NEW TRENDS in BOLT-ACTION BEDDING

How Actions and Stocks Have Improved Accuracy

- John Barsness

This 98 Mauser action is a remodeled military action on an old German custom rifle that had the front action screw turned right into the recoil lug. This is partly why the barrel channel on the old stock is epoxy bedded to prevent the front of the action from bending as the screw is tightened.

Until relatively recently, many centerfire bolt actions followed the same pattern, originally devised for military actions back when all military rifles had wooden stocks. Most early actions used the same basic design, featuring an integral recoil lug under the front end, with a hole in the middle for the front action screw. This drew the lug firmly into the stock's mortise, usually preventing the stock from splitting after repeated recoil, though sometimes a transverse steel bolt was placed somewhere behind the lug.

The Model 98 Mauser and 1903 Springfield actions are prime examples of this, along with several of other bolt actions designed in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, including some commercial rifles. The gun writers of the day often included a critique of the stock bedding on commercial rifles, mentioning their high regard for "close” inletting of both action and barrel.

In fact, many riflemen considered tight inletting necessary for fine accuracy, and while to a certain extent this applies to the action, some shooters realized rifles tended to shoot more accurately with the barrel "floated” enough to prevent touching the forend during firing. Perhaps the earliest reference I have run across is in the 1965 book Mister Rifleman, a collection of Col. Townsend Whelen's articles.