I am just curious, if I devcon the action with pillars, could it help to bed the rest of the barrel in high quality silicone to dampen the vibrations in the barrel?
Has anyone ever tried this?

Do a bang up bedding job on the action, float the barrel and test it, then fill the barrel channel in with silicone and test it and let us know. It would be an interesting experiment.

stick with the devcon. Silicone is for leveling the playing field for small breasted women.

Rich

Silicone isn't a material I would recommend for bedding anything other than speaker drivers .

Lacks necessary rigidity for bedding a rifle . Does seal well around glass and metal ,

Automotive higher temp works well for gaskets an such . Don't go Goobering up your Rifle and stock with

it !. Idaho Sharpshooter obviously you must have missed those medical segments on breast enhancements

gone terribly horribly Wrong on Silicone . Nip #1 at 4:00 O clock , Nip #2 at 11:00 O Clock oh yea

and the migrating silicone infusion of those poor women's body cavities upon leakage !.

Saline or Air Valve stay away from the silly putty !.

I once worked on a friends Sako 308 that would not shoot well enough for either of us- vertical strings that were not uniform in any direction-random up or down a few inches. Ladder load development did not find a sweet spot either. I steel bedded it and it still would not shoot to an inch with a wide array of loads. I chisled out a groove in the foreend, filled it up with RTV sealant and the rifle clover leafed with a standard 150 grain hunting load at 100 yds. I check on this rifle every time I reload for my friend, it still holds under an inch. Blue RTV dampened the barrel and stopped the vertical stringing that an otherwise well bedded rifle insisted on....

Who knows....

Ramsay, I too have wondered the same thing but have never tried it. Don't pay any attention to the ones who haven't tried it or who missed the point of your post, IMO listen to Andrew.
Regards, Joe

Doc,

heard that! I just picked one out who had a real nice set. A month later got invited over to her parents house so she could show me off. Her mother, sister, and couple nieces all had the same quality organics. So I married her.

Air valve? Is that like a valve stem on a truck tire? Adjustable? Hmmmmmm...

Rich

Sharpshooter,
My wife ... well never mind
As for the original post, to clarify, this is what I am thinking:
1. Pillar bed
2. Steel bed just the action with devcon
3. Add a glob of silicone at some point under the barrel to dampen the harmonics.
I will try it with one of my rifles and see what happens with standard bedding and then also after I add an area of silicone. Wish me luck

I always had the idea that it might help to bed the barrel with the silicone. I never tried it!!

One thing that I had a request to do was add 2 lbs of lead into the butt end of the 91 Arg. 7.65 to make it shoot farther. I didn't know how this worked until he explained that it would have more to push against when fired and that would make it shoot farther and harder. He explained that he had a problem trying to hit deer from his camp while they were running on a ridge 1200 yds away. Turned that job down!!! If he were to come back we could add the lead and put the silicone into his stock and he would be a happy hunter. Ha Ha

That is an awesome story I didnt know 2lb of lead would help that much. Maybe I'll try that if my silicone theory doesn't work

Gents

I don't think it will work

You can't damped the vibration of the barrel, all you can do is tune it and make it consistant

Barrel whip will occur naturally as the projectile travels down the barrel, it's your job to make sure as it does, it doesn't come in contact with ANYTHING that will disrupt it, like a high spot. If there is something there like pressure lugs :ie Remingtons, then they need to be ridged or taken out

You will see more effect with beddign the action and altering pressure of the action screws than siliconing the barrel bed.

Leave the barrel bed free from ANY contact.

regards
S&F

Just for drill....

One does not "dampen" vibrations. He "damps" them.

Dampening a barrel may cause oxidation (rust). Damping it reduces vibrations. Two wholly different concepts.

Neither necessarily improves accuracy. Making vibrations consistent from shot to shot does often improve accuracy.

quote:

Originally posted by ShortandFat:
You can't damped the vibration of the barrel,

Purely and simply, this not correct. It is done all the time, sometimes intentionally, other times not.

tune it and make it consistant

This part is good advice

Barrel whip will occur naturally as the projectile travels down the barrel,

True.

it's your job to make sure as it does, it doesn't come in contact with ANYTHING that will disrupt it, like a high spot. If there is something there like pressure lugs :ie Remingtons, then they need to be ridged or taken out

Again, simply not correct. I've seen many Remingtons which shot much worse with the pressure point(s) removed.

