Removing a glass bedded stock

[Laphroaig]

The rifle in question is a M1 Garand that was accurized to a National Match configuration about three years ago by a local smith. It started its life as a CMP Special. My smith cautioned me to avoid removing it from the wood because the bedding job would become degraded and eventually need to be "touched up". I got the impression that he touched up the bedding on his NM Garands every time he removed them from the wood.

Long story short, its now pushing 500 rounds and I have yet to remove it from the wood. I'm getting antsy as I want to clean the gas cylinder and put some grease on the innards. I'm going to do that before I put it away for the winter no matter the consequences.

So does anyone have experience with removing gas bedded stocks and does it have any noticeable effect of accuracy afterwards? Is my smith just being anal? Its a good shooter but needs to be detail cleaned and greased before long. Glass bedding on any rifle qualifies for your experiences and comments.

PS this is the only glass bedded rifle that I own and I expect it to be tight. Any hints as to what to expect when I finally take it apart?

 

[Reloadron]

One of my Garands I bedded and did all the tricks to. You can remove the rifle from the bedded stock. The idea being don't make a habit of it. The rifle should fit tight into the bedded stock and the front end fitting and unitizing (if done) should remain in tact.

Is my smith just being anal?

While you do not want to constantly be tearing the rifle down to parade rest and reassembling it weekly it is perfectly OK to field strip the rifle and clean it. I never saw an adverse effect on the accuracy of my rifle. Some of what you are asking will really depend on how well the rifle was bedded (accurized) in the first place. Mine was a class project for an NRA course and we pretty much followed Jerry Kuhnhausen's book procedure as found in The US .30 Gas Operated Service Rifles (A Shop Manual).

Remove the trigger group and gently tap the action out of the stock. The key word being "gently".

Ron

 

[Slamfire]

The rifle in question is a M1 Garand that was accurized to a National Match configuration about three years ago by a local smith. It started its life as a CMP Special. My smith cautioned me to avoid removing it from the wood because the bedding job would become degraded and eventually need to be "touched up". I got the impression that he touched up the bedding on his NM Garands every time he removed them from the wood.

Well, he is right. I have done my own glass bedding jobs, but my best NM Garand was done by Ronnie Morris of Match Service works. My work has sloppy drips, his is smooth, clean, wonderful. But the fact of the matter is, there is a very tight fit between the action and the bedding and to get the action out, you have to pry, push, etc, and that will loose things up in time. I recommend taking the action out of the stock at the end of the shooting season, which is basically once a year. If you are shooting from a thousand to couple of thousand of rounds a year in competition, then you will take the action out around five to ten times (at most) before the barrel is shot out.

You can do a bang up job of cleaning a NM Garand without removing it from the bedding. I removed the bolt from the top. You do not have to remove the action from the wood to take the bolt out. You have to hold the bolt all the way back as you lift the operating rod up through the dismount notch and work it around the right bolt lug. Takes practice and strong fingers.

To clean the gas cylinder I take the gas cylinder lock off and push patches down the gas cylinder. I scrape off carbon residue from the face of the gas piston and the gas cylinder lock screw. I will rub the interior with a powder solvent, rack the bolt, then wipe the powder solvent off any surface I can touch. I will rub a light oil on the inside. I also use anti seize on the threads of the gas cylinder lock screw. It will carbon up if you don’t.

I never, ever, knock the gas cylinder off the end of the barrel unless I absolutely have to. I have peened the splines and epoxy glued the things on my match rifles.

I wipe down the operating rod the best I can, getting long strips of cloth between the operating rod and the upper handguard.

You can remove the trigger guard as long as you don’t start knocking the action around and out. I have not had a zero change just removing the trigger guard. Your experience may be different. I also unlatch the trigger guard when I store. I put a pin in the safety hole to keep the bow from totally unlatching and having the trigger guard fall out.

Long story short, its now pushing 500 rounds and I have yet to remove it from the wood. I'm getting antsy as I want to clean the gas cylinder and put some grease on the innards. I'm going to do that before I put it away for the winter no matter the consequences.

At some point it is prudent to clean everything up. Wipe all the oil and crud that migrate between the action and bedding, wipe off all the crud from interior of the action and the bottom of the barrel. You will find lots of carbon in the stock channel. But if you lubricated everything before you assembled it, and shot it, and the oil has not congealed, you should have no real issues cleaning and assembling. Just don’t disassemble often.

 

[Captcurt]

Something that will help removal is to place the gun in a freezer over night. The metal will contract and will make it easier. I had an action seized in a stock and the freezer trick worked well. It wouldn't budge at first but after a night in the freezer it fell out of the stock with one tap of a plastic mallet.

 

[Laphroaig]

Thanks all for the great replies. Like I said, I'm going to do something later this summer before I put it away. Let me stew over this for a while.