NEW COMPOSITE STOCK

[Jager SA]

James

do you just enjoy an argument ??? I have stated my opinion on something a guy has taken the time to make,I have given him MY opinion unfortunatly I do only speak the truth,I do noty blow smoke up someones ass unlike others,as i have siad the design is near if not identical to a Robertson light hunter stock, how ever the finsh is no where near as good BUt as i have stated Iam sure the next one will be I also said I think pillar and glass bedding is need EXACTLY what another person has said

so james what is the problem for gods sake,good luck to him if no one gives an honest opinion how the hell can something be improoved

 

 

Now isnt that the pot calling the kettle or what?

 

Blowing smoke up someones arse how?

 

All I will say is how can you comment from a photo thats all.

[Jager SA]

how can I comment on a photo,come on James just look at it, James 1 question would you be happy to have that stock in the photo to turn up on your door step ??? infact forget that as i want an honest answer

I know i wouldnt BUT as I have said which you seem to be not seeing "Iam sure the quality will improove" as isnt this the first one made ???

now james what else do you want to argue about and pick holes in my constructive opinion

 

 

Pete, im sorry if you think im picking holes or trying to argue with you im not, nor would I question your integrity on a subject that is pointless.

 

I am sure that if that stock was going to be sold it would be completed the way the customer wanted it to be, so the chances of that stock turning up on my doorstep are zero.

 

Your entitled to your opinion even if in this case it was based on a photograph of a stock. However, everyone is entitled to their opinions also and they may not concure with you and yours, this doesnt make another opinion wrong or invalid. My opinion is based on what ive seen and actually had in my hands and the fact that the guy who made the stock has talked me through the process. I have also had several Robertsons through my workshop and as ive said they seem a bit agricultural for want of a better word.

[Wsm]

Right

 

This post was put up by edi to display a new product that he`s developing and will undoubtedly be of interest to a lot of members judging by the interest already

None of us can judge the integral build quality from a photo so what I think Pete is trying to say is that superficially the finish of the stock doesn`t match up to his Robertsons which is hardly surprising really considering as its not far out of prototype stage.

The design/finish will undoubtedly change as the product progresses and I`m sure edi will take all opinions on board which could help to improve his product

 

By the way this stays on track from now on so please take any petty point scoring posts back to the playground

[ejg223]

Thanks all for your replies,

please feel free to criticize, If one doesn't crib it'll never get better!

 

We'll try put a bit more effort into finishing.

 

Baldie you could have a point with the niche products.

Do not quite agree with the thick bedding though.

Rather a thin layer of weak inferior material than a thick layer.

Some stocks hold the action by shear forces, this we avoid and

utilize compression and tensile strength. That's the advantage

of the inlet moulding.

Anyway time will tell.

 

edi

[baldie]

Have a look at any trophy winning BR rig, or "f" class gun Ed, they will all be sat in at least 1/4" if not more of devcon, etc.I,ve seen smears of bedding, done to the so called "skim" bedding theory....so thin, you could almost see through them...an absolute waste of time. It chips, peels, or cracks...about as much use as tits on a boar.

I,ve used quite a few wilddogs now on various custom guns, and these are the same as yours, ie, moulded inletting. They are a right stripey deckchair basically, because, yes, the action does "drop in", but its not perfect, and it never will be when its been moulded round a mandrell/former.Every gun in minutely different, and requires its own custom bedding, to perform at its absolute best.The wilddogs always shoot better after correct, deep fill bedding, just the same as a mcmillan, or a robertson.

I,m not picking at your theories buddy, far from it, i,m just attempting to tell you, in certain area,s such as this, you are wasting your time and effort, because every gunsmith worth his salt, will bore out the screw holes, fit aluminium pillars, then mill out your beautifully hand laid carbon fibre, and fill it up with devcon. Devcon works, the industry has used it for years, and it produces tack driving rifles

mcmillan, and robertson both supply their stocks to this end, and have a proven track record, with military, and target rifles, its a proven theory. Put your undoubted skill and effort into the left handers/rarer models mate, it will save you time, and make you more money. People arent bother about inherent strengths, shear values etc, they are bothered about an accurate gun for the money, that fits. you,ve already got that matey, looking at those targets...why make life hard?

[col48]

i don't want to get in to a pissing contest here but here is it how i see it.

 

i had a rifle made by nesika and this rifle was made wrong, but i had all ready had the rifle bedded, so i spoke to Richard at nesika and asked if they sold me another barreled action, would i need to re bed the rifle.

 

Richard said even though our actions are made to very tight tolerances,(in side and out) you will have to re bed the rifle.

 

so i tried it and smoked the action in here are some pictures

 

 

 

 

 

now i have done a bit of bedding and this is not what you are looking for, the rifle would not shoot for that which promotes growth and vigour.

so i re bedded the rifle and bobs your uncle.

