Bedding under the barrel... yes or no?

We can eliminate the forward barrel pressure issue. This has been done for years. we can place a business card under the barrel about 1 3/4" from the end of the forearm. If this indicates a plus or minus go from there.
I have hunted all these years in the Rocky Mtns. A totally free floated barrel used at high altitudes may be a poor choice. Wet snow and ice will freeze in the barrel channel. The fine Austrian and German Alpine hunting rifles have close fitting barrel channels. This is my opinion make your own choices.

No, You were very clear. I offered my thoughts as full free floated barrels has entered the thread as well.

On a common design bolt action centerfire rifle, fully free floating is the way to go. Slightly recessed pillars to eliminate them as high points, and a cozy little bed in which the action and recoil lug will sleep.

As i said before.

Putting bedding in front of the recoil lug, towards the muzzle, doesnt help accuracy IMO.

Bedding is placed there for 2 reasons, that i know of.
1. To keep some actions from flexing.
2. Keep the barrel from drooping. This downward drooping of the barrel requires removing materal in the barrel channel. Sometimes a lot with a bull/varmint weight barrel.

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I think it can work either way, in my limited experience.
Back in the 70s, a buddy asked me to work on his 6mm varmint rifle. It had a beautiful glass job with about 6" of bedding forward of the recoil lug. No loads I tried would group under an inch and a half or so. I finally gritted my teeth and cut out that beautiful bedding under the barrel. Then it would touch holes with about any load. That confirmed my belief in floating the barrel.
Then, sometime in the 80s, I ordered a new 40X BR. It came with about a nickel sized dollop of bedding about 3/8" in front of the lug and it shot great. I still free float about everything, with good results. But sometimes, on a really heavy, long barrel, I'll add that dollop. I do it as a second step after the action has been done and set up. I shim the barrel at the end of the stock to put just a little pressure on the barrel until the epoxy sets. I can't say that it's any better than full floated but several prairie dogs have been harmed in this experiment. I've never had a place to shoot paper beyond 300 yards. That might show a difference and I would defer to those having that experience.

Depends on the rifle and stock and action involved. Some military rifles do pretty poorly when sporterized and free floated if they were designed to have upward pressure at the tip (using a stock barrel). I have found in some cases, reversing a lightly sportered version of a milsurp with its original barrel will cause the rifle to be more accurate when returned to a full military stock/handguard with all of its hardware (SMLE is one of these).

What is desirable is repeatability and predictability in the firing combination of rifle barrel, action, and stock fit. If you are good enough, and I am not, you can inlet a stock so well as to require no bedding at all and still shoot very accurately. On the other extreme, some intentionally bed their rifles permanently to the stock.

I used to put bedding under the chamber area on the barrel. Ive now switched to keeping the bedding from the recoil lug back. Accuracy has been as good as i can shoot with either system on the guns ive done it with, but less bedding and issues getting stuff apart easily has me doing recoil lug back now.

The properly fitted barrels, fitted and bedded in cured stocks served for centuries. In the 1960s the Companies convinced the public that opening stocks up one size fits all was the answer. The arms firms like Winchester sold these improved rifles after 1964. How did that work out?

Many records were established by both Military and Civilian shooters with fitted barrels. The free floated barrels work. They were however introduced to reduce manufacturing cost. Proper barrel and action fitting was labor intensive, The Post 64 Mdl 70 Winchester were among the first free floated barrels offered. These rifles came with a plastic shim to be placed under the barrels when not shooting. when stored without shims the stocks warped.

Proper close fit of barrel and action takes a ton more time, skill, and attention, than floating and glassing.
Floating nearly always produces acceptable accuracy, tho ive found pressure bedding can be usefull on some guns. Glassing in the action offers less chances for oops'

Personally ill give up some accuracy for a nicely fitted stock, but i cant do it well enough, and almost no factories offer them anymore.

Well ill give up Accuracy for pretty on SOME applications....

Dog Soldier said:

Many records were established by both Military and Civilian shooters with fitted barrels.

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Henry Ford established a land speed record in 1904 in a car using a wooden frame. Don't see many folks drag racing in wooden-frame cars these days though, and his established record just over 90mph surely doesn't mean much 113yrs later.

Stress-free action and barrel bedding is an art from the past. Samurai katana were produced at one time - some of the finest metalwork ever done - by over a hundred hours of manual labor by supremely skilled artisan blade smiths. The cost to benefit ratio for this type of production just isn't there - even traditionally constructed replicas are typically made with a power hammer and a gas forge; a high contrast to the traditional method, and typically producing a more consistent product, at a fraction of the time and cost. There ARE folks out there swinging hammers by muscle, but the allure of these is not in performance, it's in nostalgia.

Equally, there are still a few stock carvers out there hand fitting barrel channels, but in reality, a CNC duplicated channel is faster and more accurate, and a broad channel free float is faster, cheaper, and less apt to develop issues.

Wood warps, shrinks, and swells. Contact will never be truly consistent. Stress-free one week might not be so the next week - or the next year, or next decade. Properly free floated barrels will never change for contact pressure.

