@Terry Cross would/do you recommend skim bedding in chassis generally?
I would totally recommend doing anything that would make the finished rifle more accurate, more consistent and more trouble free.
If I thought that skim bedding the Zealot chassis helped, I would bed every one I built. On an already expensive rifle, there is no reason I would omit a step that would improve the rifle for my customer.
I don't bed any of the Zealots.
Also, like the IMB, they are not sensitive to the torque on the stock bolts and they shoot small.
The IMB is an internal chassis I designed and use in almost all of the SENTINEL stocks. I was not a fan of such and had no intentions of trying that but I had a project to compete for a while back that had a "no bedding" requirement. I had to design the IMB to compete for it. It worked really well. I refined it over a few years and for the last 10yrs every SENTINEL or LongSword rifle I have built uses the IMB bonded into the SENTINEL fiberglass stock.
When working on the CAD for the Zealot project, I wanted to bring over all of the proven tech that was applicable from the SENTINEL project. The SENTINEL IMB as well as the SENTINEL DBM bottom metal was merged into the Zealot chassis. Both are proven across a pretty rough user history. As was hoped, both of those aspects have worked perfectly from the start with the chassis project.
If I had to hazard an instance where this chassis might benefit a skim bed, it would be if the user mated a factory Rem 700 receiver to it that was particularly curved and inconsistent on the exterior surfaces. Maybe.
For all the other actions out there, I would say bedding probably wouldn't hurt but I would also be surprised if you could quantify any improvement either.
History may prove me wrong but so far, not.