As follow up to my original post a couple months ago, where my bedding was bulged up behind the recoil lug recess...

Digging around in there, trying to remove old bedding to put some new stuff in, I was quite surprised when the whole back of the recoil lug pocket, wood, glass and all, fell out. I refer to the part of the stock that the rear of the receiver recoil lug rests against. It seems that the wood cracked across the grain, right in front of the crossbolt (it was less than 1/8 thick at this point), and this piece lifting up and back is what was causing the bulge. Jack hit it on the head in my original post, if I remember right, he suggested the problem was caused by a slightly-too-long front receiver screw, that was bottoming in it's hole before it drew the receiver down tight enough. My bad.

I'm now mulling over how I can fix this, leaning toward using the toughest epoxy I can find to just take the place of the missing wood when I re-bed it.

Any ideas?

Todd

The 458 lott I purchased with a damaged stock had that contition. What I did was two things, fabricated a second recoil lug for the barrel, 5" from the action lug. The second thing I did was to install the threaded section of a 5/16" bolt where the wood behind the action lug had been, and used acraglass to fill up the void.

Since you already have the crossbolt, I'd just fill the whole void with epoxy. I also highly recomend a second recoil lug on all 40 caliber and up rifles.

Todd,

Seen this happen a few times with Sako's. You need to examine the area around the cross bolt and look for a way to provide a gripping surface for the new epoxy.

Epoxy doesn't grip bare steel real well, especially when pounded by recoil. Anything you can do to open an area for the epoxy to flow into and around, giving the epoxy something to hold to, so that it cannot pull loose should work. Be sure to use acetone or trichloroethane over the entire area before reapplying the epoxy. Good luck.

Malm