Permanent Rifle Bedding

, CDR USN (Ret.) May I introduce you to "Blue"? About 1981 while at NAS Key West, I bought an old "Devine" M1A, serial number 00082X. The metal was OK but the wood was horrid; a bit beat up, truly ugly, and—what mattered—flexible. I lean hard into the sling in prone and the stock would give a bit. " As a fix, I covered the stock with layer upon layer of fiberglass and clear, marine-grade epoxy. The truly ugly wood was still visible, so I put on a final coat, a color coat of—you guessed it—blue!

While at Camp Perry in 1985, Glen Nelson had a booth and a small, mobile shop and I had a heavy barrel installed. These upgrades set us up for the main theme of this story: Bedding. The essence of precision shooting is consistency. Every aspect of every shot should be as near the same as possible; that definitely includes the foundational marriage between the rifle’s receiver and stock.

That union is usually accomplished so that the rifle can be disassembled for maintenance, but otherwise, the more attaching points and the more solid the fit between them the better. For most any rifle receiver, additional attaching points can be added. Upgrading a standard M1A receiver starts by adding a rear lug and upgrades to adding both front and rear lugs. These added lugs can be set

into inlets in the stock and rigidly attached by bolts. But, those inlet sockets and other attaching points still need to be tailored such that all free space is removed and an intimate marriage achieved between the receiver and stock. This marriage is usually accomplished with epoxy, which itself is enhanced with additional strengthening reinforcements such as fiberglass, carbon, aramid, etc.

To enable disassembly, some type of release compound is painted on the receiver when initially set into the epoxy-coated stock inlets. But that release compound will create at least a minuscule space; repeated disassembly and reassembly can create even more. And any slippage in that space will magnify the damage caused by the repeated stresses Top Bottom of shot recoil and the heating and cooling inherent in a firearm’s operation.

Finally, if your stock is made of wood, exposure to rain or other variances in atmospheric moisture can cause stresses from swelling and shrinking. So I had this idea: Glue the gun into the stock. No release compound, just glue the two into one. That’s what I did. With some of that same marine epoxy reinforced with carbon fibers, I glued the receiver into the stock. For over 30 years, the receiver has never been out of the stock. Oh sure, I can remove the trigger group to clean and replace parts that break.

The bolt comes out and the gas system is mostly accessible but the receiver has never been out of the stock. I’ve worn out National Match sights, had to glue an "elevation disc" on the receiver because the elevation notches wore out, and replaced a trigger group or two when parts broke, but the bedding has held. I reload exclusively with mild charges of Accurate 2520, a ball powder that doesn’t seem to erode the bore. I’m still under #3 on an erosion gauge. That said, how much use has this bedding endured?

Over the period from 1986 to 1995, a rough guess is 7,000 rounds. Did it hold? In the last match I shot with "Blue" we shot a 195-6X at the 600 and won a Secretary of the Navy trophy M1. There you have it—the history of "Blue." A fine shooting rifle, one whose homespun bedding gave and continues to give this duffer a lot of room for shooter error. AG