A bit of help please.
Normal bedding has the action bearing surfaces clamped to the bearing surfaces of the stock ans the recoil lug firmly against the lug cut out.
Ok there is compression of all stock materials depending on their composition.
As i see it if you clamp onto pillars that are just short enough to allow stock "compression" then they become "auxillary" recoil lugs. To me this is putting recoil stress on weaker areas of the stock and undesirable.
These are "my" thoughts on this subject.The pillars are part of the bedding system, and......do not act as "recoil lugs", the recoil lug is still the recoil lug, if the bedding job is done correctly, it will continue to do what it was designed to do; absorb recoil. The pillars are put in place so that the floorplate screws are tightening up against a solid object that will not not expand or contract from moisture, heat, cold, or compression from the floorplate screws, unlike wood that will so.......the action is less likely to shift due to be sitting up against wood. As for making the stock weaker at the drill/relief points from drilling the original floorplate screw holes out, the epoxy is a whole lot stronger and durable then any wood and.....would state that "if" the stock were to break it would not be because of the pillars being set in the stock. I am not an engineer, however I'd dare say that if a person were to conduct a test with two pieces of wood that were epoxied together and tried to pull those pieces of wood apart, the wood will probably pull apart on the grain and not on the glue seam; epoxy is a very strong and durable glue.
Also I read in this thread where someone wrote that they bed the entire stock, including the pillars at the same time. I bed Ruger 77s for the most part. Ruger is unique due to the front floorplate screw that is at an angle. When I pillar bed, I use bedding screws to align the pillars and hold them up against the receiver "after" relieving all of the wood around the pillars. Once the pillars are in place and......the epoxy is dried and set, "then" I relieve the wood behind the pillars and the recoil lug, and....the barrel channel, and....float the barrel with plumber's tape so that the
bedding job is done with the receiver sitting on top of the pillars, making the entire bedding job a system that integrates the bedding with the pillars set into epoxy. I am sure that there are other opinions on this process, however this is MHO on pillar bedding.