Bedding my bottom metal turned out well! It created a completely flat stable surface for my bottom metal to sit in when tightening the action screws, hopefully preventing any stress on the action when tightening the screws. I unfortunately didn't get a picture of it before bedding my action.
My probed 2000 came in, so I spent one evening prepping my recoil lug, taping the stock and action guide screws, and modeling clay on all the openings. I also used high spot blue on my action and sat it down on the pillars in the stock so that I could remove any stock material that was in contact with the action before bedding. I used a dremel and probably took about 1/16" of stock material off the entire bedding area.
I decided to go with the method of temporarily attaching my recoil lug to the action by doing the following:
1. Put a layer of electrical tape on the action side of the lug and the rear side of the lug. I trimmed the tape on the top side to make sure there was no overhang on the muzzle side corner of the lug that fits in the action to ensure I could get a 100% square seating of the lug on recoil interface between action and lug. I also put kiwi polish on the action lug slot and tape.
2. I put a very small bit of 5 min JB weld on the tape on the top (action) side of the lug. Then I put the lug into the action and held it for several minutes while the epoxy hardened.
3. I then trimmed the exposed excess tape off the back side of the recoil lug so that there was no longer any visible tape with the lug attached.
The reason I used this method, rather than going with Susquatchs suggested method, is the following:
1. I'm using the pillars as my height reference in the bedding and I didn't want to potentially have the top of the lug be in contact with the action after bedding, creating any binding or stress after recoil. After bedding the action and removing it, I'll remove the tape from the lug, leaving a couple thousandths of relief between the top of the lug and the action. This is similar to how people tape the bottom and sides of the recoil lug on actions like the 700 that have a permanently attached lug to the action, to prevent any binding and stress under recoil. Except, it is the opposite since the lug will permanently be in my stock.
2. This is Nathan Foster's recommended method. He does a huge amount of Tikka action bedding and research with great results.
I bedded the action last night, and included a couple of pictures. I don't have the special pillars kit that attaches the pillars to the action before bedding, so I left them slightly protruding from the bedding so that I could get metal to metal contact with the pillars and action when laying it down into the bedding. There was enough clearance in the screw holes that I could push the pillars down as I payed the action down.
I also painted some of the bedding compound onto all the parts of the action that would be bedded to prevent any air bubbles from being at the bedding surface, even though it doesn't show that in the picture.
When setting my action down into the bedding, my guide screw for a bit bound up on the bottom metal screw hole, causing the bottom metal to be pushed out for a moment. I'm sure I probably got some compound between the bottom metal and stock when it came out, but hopefully I got it pushed completely back in before securing the action. This was a pretty stressful moment!
After getting the action layed down and squeezed out the excess compound, I held it securely and used electrical tape around the stock and action to hold it firmly in place. I really didn't want to have to re-level my scope, so I left it attached and just put the electrical tape over the scope rings when fixing the action to the stock.
My barrel wasn't completely centered in the barrel channel, so I wedged a small piece of tape in one side to center it. As an afterthought, this could potentially cause stress in the action during the compound curing, and I wish I wouldn't have done it. It would have been better to just sand off excess barrel channel material afterwards.
For anyone wondering about the probed 2000 compound, I followed their instructions for mixing up the correct ratio with a scale. They say you can mix it by eye in a 1:1 ratio, but if you'd rather use a scale it's a 100:77 resin:hardener ratio. I used a scale and it was surprisingly thick! They include a bag of fumed silica to thicken the compound for areas where you might want to prevent it from running, but I didn't have to use it because it was plenty thick already.
