Gunsmithing Bedding a AICS AX Chassis

[JayCarver]

I've been having some inconstant results with my 338LM build. It's a Rem 700 thats been trued up and has a Broughton 1in9.3" twist barrel. Its the rifle in the back of this pic.


I was able to get some direction from the great people of snipershide that there may not be very much support for the rear tang of the action with the AICS. So I took it apart and this is indeed the case. In this pic you can see that there is only very little contact on the very edge of the tang.


The other side is even less...


And a pic of the chassis, you can see where it's making contact.


So after seeing this I figured it cant hurt anything to bed the rear tang, the front of the action makes good even contact for about a inch on both sides so I'm not going to worry about that at this time and just focus on the rear tang.

I couldn't find much for info about bedding AICS's so I thought I would make a post that might be able to help some people out in the future. This is how I went about it, I'm not saying that is is the best way or only way to do it, it's just the way I did it.

First I scribed a outline around the tang onto the chassis so it would be easy to tape off.


Then I tape off the chassis and put the barrelled action back in to see how everything lined up.


Next I used the mill to make some pockets to give the bedding compound a mechanical lock. I just roughed these out quick as I wasn't concerned with how it looked because it was getting covered in bedding.


Then I made a little damn so all the epoxy wouldn't run out, not sure if this is necessary but it can't hurt.


Then the action was prepped and I installed a guide screw, I wrapped enough tape around the screw so its snug in the hole, this will ensure that the bolt is centred in the hole later.

 

[JayCarver]

Time to mix some epoxy.


Did my best to apply it so there wouldn't be any voids...



And in the action it goes... I just snugged the front screw.



After some Q-tips


After 4.5hrs the epoxy was hard but could still be cut / scraped with a knife so I took out the guide screw and popped the action out, was very happy to see this


And after some clean up




After I cleaned it up I put it back in the chassis for the final cure. I'm very happy with how it turned out. It will be awhile before I have a chance to see if it helps or not. Hopefully this helps someone thinking about bedding the AICS.

 

[daltexmex]

call me crazy but i tightened the screws down in my ax chassis to the specified amount. Then I shot it and at first the rounds from the mag were loading up fine then they stopped. Like the action moved back or something. might get the smith to bed my action now that I am looking at your pictures here.

 

[JayCarver]

call me crazy but i tightened the screws down in my ax chassis to the specified amount. Then I shot it and at first the rounds from the mag were loading up fine then they stopped. Like the action moved back or something. might get the smith to bed my action now that I am looking at your pictures here.

Did you ensure that the recoil lug was seated back before tightening the screws? Should feed either way thou.

 

[bjay]

Jay im also thinkin about doin this on my custom saum 7mm.althou its giving .3moa im kinda not confortable of what im seeing.. is this normal, from the front magazine well to forward is where only contacting the chasis.the center part of receiver from front of tang to front of mag cut zero contact..is that how supose to be? Heres d rifle

400 yard

 

[daltexmex]

Did you ensure that the recoil lug was seated back before tightening the screws? Should feed either way thou.

Well when i loaded my bullets to the mag length they at first worked fine for the first few shots. then the started getting stuck at the lip of the magazine were it goes to feed into the chamber. weird. But i plan to check out what you had said. Or just single feed until I change the rifle out in the chassis in a couple of weeks.

 

[JayCarver]

is this normal, from the front magazine well to forward is where only contacting the chasis.the center part of receiver from front of tang to front of mag cut zero contact..is that how supose to be?

Yes that is how they are, there's no contact from the front action screw to the rear tang. The whole magazine well is floating.

 

[30calDeath]

Excellent job Jay! Looks pretty darn professional to me.

 

[bjay]

Well when i loaded my bullets to the mag length they at first worked fine for the first few shots. then the started getting stuck at the lip of the magazine were it goes to feed into the chamber. weird. But i plan to check out what you had said. Or just single feed until I change the rifle out in the chassis in a couple of weeks.

Looks like u need to cut a litle notch below your feedramp.i did this to mine, mag oal on my aics 2.975 i load my rounds 2.960 and tip of bullet catchin the lip of feedramp.
Like this:
http://www.snipershide.com/shooting...illing-100-off-feed-ramp-accommodate-oal.html

 

[D_Lamz]

Jay im also thinkin about doin this on my custom saum 7mm.althou its giving .3moa im kinda not confortable of what im seeing.. is this normal, from the front magazine well to forward is where only contacting the chasis.the center part of receiver from front of tang to front of mag cut zero contact..is that how supose to be? Heres d rifle

sorry to be off topic but how do you like the AI scope base? I was thinking about linking that with the AI forend rail to get the continuous top rail.

 

[JayCarver]

Excellent job Jay! Looks pretty darn professional to me.

Thanks 30cal!

 

[bjay]

sorry to be off topic but how do you like the AI scope base? I was thinking about linking that with the AI forend rail to get the continuous top rail.

Im not fan of tall/ AR rings on bolt action unless its AR.for me they look off.. I like it a lot.. it gives me the option to do full top rail for NV or light.

 

[dieselten]

My observation is that if you taped up the rear guide screw so there was no forward-back movement, then you might not have full recoil lug contact. I would check that.

 

[GhostFace]

Okay, I am interested in this, I just had a rifle built up and the smith said it could need to be bedded but he wanted me to shoot about 200 rounds first. I have done some load development but my best groups are 1/2 MOA. I was expecting my rifle to shoot in the .3s-.4s, maybe I'm expecting too much or maybe I have not done enough to tweak the load that I found. Anyway I can't help but to think bedding might help. I get decent accuracy but my rack grade PSS is more consistent then my trued 700 but there are different calibers, the trued is an '06. Have you noticed any improvement in your group size since doing this?

 

[JayCarver]

Have you noticed any improvement in your group size since doing this?

I ended up doing this on my 308 and 338 and haven't had a chance to shoot either yet to see if it helped or not.

 

[JayCarver]

Well it's been a while but I have had some time to do some more load development with this rifle. Bedding the rear tang shrunk my 300yd groups by half or more.

The load I settled on is 90.0gr H-1000 behind a 300gr Lapua Scenar. I pulled one shot pretty bad but you get the idea.

This was at 321yrds. The red dot is 1".



Looking forward to stretching it out past 2k this summer.

 

[xringaccuracy]

Good write up. I have so many customers with AI chassis, HS alum block stocks that think bedding is a dead art. You have shown that no machining can duplicate an actions profile. I get blue in the face explaining a chassis need bedding. Thanks again

 

[sled_mack]

Is bedding the rear tang all that is normally required? Is there value to bedding front and back?

 

[agbm]

LRI does this to the AICS Chassis: https://www.longriflesinc.com/pages/services-surfaced-chassis-block-machining

 

[Easy_E]

Is bedding the rear tang all that is normally required? Is there value to bedding front and back?

I did my Rock Solid stock front and rear made a big difference.

 

[mrbig]

Good write up. I have so many customers with AI chassis, HS alum block stocks that think bedding is a dead art. You have shown that no machining can duplicate an actions profile. I get blue in the face explaining a chassis need bedding. Thanks again

I bet the AI chassis is truer than the Rem action,,,it is so easy to do that there is no reason not to at least skim bed all the aluminum chassis`s and stocks with bedding blocks,,