Glass beding a rifle

[M. De Land]

I'd fill the staples with clay then tape over them vertically on the staple keeping the clay in the middle and fill the slots in the stock with soft car wax. The staple will push it's way into the soft wax and extrude any glass bedding compound and keep it from locking down on the staple. It is important to find any over hangs in the metal or holes that can cause physical shape lock down, and fill them with clay or wax. This is the very important preemptive part spoken of earlier.
A couple of tricks for getting the barrel, lock or tang out of the stock when completed.
Shock/impact breaks them loose better than raw force so before trying to man handle the barrel or lock out go to the range and shoot the gun for a spell. When you get home put them in a freezer for and hour or so if possible then bring the gun out and with a rawhide hammer give the barrel some sharp blows along it's length from the top before running an aluminum rod or hard wood dowel in the muzzle for a lever to remove it.
The lock plate and tang get the same shock treatment from the outside with a plastic headed punch or dowel. The keep screw on the opposite side is removed from the lock and a threaded rod punch is screwed in the same hole to drive out the plate.
Tap it slowly and keep flipping it over to see the progress or where it is binding.
The main thing is to not panic when it does not come apart immediately as patients and repeated application of the techniques described will eventually yield results and it will come apart without breaking anything. When properly done the metal in the stock will be tighter than "Dicks Hat Band" so don't be surprised that it takes a bit for the release agent or wax to let the metal go.
Been doing all manor of gun glass bedding for nearly 40 years and have never had even one gun that would not give up it's metal eventually and not destroy anything if these suggestions are employed.
I don't like to use heat as metal and wood respond much better to cold in disassembly and is far less likely to cause any damage in my experience.

 

[necchi]

Tell yah what, you better do some listening to some of these suggestions if your going to do a full glass bed job

Easy Tigerboy, did you read this?

Anyone know if glass bedding a TC Hawkin rifle is worth the effort?

Who was the one that mentioned a full glass bed job?
(on an over the counter rifle?)
Geez,

 

[meanmike8665]

Of course you will never answer the question, but are you saying production guns aren't worth trying to make better shooters?

Michael

 

[M. De Land]

I did read it and sure it is worth it if you want the best the rifle is capable of. Partials are not usually as good as a complete job although a little in the right spots can make a marked improvement in accuracy but you will be missing the rest of the benefits possible from a complete job.
A complete job is definitely more difficult in all respects hence the admonition to listen to those who have experience in that realm. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! :wink:

 

[Artificer]

Hi M.D.,

I thought I had posted this last night, but must have hit the wrong button....

Thank you for taking the time to add the information on claying/taping the barrel lugs, info on breaking out the stocks out, etc., etc. "Breaking out" was the term we used to describe getting the barrels (or receivers) out of glass bedding and is not meant to be critical and certainly not literal.

It is a good thing to get more info out for other forum members who may be interested in doing the work.

Gus

 

[Jimbo47]

In other words it's best to have a good idea what you are doing before you even attempt it.
Worst case scenario is you end up with the barrel and stock glued together, or not be able to mate them back together. :idunno:

 

[Rat Trapper]

Thanks for all the good info.

 

[Vaino]

Because most MLers have heavy bbls and the pressures are low, harmonics don't affect the accuracy to any degree. CF accuracy can be improved by glass bedding because many have "whippy" bbls and the pressures are approx. 50,000 PSI which does generate harmonics.

Somebody mentioned completely glass bedding a LR....in spite of the fact that the forestock on a LR is quite flimsy and the bbl does all the work.

Using glass bedding to repair a MLer stock is something that can do a good job that might not be possible w/ other attempts.

The "modern mindset" sometimes looks for problems where there aren't any.....Fred

 

[Artificer]

Fred,

You have properly inletted barrels into good wood stocks and when that is done, I fully agree that glass bedding is not needed or desirable for most of us and certainly not my choice at all.

However a fair number of factory stocks, including the fairly good looking but poor Walnut stock I had on my old TC Hawken, were/are far from good wood and some are not inletted all that well. So I will only consider glass bedding a stock when the wood is compressed far too early from shooting or some other kind of repair job, or for NSSA Match Shooting.

Gus

 

[stubshaft]

A quick coating of inletting black or even lipstick on the bottom of the barrel will show how well the barrel is inletted. For best accuracy I always bed the tang and first 4 inches ahead of it.

 

[Gene L]

I doubt a lot of improvement, but others have said bedding improved for them.

The reason for bedding is for stability, and to float the barrel. If you've got more than one (or maybe just one) pressure point (wedges) holding the barrel down, should minimize barrel whip. So I don't see a whole lot of advantage to it. I just don't see that with a slow, low pressure and presumably thicker barrel should reduce harmonics to begin with.

 

[M. De Land]

Bingo!

