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Old March 17, 2009, 08:22 PM   #25
Gewehr98
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Join Date: June 30, 2000
Location: Token Creek, WI
Posts: 4,067
Not always...

Quote:
If you bedded the barrel channel, take that out too. You bed the action out to under the chamber area of the barrel only.
Granted, that's a good rule of thumb for centerfire rifles and rifles with steel receivers and threaded-in barrels.

Depending on how this particular 10/22 is configured, however, you may want to support more than the typical 1" of barrel chamber end that is normally bedded.

Why?

Because with a 10/22, the receiver is aluminum, and the barrel shank is held into the receiver's front end by nothing more than a wedge and two allen bolts. It's an interference fit, not threaded, and susceptible to a lot of flexing and subsequent slop.

Hanging the weight of a free-floated barrel from a 10/22's bedded aluminum receiver is not conducive to accuracy or longevity. You're looking for an extra measure of stability when glass-bedding a rifle, and the 10/22 requires a bit of extra vigilance.

When the practice of hanging heavy, large diameter target barrels on Ruger 10/22s began in earnest several years ago, this became a topic of concern. There were several solutions, some of which are adding a second barrel bedding point in the forend, bedding the entire barrel, etc.

I went with the latter on all my 10/22 conversions. I settled on free-floating the receiver, bedding the trigger group, and bedding the barrel the entire length of the stock's barrel channel. The idea behind this approach is that the flexible aluminum receiver is simply a raceway for the blowback bolt to ride back and forth in, and not particularly structural in the general 10/22 scheme of things. True, it's attached to the barrel, but doesn't add as much to the accuracy equation as does the barrel itself, which I consider the backbone of the popular Ruger rimfire.

Bedding the barrel full-length has its own problems, particularly if it's not attached to a synthetic or laminated stock, which are less prone to warpage or expansion/contraction with changing temperature and humidity. My preference is heavy laminated stocks, so I'm not worried about lack of stability. I use Devcon Marine Epoxy, with either powdered aluminum or stainless steel added. Brownell's Acraglas is also a fine product for the job.

It's not a bad idea to peruse the www.rimfirecentral.com forum, and see what works and what doesn't. Chances are that folks there have tried darned near everything.

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