Bedding my Savage MKII BTVS

RabidM4U5

RabidM4U5

BANNED
CGN frequent flyer
BANNED
Rating - 95.2%
20   1   0
Location
Ontario
In my quest to succeed in the 1/2" @ 50 yard challenge, I've had to do some tinkering with the ol' savage. I thought I'd be beating the challenge first try, having previously shot a 10-shot 0.395" group with RWS Club. I had removed the action to do a little trigger work and then attempted the challenge. I could not get even a 5-shot group of RWS Club better than 0.7" what happened?? :confused: RWS Target Rifle which I used in my posted attempt got me two sub 1/2" groups but ballooned out to just over 1/2" and 0.7" so no success :( Doing a little research revealed Savage provides a rather crappy stock for the rifle. Bedding was sure to be a challenge and pillar bedding risky noting others who then got cracked stocks due to the thin wood. Well, I had to do something so here goes!



All prepped up drilled many small holes along the stock for the bedding material to lock into. Note the front action screw hole isn't even fully encircled by wood, no excuse for that there is plenty of clearance from the magazine to have 1/4" of wood beyond the hole edge.



Well, there it is no turning back! gently tightened the action screws then wrapped electrical tape around.



Also bedded the trigger guard and floor plate. Ended up with some voids, but overall mission accomplished functionally the voids don't impact anything and are not seen. Also put a nylon washer over the front screw hole which properly spaced the floor plate during the bedding so it is flush to the stock and now will not bend when tightening the action screws.



Alright! It came out! Cured overnight for 20 hours, released like a charm though it did take some wiggling after the initial "crack". Used Kiwi black shoe polish as it was on hand and didn't feel like going out to get "neutral" just for the sake of this project. Wasn't concerned about stains as it was only contacting unseen areas of the stock. I epoxyed 3 small washers together and put them over the front hole to "semi pillar" it. Still some clearance to the post on the action which was made up by loosely placing a lock washer there before final action installation.



Cleanup, cleanup everybody cleanup!Laugh2 Full disassembly required took advantage of that to polish the sear mating surfaces as a follow up my trigger spring job. Pulling 1 lbs 2 oz on my fishing scale. Passes the "bump" test. I like the accutrigger. The accublade itself is about a pound before you get to the actual trigger.



There we go! Not as crisp a finish as other job's I've seen but it was my first try at bedding ever and I think I hit the nail on functionality of my work. I didn't care to anally remove all excess material as again it is hidden and doesn't contact anything critical. Made a epoxy pillar for the rear action screw. Better than nothin or a cracked stock..



There it is range ready. Nobody will ever see inside that it wasn't the neatest job :p. Oh I'm sure you've been dying to know, I used good ole JB Weld as my bedding material. $10 at home depot, or $200 to order a frickin POUND of Devcon and wait a week? JB wins that argument. seems to do the job just fine and now I know I could be a little more generous with the material noting some of the voids I ended up with. Hopefully off to the range on Sunday with the 9 brands of ammo I picked up to see how she shoots now!
 
The next wise thing to do would be get an inch/pound torque driver and set the action screws to the correct spec. That's probably why your accuracy took a turn for the worse after taking it apart.

Nice work on the bedding though, I've done quite a few and it's a task and a half so I can appreciate your effort. I always used either JB marine or Marine Tex epoxy. Devcon is great stuff but super overkill for a rimfire. One of the best silhouette shooters in the province I know uses Marine Tex for bedding his Anshutz and Suhl rifles.
 
This is a good report on your work. That looks like it will do the job. I had a Savage Mark II with the accutrigger but found that I couldn't get it light enough. You might consider getting the Apachee trigger kit which brings the trigger weight to something usable for shooting the tight groups you are looking for.

Regarding the epoxy, I used JB Weld for the first bedding job I recently did on a CZ. I found that it was very runny and went into every nook and cranny. To thicken it I should have added some filler, like the micro balloons that folks use with boat repair work. In any case, as I since found out, Devcon 10110, one of the best materials for any bedding job, is available in Canada for less than $100 a pound. It isn't runny.
 
Did you get the upgraded bottom metal?
Thats what Ive also read, the torque on the action effects groups.
I also have the btvs. Very very light trigger. Id say less than 2.5lbs.
Very crisp break now.
Did you cut one coil or two?
 
Bedded mine as well. Seems to like 10 inch lbs of torque for best accuracy.

Experiment with torque settings to find where yours shoots best.
 
little_airwolf said:
Did you get the upgraded bottom metal?
Thats what Ive also read, the torque on the action effects groups.
I also have the btvs. Very very light trigger. Id say less than 2.5lbs.
Very crisp break now.
Did you cut one coil or two?
Click to expand...

