Epoxy Pillars

[prarie_boy]

Have done a few bedding jobs with aluminum pillars and recently done some reading about people having success with poured epoxy pillars. Anyone attempted this before and if so how do you ensure the holes you have milled out of the stock is packed with epoxy with no voids and in a similar shape to an aluminum pillar when it cures?

 

[trevj]

Have done a few bedding jobs with aluminum pillars and recently done some reading about people having success with poured epoxy pillars. Anyone attempted this before and if so how do you ensure the holes you have milled out of the stock is packed with epoxy with no voids and in a similar shape to an aluminum pillar when it cures?

A little heat and epoxies generally flow very well.

Don't whip the epoxy full of bubbles when mixing. Pour in slowly, and watch that it flows into the void.

Cut a neat and tidy hole for the pillar. That will give you a neat and tidy column of epoxy. Of course, it doesn't much matter, as you will fill a rough and nasty hole, it just takes a bit more epoxy...

It's a bedding job with an extra void to fill.

Anyways, no, never done one. Made a few pillars, but mostly, filled a LOT of holes in Honeycomb panels doing repairs on floorboards for aircraft.

 

[Mystic Precision]

Things to consider... epoxy resin on its own is compressible. Some can soften at lower temps. Most are not abrasion resistant.

Epoxy with a steel/alum/metal filler can be very brittle when thick. Just look at the specs the manf gives for how to use each product.

Epoxy with a glass matrix has been used for years but it is a bit messier then I care for.

Me, I prefer some 1/4" ID tube and get the job done.

YMMV.

Jerry

 

[guntech]

I believe Bill Leeper has done several pillars with poured epoxy with excellent results. I have done a few... liquid epoxy flows quite well and leaving a void in the pillar would be quite unusual.

 

[Leeper]

Art Bourne always poured glass pillars and I got it from him. He told me who he got it from but I don't recall the name. A 5/8 inch hole (a smaller hole if the trigger guard or tang was less than 5/8 wide) was drilled at each screw location and the pillar was cast around the screw. Typically, this was done in one step but for precision rifles, the pillars were cast first then the barreled action was bedded on top of them. This minimized any errors due to shrinkage of the epoxy. Voids are caused by errors in technique and can be avoided by not making the error . I do use aluminum pillars if asked to do so but a prefer glass.