I have an ag composite carbon fiber stock coming soon and an APA RTG bottom metal sitting on the bench to freshen up my 308 shorty. The stock has pillars installed and AG said it does not have to be bedded. I have all the bedding stuff at home already. What do you guys think? Bolt it together and shoot it first, bed lug and tang, skim bed lug to tang, or remove some material on rails and around pillars and bed? I have never bedded a rifle before and was going to start by practicing on my 22 but this rifle needs done before deer season. Well I want it for then at least.
AG told me that the action area is solid and not foam cored as well. I know there are a bunch of people who have worked with the manners EH stocks so what have you done?
Thanks
I don't profess to know the ins and outs of AG stocks. Never held one in my hand. That said, I know for a fact that its possible to machine an inlet that'll run equal to what a bedding job is capable of. I started exploring this 8 years ago. If a cnc machine can make the kinds of parts your willing to trust your family with when you take off for the big summer vacation, then a little stock work is NOT going to be outside of its wheelhouse. Not by a long shot.
The real problem here is that the shooting community has more less become institutionalized. I mean that respectuflly. If everyone is doing the same thing and continues to do the same thing, then it eventually becomes the status quo. That kind of behavior has gone on for a long, long time when it comes to rifle stock fit and finish. Bedding was a way of solving a problem. Inletting the stock with more detail is just another way to do it.
3D surface machining is a real thing and the machines are more than capable of doing a sterling job at it. If the programmer knows how to use surfacing tool strategies, there's not a single thing wrong with it. In fact, there's a whole lot of advantages.
As for pillars: Pillar use started 3 or 4 decades ago. Wood stocks have a habit of getting smooshed over time. The pillar prevents this. Their use in composites is a bleed over from those days. If it works in wood, can't hurt in fiberglass. -right??
If its really needed in a composite stock, you should of bought a different one. A typical 1/4-28 thread pitch fastener will develop around 1200lbs of tensile load on a threaded joint at the typical 50 lbs inch torque setting. Sounds like a lot, but its really not. A guy named Jerome Sailing, an engineer from an Aerospace fastener evaluation lab in Seattle did this work for me over 15 years ago. My point here is when you spread this load over the surface area of a stock and the bottom side of the floor metal, modern composite fillers tolerate it very, very well. By that measure, pillars are not really needed.
edit: You may question/doubt this. Until you start machining on stocks routinely, you'll struggle to appreciate the strength they have. A hard fill laced with chopped glass is some tough stuff. That kind of material is very, very commonly used strategically in the better composite stocks.
It hurts absolutely nothing though to have pillars installed however. The guys who claim they heat up and throw zeros are forgetting to appreciate that the core material of the stock is a great heat sink. If you get a pillar hot enough to change a zero, your barrel is already resembling a cooling rod from Chernobyl... The one exclusion here is that AL pillars have a nasty habit of failing to adhere properly. This has more to do with the installer failing to prep the material correctly than anything else. A shiny, fresh from the lathe, pillar is not going to stick well to epoxy. You gotta scuff the exterior and put a tooth on it. The other concern is the AL oxide layer that forms. Gotta scuff that off too.
Buy with confidence. From what I've read, AG has their shit together.
C.