 

just my two pence worth.

in a nut shell baldie is spot on

 

ATB

Colin

[Vermincinerator]

Funky,

I am imposing my own standards on you and just trying to make a point, for example i have never seen or handled a Robertsons stock, i have always used Mcmillan.

I have seen plenty of pictures and the quality does look excellent but i cannot possibly pass judgement on which is better with seeing and handling both .

 

Ian.

[DeltaV]

Edi that looks good.

The prototype you sent me was definately stiff.

 

Pete

[Ronin]

The stock I have in my workshop fits the Howa very well, but, I have to aggree that if it were my decision, i'd at least skim bed the action, at first to see if there was any "crush" in the fibre structure when the screws are torqued up.

 

If there was, I'd be inserting pillars - if done right no crush and no movement = repeatable accuracy (providing rest of rifle true of course)

 

 

As it isnt my rifle, I wont be doing this unless asked to, it may be of interest (to the owner of said rifle), to do a test?

 

Groups as the stock is:

 

Groups when skim bedded:

 

Groups when pillar bedded:

 

Just a thought.

[Guest northernchris]

Very good idea Andy

[ejg223]

Good idea Andy,

I was never against bedding, all my rifles are bedded.

We are just not sure if one could possibly avoid pillars. My guess would be that the group

wouldn't be very different betwenn pillars/no pillars

 

 

In reality bedding is only done because the two surfaces don't match or?

As a quick fix, one beds.

A highly stiff steel action and half stiff glass/carbon stock get bedded with miserable (physical properties)

filler epoxy or bedding material. If one wants to unify rifle and stock then bedding should be as thin as possible.

 

edi

[Alycidon]

The man has seen a gap in the market and invested time and probably not an insignificant amount of funds producing a product from scratch designed to fill that gap. As a small company he will do whatever it takes to produce a better product than his competitor at a price that is still reasonable for the customer and the builder. He has started this from nothing, looks to me like he is on the way, good luck to him with it. And the best thing is its British.

 

A

[DeltaV]

Alycidon. actualy Edi is an German American with a bit of South African who lives in Eire. but he'll qualify as a Brit i expect,, eh Edi??

 

Bedding, well there are several theories. and i agree with and understand the logic of them all.

 

some like thicker bedding, but you have to mill out the stock to do it, obviously weaking the structure.

some like skim bedding, but its only any good if the rest of the stock between action and bottom metal is strong enough to resist the crush when the action screws are tightened.

 

Col that was a good idea to smoke lamp the action and see where it whitnessed. try it with an action in an alloy chassis, take the rem in an AICS for example, the bedding area is a line along each side of the action.

 

The idea of bedding is to mate the action and to some extend the barrel to the stock. this prevents it shifting during firing, gives a stable base for the wloe barreled action it sit in and prevents muck, fluf dust and custard getting in between.

 

I'd definately say that bedding is a must to get the best out of any rifle, each and every riflesmith will have his own methods and experiences. Most methods work. if they dont work straight away, re bedding is easy enough.

 

 

Edi. again, well done.

 

 

Oh, and before anyone bitches that i'm typing and i'm not building rifles, I'm waiting for the CNC machine to finnish production of a chassis.

Pete

Pete

[ejg223]

Thanks Pete,

your'e about right and I've got a few relatives somewhere around Southampton.

 

edi

[Guest PeteR]

...Bit of South African - Where's the 'tong and Boerwors machines? - surely more important than simple engineering!!!!

[baldie]

first and foremost, bedding is put into a stock to give a stress free fit between action and stock. If there are no metal pillars present , you are pissing in the wind, as the stock will still take stress from the screws being tightened. If they have no definate "stop" point, as they have when running inside pillars, how do you know when to stop? a torque wrench will only replicate a previous setting, it wont tell you whether a there is stress being imparted. The simple test is to clamp the gun, and pop a dial gauge on it, as the screws are loosened. Bed it with decent , thick pillars, with at least 2 mill walls, and a good bedding compound, and then you should see no movement on the dial indicator. I dont know why people fight shy of fitting pillars, its the easiest job in the world. I will fit pillars only, in the shop, but i will not do a "bedding" only, without pillars....it will see no improvement on the guns performance.

[ejg223]

Baldie that is a dream world, screwing together and stress free does not agree.

Tightening a screw is stress.

Once again, I wasn’t against pillars or bedding, I am just not sure if the pillars are really needed on our hunting/varmint stock. (or in the future)

Pillars are not the golden egg. Let’s look at the disadvantages. Thermal expansion is very different to the stock material. Meaning sometimes your action is on the pillars and sometimes on the bedding. This is miniscule of course. Next problem is even your good

bedding material shrinks slightly when curing, which means action sits on the pillars and

as you said and is stress free away from the action (slightly). What do you need bedding for then???

