Is bedding the front recoil lug of a rifle enough?

Improving and repairing firearms. Rifle bedding, barrel work, stock replacement and other ways to improve your firearms.

Is bedding the front recoil lug of a rifle enough?

Post by sha » 12 Sep 2013, 11:02 am

I've got an old Savage Axis that's a bit of a fixer-uper of a rifle that I'm going to try my hand and some gunsmithing work.

First on the list is bedding...

I'm not bad at this kind of work but new to rifles specifically, I don't mind giving things ago but the rifle has to be serviceable afterwards... While this is a bit of an experiment for me I don't want to get too ambitions and muck anything up...

Full bedding is the best I guess, but also seems to be where everyone gets stuck with things like mechanical locking around the box magazine area, trigger or whatever the case may be on a particular rifle.

Just bedding the front lug looks to be a lot easier and something I'm confident I can do without mucking it up, but how much of an improvement is there compared to full bedding?

Is it 90% as good as full bedding, or just a small improvement?

Am I wasting my time doing the front lug only, should I bite the bullet and give full bedding a go?
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Re: Is bedding the front recoil lug of a rifle enough?

Post by Hercl » 12 Sep 2013, 12:25 pm

That mechanical lock in is a bitch... You wouldn't be the first person to screw if up if you went that way...

More than one picture floating round the net of snapped rifles stocks which people broke trying to unlock their action from the bedding... :(

Not trying to talk you out of doing it, obviously full bedding can be done successfully, but doing just the recoil lugs will still be worthwhile if you're more comfortable going that route.
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Full action bedding vs. bedding recoil lug

Post by Herdsman » 12 Sep 2013, 1:15 pm

Pretty standard practice for sporters and hunting rifles to just bed the recoil lugs.

Front is the biggie but worth doing the rear lug as well.

Full bedding is nice obviously but not essential unless your talking serious competition shooting IMO.
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Full action bedding vs. bedding recoil lug

Post by Streamline » 17 Sep 2013, 10:49 am

Herdsman wrote:Full bedding is nice obviously but not essential unless your talking serious competition shooting IMO.


I'd agree with that.

Full bedding for competition rifles.

Front and rear lug for hunting rifles is plenty.
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Full action bedding vs. bedding recoil lug

Post by artimu » 18 Sep 2013, 7:27 am

Front lug is usually the worst offender in terms of movement. Definitely worth doing even without full length bedding,
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Re: Is bedding the front recoil lug of a rifle enough?

Post by Zilla » 19 Sep 2013, 9:36 am

Give bedding the front and rear lugs a go to start.

It will be an improvement and if all goes well you can always try full bedding on your next rifle one you're more confident.
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