What does cutting coils do? I think your talking about the trigger mech. I'm new to savages so haha.
 
Fortunately I saved the coil I cut off so here is a pic of exactly what I removed. I was a little unsure how other people were determining coil count when modifying theirs so I applied my own logic to it. As you can see the top three coils are so tightly wound I felt they contribute nil to the compressive force of the spring, they quickly contact each other and act more as a solid metal spacer. Then the coils are wound with some space between them so contribute towards force for a great range of movement during compression. I removed what I consider to be "one" coil and re-created the bend at the top. I have the trigger cranked all the way down to the minimum setting and it is the adjustability of the trigger in this regard why I felt removal of the tightly wound coils was trivial, the spacing effect of them could be achieved via the adjustment screw. I felt removal of one or two of theses tightly wound coils couldn't possibly result in a reduction of trigger pull more than an ounce or two, if that.

blackradon these springs were are talking about are what resist your finger as you pull the trigger. Cutting the coils reduces the force with which the spring can push back against you thereby reducing trigger pull weight.



I didn't get the upgraded bottom metal, couldn't find a Canadian source for it. So annoying I can't order little gun parts like that from the states. I saw I could order the Devcon 10110 for $80 off Amazon, but tack on another $53 for shipping. I really have no need for a pound of the stuff at that price. Locally only Acklands Grainger carried Devcon products (most order in though) in the $200 plus range. They didn't have 10110 available just titanium, steel and aluminum puttys. I have enough JB Weld left over to bed another rifle. I read about the runny-ness of it so I worked on the bottom metal and trigger guard first and the washers. 20-30 minutes and it became a more workable texture for the main bedding.
 
Would you mind posting some post-bedding groups when you have a chance? I'm considering doing this to my Mark II but want to see some real-world results before I go to the trouble.

The Apachee Trigger Kit is an amazing upgrade to the rifle; night and day difference! I didn't want to permanently alter my trigger spring because from what I understand, Savage will not send out replacement trigger components.

Nice work!
 
I see that they are only in the west, but I recently bought devcon 10110 at Gregg Distributors, about 72$ with tax. It is available, just need to know who has it.
 
As luck would have it I just got back from the range and tried out a ton of ammo. Shot a shotgun at this target... Yeah I was kinda going wtf did I just do to my rifle! Can't even measure the groups don't know what's from what. Very low torque on the action screws can't name a number as I don't have a torque wrench for such low settings. I tried with my 30 inch lbs wrench set below 30 to approx a "10" but who knows how reliable that measurement is.



Now with "high torque" on the action screws. Ok, I have a rifle again! I am still disappointed with the results and am thinking a couple things. One being maybe my rifle just doesn't like the cold I usually shoot (outdoor range) in the warmer months and was seeing decent to good results with just about anything I put in the tube I've never seen such bad groups from this rifle, heck even my 597 was performing exceptionally crappy as well. Another thought is the lock washer I put in the "ghetto pillar" the front action screw is just a little too thick and I'm not making good contact with the bedding due to that. I'll be removing that lock washer and won't be shooting in the cold again. Even the $19 box of Fiocchi 300 I bought was one of the worst performers... I ordered up a torque wrench and I'll have to do a little more playing around with the settings, clearly torque makes a quite drastic difference and there should be an elusive "sweet spot" to be found.

 
Savage recommends 15 inch pounds on the action screws, and I found it was indeed the sweet spot when I owned a savage. Really tightened up the groups.
 
Where do you get SK ammo? I've never seen it at any retailers around me (GTA Ontario). Locally Al Simmons in Hamilton has the best selection of higher grade .22 ammo (Aguila, CCI, RWS, Fiocchi) SAIL had REM/Eley yellow box, Bass Pro had Rem/Eley orange box. All this Lapua, Eley, Wolf and such I see you guys talk about has never been on a shelf near me.
 
My BTVS loves Win Subsonic, if you can find it. SAIL has/had some CCI subsonic which is not too bad, and inexpensive, but I am having issues extracting and ejecting the stuff. I will (hopefully today) try polishing the chamber with jeweler's rouge.
 
Rabidm4u5- those are some pretty drastic results for sure! Thanks for post those pictures of the spring also, I think I'm gonna try and keep all my part stock for right now. I may look into those apachee trigger kits tho. Did you guys with the kit have any troubles getting one into Canada?

Papaclaude- I found that with my savage mk2 Fvsr you have to keep the camber super clean or I get failures to eject. I was pretty surprised at that really as rimfire ammo is pretty clean stuff. When I first got it ( I got it second hand ) I shot about 150 round and started to see problems with ejections. It just got worst with more rounds. So I was pretty concerned but I thought I would just clean it before anything else and after that it worked awesome agian!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom