When I bedded my latest Savage, I used 2 types of JB Weld epoxy. I used the putty to fill in large voids and used the 5 min gel for the main bedding.
Some of the Savage factory stocks have a large void just in front of the recoil lug area and I used the putty to fill this up to just before it contacted the lug.
The biggest thing with bedding is the prep work. As long as the action and stock is prepped right and you have all of your materials ready to go it's not too difficult a task.
I start by masking off everything that I don't want epoxy on. This includes the trigger group and mag box, and everything above the stockline. A lot of people might not worry about doing the top of the receiver in tape but I'd rather peel off tape later than try to get off epoxy. Just personal preference. I also put 1 thickness of tape over the barrel nut to prevent epoxy getting into the grooves. Tape also goes around the barrel. Before I bed an action, it looks like a rifle mummy!
The next thing I do is to apply bearing grease to the entire receiver, including coating the taped areas, bolts, lower metal and also inside pillars. I'm pretty liberal with the stuff inside screw holes and inside pillars. I find that having too much grease in an area can be a less permanent situation than having too much epoxy. The tricky place is the bottom of the receiver that is to contact the epoxy. You want just enough grease to protect from adhesion but not so much that the receiver won't fit when the grease is cleaned off.
For the Savage rifle in particular, I fill in the entire area around the recoil lug. I only skim bed the area directly around the rear action screw in front of the trigger. I see no reason and have actually heard of bad results in accuracy from bedding under the tang of the receiver. If you want to be more liberal with your epoxy, make sure to put some extra tape under the tang so that the tang area is floated when the bedding is done and the tape is removed.
Hope that helps!
-PJS
