How much bedding compound do you leave in front of the recoil lug?

A little history of epoxy bedding round receivers when it was first done decades ago.....

Remington 7XX receivers were popular in benchrest matches. They were cheap and did very well with 22 and 24 caliber cartridges shooting bullets under 100 grains of weight. Full contact epoxy bedding them with the barrels totally free floating was great for best accuracy.

Some of the high power match rifle shooters tried epoxy bedding their .30-06 chambered rifles built on the Remington 7XX receivers. Again, best thing for accuracy to date. For a couple hundred rounds.

Then fliers were noticed; not too bad but 1/4 to 1/2 MOA away from aiming point that top ranged competitors easily noticed. So they rebedded the receiver all over again. Same thing happened a few hundred rounds later. Those using Remington actions on their 30 caliber magnums rarely got 200 rounds down range before they started throwing fliers.

Some of the military teams tried a 2" thick recoil lug on their Remington action based 30 caliber magnums to resist the torque 200 grain bullets put on their barreled actions leaving at 2800 to 2900 fps. That helped for an extra hundred or so shots.

Then someone decided to copy what some benchresters had started doing with their Remington receivers; epoxy them in a flat side/bottom aluminum sleeve with cutouts for bolt and loading. That fixed the problem and the same epoxy bedding job on that sleeve lasted for a few barrels.

In the 1980's when really good bullets were available in 28 caliber, people shooting 7-08's with 140 grain bullets from barrels fit to round Remington receivers, the receiver stayed in place and accuracy stayed good. Same thing when people started shooting 155's from their .308 Win's in round receivers; all things held together.

All of which sort of ended up with the old rule of thumb that bullets heavier than about 160 grains not be used with round receivers if best accuracy is the objective. Mid Tompkins has championed that for decades; as have others.

Hey Bart, what was the reason that the bedding failed after a couple hundred rounds on the round receivers using heavier bullets? Thanks.

Can anyone disprove this from personal experience? This is the first I've heard of it.
 
Hey Bart, what was the reason that the bedding failed after a couple hundred rounds on the round receivers using heavier bullets? Thanks.
As I stated above, it was the torque of the barrel twisting the receiver out of a perfect fit in the bedding.

Can anyone disprove this from personal experience?
They probably can if they do the following:

* Get a rifle and ammo they can shoot 20-shot groups from a bench 1/4 MOA on average at 100 yards or 1/2 MOA average at 600 (or maximum 1.25 MOA at 100 or 1.75 MOA at 600 slung up in prone) with a Remington receiver conventionally bedded full contact in a good, minimal shrinking epoxy such as Devcon Plastic Steel or MarineTex and the barrel totally free floating. Bullet weight at least 170 grains from a 30 caliber cartridge leaving at least 2600 fps.

* Shoot several 20-shot groups then see how many of them are shot before they open up 50% on average.

* Rebed the receiver then start over.

Note this problem never happened with Winchester 70 receivers full contact bedded. This happened with my first match rifle based on a Rem 700 short action in .308 Win. After rebedding it twice over about 700 rounds and the advice of a couple National Champions, I sold it and got a Winchester.
 
That is very interesting to me. Thanks for sharing your experience. If i start getting flyers that will be one of the first things i check.

From some of the slow motion videos Ive seen, it almost makes me think that a top ported muzzle brake could cause the same issues eventually.
 


Dang... I wish I would have seen that 6th video down on the webpage before I bedded my Lee Enfield recently. I literally made every single mistake he warned against and had to redo the bed job a few times until I got it right and could actually take the stock off and on.

That certainly was a tricky stock to bed because of the way it's angled vertically near the back.
 
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