You will see more effect with beddign the action and altering pressure of the action screws than siliconing the barrel bed.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I owned a rifle once which was used by a person who shot it for several years to win the small-bore Championship of Great Britain. His action and barrel were bedded in sponge rubber for their whole length.

Leave the barrel bed free from ANY contact.

Again, that sometimes works and sometimes does not.

A barrel is akin to a violin string. A violin string is tuned both by adjusting its tension, and by pressing it against frets on the neck of the violin. The contact points of a barrel with its stock (frets) can produce outstanding accuracy, IF the contact points are of the correct pressure and in the correct location(s) against the barrel.

Free-floating of barrels works because with a good barrel it can provide good enough accuracy for the rifle's intended use. But it MAY not be quite as good accuracy as a properly "fretted" barrel may produce.

The trouble with placing pressure points against a barrel is that particularly with wood stocks, the pressure may not stay the same or not even be restricted to the intended points of contact over time.

Wood stocks MAY warp, and pressure points MAY change as a result. But often they don't!

Composite stocks often flex, with approximately the same results as wood warpage.

Barrel "tuning", like violin tuning, is an art. There are many potential tweaks which may help, and learning to assess which tweaks are needed on a given rifle and to apply them correctly, is not a simple matter of doing one thing in every instance.

Why Oh why is there always a debate on bedding or pressure points on a barrel.

Consistency = Accuracy, pure and simple. Bedding a barrel or adding a intentional pressure point WILL INDUCE AN INCONSISTENCY and hinder the accuracy of the rifle.
There is not one bolt rifle made that is used by police or military snipers that has a bedded barrel or a pressure point.
There is nothing you can do to stop the vibrations from a barrel from occurring period. So just float the barrel and be done with it.

Saying that a a rifle will shot better with the pressure point as opposed to with out is highly misleading. Was the load then retuned to the rifle. You changed something so now you need to start all over again with load work ups.
The number one reason not to pressure point a barrel is weather and temperature. You can't get the same pressure on a barrel every time every day if the humidity, or temperature changes so does the pressure on the barrel. Free float it an be done

Sure wish you'd tell my 270 that! I have used the same target for five years now...sighting shot "just to make sure"I can cover all the shots with a nickel"

I must have made a big mistake pressure bedding this light weight....with a wood stock of all things! and to add to the disgrace, not a bit of glass anywhere.

Please tell me what I've done wrong!

An interesting viewpoint Mr. Stott.

The reason there is still a debate over whether to use a pressure point or not is that some rifles shoot better with one, others without one.

You may not believe that. Doesn't matter. Doesn't change anything, whether you do or don't.

We have a sizeable number of members at our range who buy a LOT of new rifles and work hard at making them shoot well...consistently well. Several of them are current or former national champion shooters. Even more are "high master" card holders.

These guys routinely perform at levels which police and military shooters usually haven't reached.

Of course the goals of the two kinds of shooting are different. Police and military shooters need "good enough" accuracy every time. They often aren't in a situation to maintain their own guns for accuracy production and often wouldn't know how to.

Accuracy "nuts" & competitive civilian shooters want the very best accuracy their guns are capable of, even if they have to put in a lot of repetitive work to find it...and maybe re-do it every so often.

With Remingtons as a particular example one of the common approaches they use is to shoot the rifle with various loads until they find a really good load...they save their targets for later base-point comparisons. Then they remove the pressure points and do it again.

If they get really significant improvement by doing that, they may leave it that way and use it that way, or if the improvement is such they think the rifle may be capable of even better results, they may start experimenting with adding pressure points of differing amount and locations.

Often the pressure points deliver even better accuracy.


Different strokes for different folks, just like different tuning works for different rifles.

