Bedding an Omark 44

[Puahue]

Ive bought an Omark 44 with the Palma medallion from 1979 trentham event embedded in the stock. It was bought by a bloke after the Palma shoot and has only had a further 250 rounds put through it. It seems to shoot very well. I do a lot of smallbore target shooting and this is to get in to fullbore TR.

The guy i bought it from had a thin brass shim under the rear tang and talked about tightening the front action screw enough to put the barrel under enough tension to "lift the barrel 4 thou. You can slide a sheet of paper between the stock and barrel all the way until 50mm from where the barrel joins the action.

This seems contrary to what i normally understand when bedding a rifle.

I would like to remove the action and barrel from the stock to check and clean trigger etc but am unsure how sensitive they are to correct tensions etc.

How robust is the original bedding system on an omark? Is this brass shim under the rear tang a common arrangement and if so what torque setting should i do the action screws up to.

Any feedback welcomed

[Wm.Traynor]

To answer your last question, removing the stock will almost certainly affect zero. Only rifles that are bedded on pillars or a bedding block will go back to within half moa of the original zero. Add to that the fact that the backsight will have been removed from the sight plate and there goes another half moa. Generally speaking, of course. Personally, I would float the barrel and if the tang-shim is not epoxied to the bedding, I would call it dodgy.

However, you say it shoots well, so that blows my theories out of the water
At the very least, you will have to expect to re-zero your particular rifle after disassembly. Whether disassembly will spoil accuracy or not, I just don't know. A lot might depend on how stable that shim is but it sounds like you must have a good barrel and the makings of a "robust" rifle at least.

FWIW
Different methods came to be employed to bed the Omark and one of mine deleted the tang bolt altogether. Instead, a hole was D&T for a take-down bolt forward of the trigger box, in the receiver. However, you might not want to go to that trouble. If you do have to change the bedding it would be simple to bed around the recoil lug and the tang, with the barrel floated. It might be necessary to relieve the tang bed so that only the rear half makes contact with the tang. Between the front and rear beds, the action is floated BTW. It is a minimal contact method where the barrelled action drops out of the stock when you turn it upside-down. (Bolts out of course) The recoil lug does not bear on the bottom or sides, just the rear.

But for all we know, nothing at all will go wrong. Best of luck mate
ps very good triggers for Omarks used to be made in NZ

[Puahue]

Quick update,
Found a few places where the stock was rubbing on the action including the base of the recoil lug. would shoot tight groups then point of impact would change up to 1 MOA and would shoot tight groups and then another significant POI change. Took it to a gunsmith who has plenty of experience with these and he did exactly what Wm.Traynor suggested in the above post. Action D &T just in front of triggerand with a front and rear bed

Now have a rifle with a nice bit of history that shoots consitently well

[ebr love]

The guy i bought it from had a thin brass shim under the rear tang and talked about tightening the front action screw enough to put the barrel under enough tension to "lift the barrel 4 thou. You can slide a sheet of paper between the stock and barrel all the way until 50mm from where the barrel joins the action.

This seems contrary to what i normally understand when bedding a rifle.

Not sure I have the picture right here.......

There is a brass shim at the rear but he's tightening the front screw to lift the barrel?

Maybe we've lost something in Chinese whispers while conveying the story here but that aint how it works. If the front action screw is the pivot point obviously shimming the rear of the action will lift it, thereby lowering the barrel closer to the stock.

As for what bedding is, I assume you're thinking of removing the action, lining the inlet with a bedding compound then re-seating the action to form a near perfect mould between it and the stock. If so you're correct, that is bedding.

There is also 'shim bedding' which IMO is just doing a half assed job of it. In short you put a shim under both the front and rear action screws so the pressure is distributed between the 2 points, and any uneven points of the inletting are not putting pressure on the action as it has been lifted away from them by the shims.

It's easier than a proper bedding job of course, slice up a coke can for shims and you're done. How much benefit it will add to any given rifle... Your guess is as good as mine.

It's shooting well now anyway so you've got a good result

If approaching another rifle though and it were me, I'd get it properly bedded instead of screwing around with shims. And if the barrel is contacting the stock I'd expand the inletting until there was enough room instead of trying to tension the action to move the barrel away from the stock. That's the oddest 'solution' I've heard.

[Diesel]

Ive bought an Omark 44 with the Palma medallion from 1979 trentham event embedded in the stock. It was bought by a bloke after the Palma shoot and has only had a further 250 rounds put through it. It seems to shoot very well. I do a lot of smallbore target shooting and this is to get in to fullbore TR.

The guy i bought it from had a thin brass shim under the rear tang and talked about tightening the front action screw enough to put the barrel under enough tension to "lift the barrel 4 thou. You can slide a sheet of paper between the stock and barrel all the way until 50mm from where the barrel joins the action.

This seems contrary to what i normally understand when bedding a rifle.

I would like to remove the action and barrel from the stock to check and clean trigger etc but am unsure how sensitive they are to correct tensions etc.

How robust is the original bedding system on an omark? Is this brass shim under the rear tang a common arrangement and if so what torque setting should i do the action screws up to.

Any feedback welcomed

This is going to sound really bad but:

Pull it apart and see what happens, I have a few Omarks and one has had a bit of random plastic drink bottle under the back bolt and shoved in alongside the recoil lug for a few years now with no drama, always mean to make it look nice but have never got around to It and it still shoots very well. It is important the recoil lug and first part of the barrel are secure which was the reason I shimmed mine (on a club day), it was rocking on the front which is wrong

Bedding it properly is the right thing to do but don't be too fussed about it, as long as you don't use a six foot piece of pipe for leverage they aren't as fussy as people reckon.