Gunsmithing In Process of Grinding My Stock for Bedding (Pics)

[RmeJu]

Following up the advice I got on my prior posts, I've been slowly roughing out my stock before bedding, and started wondering about a couple of things as I was going along:

1. Am I grinding deep enough? Other than the tang area...haven't got there yet.

2. Do I need to remove any material where the rear of the recoil lug interfaces with the lug recess, so a thicker layer of epoxy can get in there? Or is it ok as is, even if that means only a very thin layer of epoxy ends up on the rear face of the recess?

3. For various reason (below) I've been leaving thin, unroughed edges all around the trigger well, pillars, mag well, just in front of the recoil lug recess, etc., which can be seen in the pics if you look closely. Is that ok? This will give me thinner epoxy outlining those areas... will that be a problem down the road (breakage, etc)? Or should I really be grinding all the way to the edges to avoid those thin spots?

My reasoning was that, near the pillars, I wanted to be especially careful not to ding them up, since that'll be the action's height reference point while the epoxy cures. Near the mag and trigger wells, if I grind all the way to the edge, I have no way of making sure I have clean well lines after cure unless the modeling clay stays put exactly (and if I grind right to the edge, I could very easily ding up the clay).

Thanks for all the help so far!

 

[iceng]

1: you want 3mm or 1/8th depth, this gives the bedding compound that much thickness when cured, which makes it strong.

2: you shouldnt have to. I use very small amount of plasticine (like a 7.5 shotgun pellet worth) on the back of the recoil lug, and assemble the gun and torque it down. It should spread out hugely and be wafer thin. You should be fine in 99% of cases. We do this to work out if we need to cut the back of the recoil lug area. Rarely do we need to.

3: we cut it back and around the pillars. If it doesn't have pillars (which Yours does) we install pillars first, set those in place, then bed after, however sometimes we assemble pillars to the action, drill oversize holes for the pillars to sit in, bed it all up, and go from there.
Cut around the pillars, have the bedding compound flow up to it.

Wrap some tape around an action screw, maybe 4 or 5 wraps, and it should be a snug fit into the pillar. I cut the head off a spare screw, screw into action, the screw has tape around it. This centralises everything. Make sure to use release agent on the tape / screw.

Good luck.

 

[FisherT&C]

Your prep looks great to me.