Duane
I respect you as a true craftsman and a top notch gunsmith. But I think you got lucky.
Now I will say this I never said it was impossible to get good accuracy from a pressure pointed barrel. It is possible to get good accuracy with a pressure point But is is very difficult to tune to and it is just near impossible to correct poor accuracy with it. It is just on more variable to deal with that can be eliminated and tuned for so easily.
Guard screws can be torqued, Loads can be changed, But how do you measure how much force is being applied to a barrel and where on the barrel would that force be applied and over how large of an area. To many variables for me.

I'd be willing to bet that if you glass bed that rifle and removed the pressure point and tune the load to the rifle it WILL shot as good as it does right now and be less susceptible to change over time

I've never believed in pressure points and unless someone could show me consistently it was as good or better then free floating I'll never do it on a bolt rifle.

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe:
Sure wish you'd tell my 270 that! I have used the same target for five years now...sighting shot "just to make sure"I can cover all the shots with a nickel"

I must have made a big mistake pressure bedding this light weight....with a wood stock of all things! and to add to the disgrace, not a bit of glass anywhere.

Please tell me what I've done wrong!

Humble?

quote:

Originally posted by kcstott:
Duane
I respect you as a true craftsman and a top notch gunsmith. But I think you got lucky.
Now I will say this I never said it was impossible to get good accuracy from a pressure pointed barrel. It is possible to get good accuracy with a pressure point But is is very difficult to tune to and it is just near impossible to correct poor accuracy with it. It is just on more variable to deal with that can be eliminated and tuned for so easily.
Guard screws can be torqued, Loads can be changed, But how do you measure how much force is being applied to a barrel and where on the barrel would that force be applied and over how large of an area. To many variables for me.

I'd be willing to bet that if you glass bed that rifle and removed the pressure point and tune the load to the rifle it WILL shot as good as it does right now and be less susceptible to change over time

I've never believed in pressure points and unless someone could show me consistently it was as good or better then free floating I'll never do it on a bolt rifle.

Well then don't do it! I guess I get "lucky a lot" I have no argument with free floating...just get a litte pissed when some "expert" tries to tell me that pressure bedding never works. I just damn well know better.

No one has ever paid me to make a custom stock and float the barrel. I always use a pressure point system.

I would like to ask Duane how many customers ask for a barrel to float on one of his stocks?

I hope to see someone try the silicone and see what's the results.

Maybe 6 in 40 years...have to admit they shot well...but then again they were heavy barrels in calibers like 6mm, 243, 22/250..etc.

I happen to think that heavy barrels don't care much whether they're free floated or not.

When free floating, I keep the gap minimal....I've seen applicaions where you could throw a cat into the channel...trouble if you do that (throw a cat) he will wedge himself into the channel and accuracy will REALLY go south.

Just for drill
violins don't have frets. Violinists have nimble fingers that are slid or rolled on a smooth fingerboard to make the effective length of the string the correct length. Muscle memory gets them close, and corrections are made by ear, so fast as to be imperceptible to a listener. Strings are tuned by choosing the correct thickness and adjusting the tension.

Your analogy is apt, and its easier to understand the vibration of a string than a rifle barrel.

Back to the silicon. I have also considered it, or spray foam. I guess a wedge could be installed between the fore end and barrel while the goo cures, to add some tension to the silicon pad. That is an idea I read somewhere.

When I lived in Wisconsin, I dealt with a lot of "\Hi Power" shooters. They all told me that 1 MOA rifle could win any match they entered.

Any agreements/disagreements??

The high power targets have a 2 MOA 10 ring and most of the serious shooters can hold 1 MOA from position.

I used to shoot HP and we used to say that it's not always the best shooter or the best gun that wins the match, it's usually the guy who judges the wind the best.

I shoot F class now with a 1/2 MOA X ring and a 1 MOA 10 ring so a 1 MOA gun won't win there.



My 2004 Win Classic Safari Express came with that hot glue bedding that they installed at the factory. It was very similar in consistency to the soft silicone sealant used around the house.

I peeled it out by hand and had it bedded properly before I ever shot it.