 

[M. De Land]

Fred, in my opinion, the closer you can fit a barrel channel to a barrel when harmonics are not a factor and the more you strengthen the thin wood in the breech and the more you can seal out water and the more you can keep wood from oil soaking the better your rifle will be able to exhibit it's full possible potential over it's entire life.
I have to ask, have you ever tried a completely bedded tang, lock and barrel?
My guess is that a fully bedded barrel would be of particular benefit to banded muskets which usually need band tuning to shoot there best but Gus would be the guy to consult on this aspect.

 

[Col. Batguano]

It's probably best to do your glass bedding when the fore end is still in the square too. Once the edges are feathered down, they get really fragile. With a long rifle, it's pretty hard to find a freezer long enough for a 44" barrel.

 

[Vaino]

Don't know if this is pertinent to Mlers, but have glass bedded 2 Cf rifles and noticed improved accuracy w/ one and the other had worsened accuracy and had to free float the bbl and of all my CF rifles this was the most accurate and it was a .300 Win Mag.

From a practical standpoint I don't think glass bedding accomplishes much of anything w/ a MLer.....Fred

 

[M. De Land]

Yeah, it would have to be a walk in or as I do just set it outside the shop door from November to April and they get plenty cold.

 

[M. De Land]

That is very true with center fire guns which I never glass bed past 1.5 inches forward of the recoil lug on the barrel. Some do their best with some pressure right at the end of the forearm.
With muzzle loaders though I like to at least bed the tang, breech area in back and around the lock, under and around each wedge or pin and the muzzle cap. Then I realize a bit more and the whole barrel channel will be protected and perfectly mated to the barrel.
I have never bedded a full length stock though all my guns are half or two peace but I don't see why it would make any difference as far as protecting and perfectly fitting the barrel to the stock and forend cap.

 

[necchi]

Of course you will never answer the question, but are you saying production guns aren't worth trying to make better shooters?

Sure I will.
Nope, never said they aren't worth bedding.
I have done that kind of work to several, Acraglas and the included instructions work just fine.
I do understand that proper pin or wedge fitting is a huge issue with our guns. And I assure that issue is cared for long before I consider bedding,, it's part of finding the mechanical accuracy of a rifle. Part of load development basics.
I don't own a purchased custom rifle, the ones I commonly shoot are all off the shelf.
I just follow more of fletho's ideals. Harmonic balance isn't an issue and that with most traditional ml's it's the barrel that holds the forearm wood, not the other way around.
It is important that the breech (tang hook-up if the rifle has it) should be as tight as possible and bedding the tang and the first few inches does add to accuracy.
I just feel that fully bedding the barrel channel isn't needed at all.

 

[meanmike8665]

Thanks for sharing your views.

Michael

 

[Artificer]

With period through modern traditional inletting, not giving enough room for pins/wedges in barrel lugs for the natural expansion/contraction of stock wood and also not giving room for barrel lug clearance in the stock for the same reason, most definitely sets up negative nodes of vibration in barrel harmonics and hurts accuracy in ML guns. This even though most people don't think of it that way and ensure there is room in the lugs and stock for that natural expansion/contraction mainly for the purpose of ensuring there is not stock damage due to those things.

Barrel harmonics also come into play when finding the most accurate load for a particular barrel, that's why the long standing tradition of going up five grains of powder (and sometimes less) at a time and then looking at and possibly recording the results as the groups close up or open up with the changes in the powder charge.

So while I agree that harmonics are not as important with most ML guns compared to modern firearms due to the distances we commonly shoot ML's and other factors, I disagree that barrel harmonics are not important at all with ML firearms for these reasons mentioned.

If the barrel in a ML is properly inletted in good stock wood in the time tested method since the 18th century in rifles with a very tight inletting around and a few inches forward of the breech, pretty loose along the bottom of the inlet until becoming pretty tight near the muzzle and finally fairly tight along the sides of the barrel to keep water and other foreign substances out and thus not easily open to forearm warpage, then glass bedding is not needed for most ML usage.

But the fact is that many modern made factory repro's of ML guns do not meet those standards.

Even well inletted barrels/tangs in good stock wood will eventually compress the wood where it is no longer as tight as it was when originally inletted, as enough shots are fired from the gun to cause it. Many, if not most modern shooters never shoot that many rounds through their guns, though, so they have no personal experience with it.

Though I have not checked in the last 10 or so years, the International Muzzleloading Committee (that is stricter than most places on originality of firearms used in their competitions) has for many years before allowed using wood pieces or wood shims glued (with period type glue) into stocks to correct these problems and then the barrel re-inlet as needed. This because there is ample evidence such repairs were made in ML firearms over the course of years they were in common use.

For most people, it is far easier to use glass bedding.

Gus