Thanks for your in depth diagnosis regarding the bedding of rifles. Is cured wood our nemeses? Degradation occurs in resins usually due to UV exposure. Permanents under stress and UV exposure often causes changes in the best engineered designs. Thanks for your design conclusions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_degradation

Who has put bedding under a barrel to counter droop and measured droop before and after to prove it worked without firing a shot?

If a 26" straight taper barrel has 2" of bedding under its chamber in front of the receiver to eliminate droop, would a 24" barrel (the 26" one with 2" cut off at its back end) with the same profile droop without that under-chamber bedding?

Who has measured how much fore ends bend across different shooting positions?

Lots of theory in this thread. I've measured to get facts.

Good thing we've known about UV stabilization through HALS's and benzophenone/benzotriazole for decades... Spent about a decade working in polymers and plasticizers... But I'm not exactly sure how UV degradation of polymers has anything to do with a conversation of free floating a wood stock anyway... But thanks for the material compatibility assessment all the same...

We can generalize and talk about means and extremes, or just personal experiences. Lot's of good discussion. Plenty of observations across the spectrum. Plenty of gems of wisdom and knowledge to share. A nice long thread about proper crowns going on another forum. And on and on. Just goes to show how little we really know.

Bart B. said:

Who has put bedding under a barrel to counter droop and measured droop before and after to prove it worked without firing a shot?
If a 26" straight taper barrel has 2" of bedding under its chamber in front of the receiver to eliminate droop, would a 24" barrel (the 26" one with 2" cut off at its back end) with the same profile droop without that under-chamber bedding?
Who has measured how much fore ends bend across different shooting positions?

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Not I, but I would still be interested to see. Always something to learn. The only thing I can offer is the observations of the AR-15/M-16 in use. I have observed the effect of changing the support hand position many times. Having somewhat skilled/disciplined shooters (me and some others) fire with the hand positioned closer to the receiver on the hand guard, then incrementally further away revealed a corresponding change in POI relative to POA. Closer in = higher, further out = lower. Every shooter, every time. Barrel flex due to the skinny barrel profile and possibly poor fit of the barrel extension in the upper (a major point of consideration when building an accurate AR). Doesn't keep the AR from being more than adequately accurate for the original purpose IF the shooter is consistent and doesn't move his forward hand randomly about while engaging targets. Does that in any way translate to a bolt gun? Dunno, but it's something to think about.
My very limited knowledge suggest to me that isolating the bulk of the stock from the rifle but for a very firm/fixed/stable contact with the receiver is the goal. The stock is the flimsiest piece of the equation and most subject to flex/movement. By isolating it to the minimal contact with rigid mounting you are eliminating a large amount of potentially negative influence on the receiver/barrel. In other words, since you must have a stock for user interface, then ensure that whatever part touches the action is a nearly unitized with it as possible (within reason) without imparting any stresses into the action. Restating the obvious? Probably, but I think it sometimes helps to repeat things in slightly different words as it may reveal something you missed the previous 47,000 times you thought about it. Kind of like my calculus teacher. She saved me and my college career purely by her tenacity and unwillingness to let it go until she found a way to present the material that I could grasp.

Edit - Damned, I get wordy sometimes!

How many under-barrel bedders let the epoxy cure with the barrel in the true vertical axis? Barrels are perfectly straight that way. They're not bending from their own weight.

Therefore, doesn't it seem logical that if the epoxy cures with the barrel horizontal, it's drooping while the epoxy cures? Remember, the epoxy shrinks microscopically. How does all this rigmarow end up preventing barrel droop when all the facts say it cannot happen?

How many are aware of the old adage "don't rest the barrel on something hard like a tree limb; it bounces off of it and won't shoot to point of aim." Cured epoxy is harder than tree limbs.

Dog Soldier said:

The fine Austrian and German Alpine hunting rifles have close fitting barrel channels.

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So are many fine hunting rifles made elsewhere. The fine European and USA match rifles have totally free floating barrels well clear of the barrel channel. Some rifles look nice; others shoot nice. What's the objective, conditions and standards?

Water is thin enough to get between close fitting barrel channels and barrels. It takes less time for a thin film of water to freeze than a thick film.

It takes less external force to bend a close fitting barrel channel against the barrel.

Bart B. said:

it's drooping while the epoxy cures?

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No. Shim under barrel to float bedding area. Lug and receiver are floating in the acraglas.

Most barrel droop comes when removing a Remington pressure point, to float the barrel.

Remember, there's more than one way to bed an action. I'm done.

243winxb said:

Shim under barrel to float bedding area. Lug and receiver are floating in the acraglas

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What prevents the barrel in front of that bedded section from drooping after that shim is removed?

If a 26" straight taper barrel has 2" of bedding under its chamber in front of the receiver to eliminate droop, would a 24" barrel (the 26" one with 2" cut off at its back end) with the same profile droop without that under-chamber bedding?

243winxb, you're forgetting the barrel in front of that pad under its chamber droops. It's not supported. That part of the barrel has mass and weight. If you loosen the rear stock screw in a two-screw action so bedded, the weight of the barrel will raise the receiver tang up off of its bedding. It'll stop when the barrel rests on the fore end. The barreled action hinges at the front edge of that under-barrel pad.

I don't know how to explain this simple mechanical event any better. Nor can I gently push a stick of butter into a brick.