I never said "it never works"
I just feel it's better to tune the load to the barrel and not rely on something that can change without realizing it.
Duane If you've had good luck with it by all mean keep going. I'm not knocking you or your practice. It's just my opinion

quote:

Originally posted by bja105:
Just for drill
violins don't have frets. Violinists have nimble fingers that are slid or rolled on a smooth fingerboard to make the effective length of the string the correct length. Muscle memory gets them close, and corrections are made by ear, so fast as to be imperceptible to a listener. Strings are tuned by choosing the correct thickness and adjusting the tension.

Your analogy is apt, and its easier to understand the vibration of a string than a rifle barrel.

Back to the silicon. I have also considered it, or spray foam. I guess a wedge could be installed between the fore end and barrel while the goo cures, to add some tension to the silicon pad. That is an idea I read somewhere.

Thank you for the correction. I should have said "guitar"...I know guitars have frets, as I played one professionaly for a short period in my teens. Funny how" assume" does make an ass of me, even if not of "u" (to employ part of the old saying).... As I see violinists sliding their hands up and down the neck, just as I used to on my guitar, I automatically (and incorrectly) assumed violins also had frets.

And I wasn't referring to "general tuning", but to the tuning action used when playing to sccurately produce a specific note...to do that one has to shorten the effective vibratory length of the string with pressure by ones finger(s) on the string(s).

You can do the same thing to a barrel, BTW, by mounting it in the stock held in by a clamp (called a "bedding block") locked around the barrel at just about any point you want...leaving both the action end and the muzzle end floating. That was once the rage in benchrest. It can reduce the effective length of a 22" inch barrel to about 7". That may greatly increase the frequency of vibration of the muzzle, but may also very greatly DECREASE the amplitude of vibration, which decrease can sometimes give significantly smaller groups.

Anyway, barrels do react much like a musical instrument string, using pressure at given points to create desirable vibration frequencies, so as to accurately duplicate a certain desired outcome every time one wants it.

Maybe to be fair to everyone, I should add that for SOME purposes, free-floating IS always the way to go. For instance in police shootings there is always the chance that an unintended living target will be struck. In the court room afterward it is likely a very good thing if the officer cannot be shown to have been fiddling with any part of the rifle or the ammo which could make the rifle theoretically less accurate than when shipped by the factory. And it is also probably important that the Department itself use a "universally accepted" police rifle (including how it is bedded).

In super-accuracy environs though, free floating may only sometimes deliver best accuracy. Other times free-floating it will deliver only (for an "off the wall" figure) 90% or perhaps 95% of the accuracy the rifle and its barrel are ultimately capable of.

For shooting at people, that is plenty. Police shootings by SWAT snipers are seldom at more than 75 yards, at which distance a 6" brain pan is a very large target. Almost any bedding will deliver that from a good action and barrel.

Even soldiers have relatively large targets and that's at even 800 yards. If we take the human torso as being 18" or 20" wide, that's something on the order of 2+ MOA at 800 yards, and a hit pretty much anywhere up or down from there is often just as desirable as killing the enemy would be. Wounding a man so that someone else has to care for him, and leaving him alive where he can moan and cry all night long while others are exhausted and trying to sleep can have pretty nasty effects on enemy morale.

So, for those uses, something a soldier or police officer can't adjust is quite workable accuracy-wise. And a free-floating barrel is pretty hard to screw up if it is floated freely enough.

Still, if a person wants or needs every iota of accuracy his rifle and its barrel have the potential of producing, sometimes he has a better chance of getting there by putzing with pressure points on the barrel.

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe:
When I lived in Wisconsin, I dealt with a lot of "\Hi Power" shooters. They all told me that 1 MOA rifle could win any match they entered.

Any agreements/disagreements??

I certainly agree with that Duane. I was on a national Palma Team and won my place there using a rifle which likely shot not much, if any, better than one MOA. The guys I was talking about at our club who won national championships were shooting benchrest competition.

And no, they don't pressure-bed their BR rifles, but they sure DO often pressure-bed their hunting rifles, just to get the most possible out of them. They free-float their BR rifles because they don't want to spend two days leading the pack only to have their bedding "go sour" in the last 5 shots of the last day. They know 95% of the rifle's potential accuracy is enough to win with if they don't screw up somewhere else in how they shoot the match.