If no stress is induced into the bedding then it becomes useless. A bit like a wheel that doesn’t touch the ground.eh

 

Baldie you are dead right about needing pillars if your stock or/and bedding material is

“soft” or in other words can compress when the action screws are tightened. That must be

avoided.

In our case we do have the possibility to experiment with materials in this critical area and might come up with a solution. As it is, it’s an improvement already.

 

PeteR,

could do with a good old braai again

 

edi

[Guest PeteR]

..and a few ice cold Castles?

[baldie]

OK, Edi, you have to plough your own furrow. You obviously know something that mcmillan, robertson, wilddog, and every gunsmith who bedded rifles for the last 50 years...doesn,t. Good luck mate. I dont think i,ve anything more to add to this particular discussion.

[Ronin]

I would be interested to see the results of my proposed test to see if Edi's theory holds true.

 

Maybe the owner of the rifle will allow this....

 

Anyway, ive done a few bedding jobs in my time, pillar, skim, tang and recoul lug only or full action.

 

Ive used AICS and Bell and Carlson and HS precision all of which say they dont require bedding (for a sporting rifle at sporting ranges this may be the case) but in these days of accuracy madness, even the "average" shooter wants benchrest accuracy.

 

So the stocks with the aluminium bedding "V" blocks get a skim bed - and lo, they shoot marginally better groups.

 

Mcmillan, Manners et al - are constructed from hard exterior and soft interior material, which will (not can) crush when you tighten the action screws.

 

Any action that is torqued down to manufacturers recomendations will twist if the surface touching the stock inlet is uneven or the stock inlet doesnt match exactly the contour of action.

 

Every action no matter who makes it, is not an exact duplicate of another - hence when we screw down an un bedded action into a stock you will twsist it slightly, this twist will affect accuracy.

 

As Colin cleverly demonstrated with the Nesika action and already bedded stock not all surfaces are touching, so it will twist.

 

Stress free bedding - well the basic principle is you support the barrel centrally (so its free floating) in the barrel channel at one end of the rifle and the other end is supported in the stock by the tang - no other surfact touches each other untill you apply bedding material. When its set, you have a perfect mirror image of the base of the action glued to the inlet area of the stock - pretty simple, but effective.

 

Ive done numerous Remington bedding "jobs" and own quite a few stocks that have been chopped and changed bettween actions etc - I can honestly say that I wouldnt trust the accuracy of a rifle if I swapped from one stock to another that had not been bedded with that particular action.

 

I do hear what you say Edi about your stocks being resistant to crush and as I have one here, I know it would take considerable forces to crush the action hole areas (or anywhere else) of your stocks.

 

But, as I know that no two actions are exactly alike, I wonder if an aplication of skim bed would offer a more stable platform for the action surfaces that sit in the stock - I agree (almost) that pillars may be unecessary as youve effectively designed them out (great idea)

 

 

Hope you see this as being constructive opinion rather than critique

[ejg223]

Baldie, you are taking this way too serious.

I really enjoy your input and it gets me thinking.

Just why do we always have to wait for others to lead the way?

A bit of initiative and try out a few things as long as it doesn't cost the world.

Because of your pillar worries I had a look at a few values. If one replaces

a steel ID6mm X OD10mm pillar with one in carbon fiber of equal stiffness it

would have a OD of roughly 17mm. That could be intergrated in the stock while moulding.

Or have you tried a carbon pillar instead of a steel pillar yet? might also be an option.

 

Ronin, thanks for the input.

the only reason why I hadn't bedded this stock was because it might end up on another rifle.

and although it shot quite well, it was only a quick test.

Problem I have is that I wouldn't be a good enough shot to evaluate if there is any difference

between the bedding methods.

I'm very thankfull and interested to see the outcome of your tests.

 

PeteR,

in SA they taught us: if at first you don't succeed,... give up!

wherabouts did you come from?

 

edi

[Ronin]

I would use a secure front rest and back back set up - takes away operator error

[Ronin]

Anyone who is honest, impartial, has access to a suitable range and equipment for shooting reliable groups.

 

 

Its only a suggestion Pete after all

[Jager SA]

Im happy to take it on with Ronin, I have no vested interest, neither does Ronin, between us the task would be impartial.

 

Not only that I am doing the finishing on the stock anyway and Edi has the stock to me to buy if it works and all is well.

 

Anyone have any objections to this?

[Jager SA]

all well and good but it needs someone who can bed a rifle correctly not just carv out a bit of stock and re fill it,there is more to it James.

 

 

You cheeky geet...

 

Dont you worry my love, im having lessons...

 

Now other than the fact its needs doing properly any other objections? Funky is exculuded now as he had his chance to voice his opinion.