My brother gave me his 338 Lapua for me to bed and duracoat for him. Right away I noticed that the alignment was a little wonky. I have never seen this with a McMillan stock but it appears that the inlet for the barrel channel is a little off. Do I send it back, or is there a way I can sand the barrel channel down a bit more? Currently the barrel is not free floating the first 3 or 4 inches in the stock.

Before you do that, have you put a straight edge against the barrel? Is the barrel concentric with the receiver?

Open up the inletting on the action on the right side of the front, and to the left a bit towards the rear so the barrel can be centered in the channel (if the barrel is towards the left side of the channel as it seems to be in the pic). Then wrap tape around the barrel at the forearm tip so the barrel centers in the channel. Now and again they are off a tad, it could be due to the rifle, often it is under or alongside the rear tang that pushes it off to one side or the other. You should be able to get enough tape around the barrel to level everything out and then bed the action and everything will look straight. Before bedding just make sure the barreled action 'settles' in the proper place and it'll be fine.

What he said and make sure you do not put any strees on the action when the bedding is curing, ie, dont tighten up the screws; let the receiver float so it won't be bent or twisted by the screws.

quote:

Originally posted by Grenadier:
Before you do that, have you put a straight edge against the barrel? Is the barrel concentric with the receiver?

Yes, that is the first thing I did.

quote:

Originally posted by thecanadian:
Do I send it back

Also, just bear in mind that there is no guarantee the inletting was done by McMillan. Since McMillan don't mold in the action inlet as part of the production process, some gunsmiths will hold a stock of McMillan "flat top" stocks, then inlet as required by the given job they are doing.

Update:

I brought it to a gunsmith to see what he thought about it. He said that that the action inlet was cut off center just a smidgen. The other bad news is that, like Bwana_500 warned, McMillan did not do the inletting. I did like Matt said and opened up the inletting of the right side and on the opposite in the rear. The downside is that the action appears to be pulling to the left along the rear tang. The only concern I have with this is that the action screws would have to go in slightly cockeyed. Will this matter after Bedding?

It would be a good opportunity to pillar bed the stock when bedding. I pillar bed all McMillans. With your tape bushing wrapped around the barrel at the end of the forearm (to keep the barrel centered) play around with the action end and see where things are going. Might want to put some Prussian blue on the action and see where the contact is and if that's pushing it to one side or the other. I keep a pad under the back of the rear tang untouched as far as height so the rest of the action can free-float. You can keep the sides snug but relieve much of the contact under the rest of the action to allow room for the epoxy. As far as the action screw holes, ideally they will be centered and if they are that far off it will take extra work as the bottom metal won't allow for those screw heads to be off much if any. Pick up a set of gunmaker screws so you can see where they will be in relationship to the holes.