BR rifles ARE another one of those situations where you don't need 100% of your rifle's potential accuracy to win. After all, the potentials of those very high buck rifles are very nearly identical anyway. Again, it is the guys who do everything the same consistently, who get "in the zone", and who can read wind, that win in benchrest too.

Best wishes,

AC

I have no idea whether silicone could be used as a bedding matrial, but it is simply incorrect to assume that bedding barrels is automatically detrimental to accuracy.

I know of at least 2 custom rifle makers who prefer to full length bed their barrels. One of these (whom I know the best) has always maintained full length bedding was an easy way to get rifles to shoot consistently - in particular with light contour barrels.

- mike

What Duane and Alberta Canuck said, and plenty of it.

I've met & shot the breeze as well as targets with many police and military shooters, let's just say that IMO most of them aren't real shooters/gun nuts and so their opinions reflect their lack of really wide experience and expertise. Kinda like some others......

Words to avoid using: always, never, assume, best, worst.

Actions and procedures to avoid condemning out-of-hand: anything you haven't personally tried and tried enough times to have a proper opinion.
Regards, Joe

quote:

Originally posted by kcstott:
I never said "it never works"
I just feel it's better to tune the load to the barrel and not rely on something that can change without realizing it.
Duane If you've had good luck with it by all mean keep going. I'm not knocking you or your practice. It's just my opinion

Absolutely no offense taken..

It worked for me, If it dont help your rifle it is easliy removed.

It dont always work so if it dont just use a piece of fishing line to remove the barrel from the stock


Cal30

I have an early 40X (722 single shot action) chambered in 222. The forend has 2 adjustable "tension screws" that I think were factory at the time. They were backed out when I got the rifle 15 yrs ago and I haven't touched them. I bedded the action and 3 inches in front, and the rest of the barrel floats. It's pretty easy for me to keep 5 shot groups under a 1/2" and I can even get down into the twos pretty regularly. Maybe one of these days I'll screw with the screws, just for fun, but then again, maybe not.

As with Duane's .270 and your .222 If it ain't broke don't fix it. Both rifles seem to have near as perfect accuracy as could be expected. Personally I wouldn't screw with either one of them.

quote:

Originally posted by MRAMSAY10:
I will try it with one of my rifles and see what happens with standard bedding and then also after I add an area of silicone. Wish me luck

Best of luck to you.

By the way, this may be common knowledge to all you folks who use a good bit of RTV on a regular basis, but it was news to me a week ago. Some brands of "Clear" RTV are now designed to come out of the tube "White". Then as it dries it turns "Clear".

First thought I'd bought the WRONG tube. Then when it went on where I was using it as "White", it looked pretty good. Came back a few hours later and it was now "Clear".

It is a nice feature, because it lets you see where it is going a good bit easier.
-----

Let us know how the RTV works for you. I'll agree that it will probably need a new round of Load Development. Do believe I'd put some kind of Release Agent on the Barrel, unless you intend to leave it stuck into the stock and never remove it.

Best of luck on the Test.

Hot core


I believe what you used was a water based product. Very excellent these days without the acrid smell of silicone.



Cal30

Hey Cal30, You are probably correct. It is called "Alex Plus" and is made by DAP. Then it says Acrylic Latex Caulk Plus Silicone.

First time I've bothered to read the small print on it and it even says it goes on White and then dries to Clear.

Also paintable!! A few years ago I resealed some windows with Clear RTV and the paint just slid right on off. A guy who Paints for a living told me they paint first and then seal with Clear. Now it looks like you can do it either way.

35 year durability guarantee - Yeah RIGHT!

When the Canadian military was still shooting SMLE rifles in competitions one of the things that was used was to remove the forarm wood open it up a little and then fill the forearm with ground up sponge rubber ball material. Apparantly this tightened up the groups on some of these rifles considerably. I've never heard of anyone using silicon but who knows. If someone has a rifle that doesn't group very well free floated or with a pressure point maybe it would be worth trying??