
Savage99, here's my theory to explain your results. Your action or barrel was in a bind or not setting uniformly in the stock. The rubber bands raised the barreled action enough to remove the bind. (Bind may not be the exact word I'm looking for but it's close enough.) The same thing happens when you test barrel float by putting a plastic card under the action to raise it.

While rubber bands or your wife's credit card under the stock help to indicate problems (and cut your wife's spending), neither makes good bedding material.

I agree with you so far. I had put tape in there and it shot well at first. The bands are thicker than the tape.

The rifle is a pillar bedded Kimber Montana 8400. It seems that the stocks bedding is machined to a specific size for every action and barrel. I had already shot it quite a bit and I wondered at the marks the barrel left on the stock under the chamber as they did not seem uniform.

The rest of those barrel channels are free floated.

I may shoot it again soon to confirm that it's "fixed". I would have used O rings if I could have found them here.

Savage99,

Maybe I’m missing it but I did not see anything in any of those posts that mentions bedding the “action†of the rifle with rubber. They all mention bedding in the “barrel†channel...and the one you copied to this site mentions it as being “an integeral part of the Browning BOSS system“... which is a barrel vibration dampening device.

Whatever they are talking about I certainly didn’t see any reference or suggestion for using rubber bands for bedding material.

Rick,

Take my advice and don't sign anything today.

quote:

Originally posted by Savage99:
After trying a bunch of tweaks with a rifle that showed spotty accuracy I put rubber bands under each end of the action around the action screws. In just one range test it's now shooting much better.

What's the story on rubber for bedding?
Here is a thread on BRC about it ]

I once bought a Model 52 Winchester from a man who had won several All Great Britain small bore championships with that rifle in the 1930's. It was bedded (both barrel und action) on little strips of foam rubber turned edgewise. it still shot 3/4" groups outdoors at 100 yards in 1974.

Ever since, I have been a great admirer of the technique, though it must have been a terrible PiTA to accomplish. All the litle rubber strips were in rheir own "micro-grooves cut into the wood. None ever fell out.

There is or was a rubber substance produced for bedding rifles and it apparantly worked pretty well...I never tried it and it must have sold poorly because I never heard much about it after that....

Savage99,

If bedding rifle actions with rubber bands is indicative of the quality of your advice...I think I’ll pass on taking it, thank you all the same!

Savage, I messed a little with "Rubbery" bedding when I was playing with a couple BOSS equiped rifles. I used a semi-rigid epoxy used in Automotive repairs to repair flexible bumper covers. I was restocking the rifles into fiberglass stocks and didn't care much for the hot-glued floppy factory stocks.
I can't really say if the semi-rigid epoxy stocked rifle shot any better than it did later when I rebed it again with std gunsmithing epoxies, but it did shoot very well with semi-rigid stuff.
The Body-Shop epoxies are pretty neat. They are usually used in double tubes that are applied with a gun that like what you use for caulking. They have a tip that goes on the front and mixed the epoxy as it flows forward. Some of it dries quite fast and you can get it in different drying rates and hardnesses. If you don't already have some around it's pretty expensive i.e. $25 to $50 a tube set, so I don't know if it would be practical unless you were doing a bunch of guns or in a factory setting.
I guess my last thoughts would be that the most important thing for bedding is that it's totally consistant and strong enough to stay that way. There's probably several ways to get there...............DJ

dj,

Thanks for the response. I don't think that elastic bands are permanent. I was just trying something quick and easy and it may have masked the problem whatever it is.

I may PM Mike375 and find out what he used.

Many years ago, some friends tried bedding a BR rifle in Devcon rubber and gluing it in with the same compound. They said it shot well but was unworkable in match conditions since the barreled action had a tendency to vibrate in the stock from the concussion of other rifles firing on the line so the experiment was ended. Others, including myself, tried rubber bedding under the barrel from time to time to try and minimize vertical dispersion. While it was effective enough it always struck me as a means of correcting a problem which would not have existed in the first place had everything been right. Regards, Bill.

Savage99,

I did not do "rubber" bedding but would have been referring to the synthetic stocks that come Rem 700 Stainless as rubber.

But some experiments I did certainly indicated that a softer material has advantages.

All the following was done with 358 STA and came from comparing the 358 STA to 338 Win, 340 Wby ( 1 in and 1 in 12 twist) and 375 H&H on switch barrel bench gun. The 358 STA barrels were .357 and 1 in 14 twist.

There is a bench stock we use in Australia that is made of aluminium and is bascically patterned on the older 40 Rem X stocks and the butt and forend is skeleton. The mid section is either left sold or machined out to make a repeater.

Glue ins I tried 4 different glue ins. The fist being a normal glue in to a Devcon bedding job and the glue we use is called Araldite and sets almost like nylon.

The seond glue in I tried was to put the stock right next to an electric radiator which made the glue very watery and thus the glue line was very thin. This shot the best.

The next glue in I tried was with the glue line thicker than normal. That did not shoot very well.

The next glue in I tried was with a glue that set extremely hard, bery strong but brittle. Accuracy was inferior to either the normal glue in of the softer glue or the glue in with the softer glue where the stock was heated

Bedding A number 5 barrel (.72" at muzzle of 26 inches) was bedded to the aluminium stock, the Remington "rubber" stock from the Rem Stainless and a wood stock that came from a Rem 700 416 Remington. All bedded with Devcon steel.

The most accurate was the Rem Synthetic stock, then the wood then the Aluminium stock.

Lastly the barreled action was bedded into a McMillan fibreglass stock which I noted has extremely hard fibre glass in the hard parts of the stock. The accuracy was not as good as obtained with either the Rem Synthetic and Rem 416 wood stock.

Several years down the track after all that was done I continue to believe that the Synthetic stocks like those which come on the Rem 700 stainless is the best platform for best accuracy, at least on bigger bores, followed by wood.

However, the thicker than normal glue line for a "glue in" with the softer setting glue did not give good results on the aluminium stock but the results were not much better using the super hard glue.

So from my little corner of the world it appears there is an ideal "in between" too hard and too soft.

Just recently a frend of mine bought an HS Precision stock for Rem 700. The barreled action is a Number 5 264 Win, Jewell Trigger, Nightforce scope and was bedded by myself into the original Rem 700 Synthetic "rubber" stock. The barreled action was tried in the HS Precision as it came and the rifle shot so so and then went off. Not suprising. I bedded the barreled action to the HS Precision and the accuracy is not quite what it was when bedded to the Rem Synthetic stock.

Of course it could be that my bedding job was better on the Rem Synthetic.

Mike