Picked up a 98 Mauser in 22-250 I believe 2 summers ago. Messed around with it off and on, shot some good groups with it but mostly it was plaqued with inconsistency.
Once I knew it would shoot if things were right, I decided to give it a good bedding job.
First I filled the voids in the plastic stock with epoxy resin to stiffen it up. Filled it all the way from just forward of the recoil lug recess, to the end of the stock. Probably put 300 holes in the stock trying to give the resin something to lock in with.
Then I bedded the whole recoil lug area and rear tang, and bedded the barrel a full 4.5" ahead of the recoil lug, then free floated it ahead of that. This rifle has a heavy varmint barrel on it and if I was going to go to all the trouble of bedding, I wanted to make sure the action was fully supported with no stress hanging on it. Figured if I didn't like the results for some reason I could easy enough free float it farther back an inch at a time.
Loaded up some 55 V-max's to test. Initial results at 100 are promising. It put the first 3 under 1/2", then it or me dropped the 4'th one making the total group just under 3/4. It's 40 degrees colder than when I normally shoot this gun so I'll wait for warmer weather and revisit it. Should be able to tweak that load and tighten it up. So far so good.
Once I knew it would shoot if things were right, I decided to give it a good bedding job.
First I filled the voids in the plastic stock with epoxy resin to stiffen it up. Filled it all the way from just forward of the recoil lug recess, to the end of the stock. Probably put 300 holes in the stock trying to give the resin something to lock in with.
Then I bedded the whole recoil lug area and rear tang, and bedded the barrel a full 4.5" ahead of the recoil lug, then free floated it ahead of that. This rifle has a heavy varmint barrel on it and if I was going to go to all the trouble of bedding, I wanted to make sure the action was fully supported with no stress hanging on it. Figured if I didn't like the results for some reason I could easy enough free float it farther back an inch at a time.
Loaded up some 55 V-max's to test. Initial results at 100 are promising. It put the first 3 under 1/2", then it or me dropped the 4'th one making the total group just under 3/4. It's 40 degrees colder than when I normally shoot this gun so I'll wait for warmer weather and revisit it. Should be able to tweak that load and tighten it up. So far so good.
