Tikka bedding

[Brad Y]

About to inlet and bed my t3 action into my laminate stock for fly and ftr shooting.

Now ive bedded rem 700’s, pierce multiflats and howa 1500’s but thought I would check with you lot since its the first Ive done where the recoil lug is separate to the action.

Will mill out all timber required as per usual, set up pillars and what not. Just checking when the recoil lug is concerned since they are a glue in lug, the idea will be to have a small amount of space between the top of the lug and the action cut out so it wont rock on the lug? Just tape it off at the top like you would the bottom of the rem recoil lug? Then have it hard against the action cutout on the front and some gap at the back? For arguments sake once I have the new action bedded its going to be screwed and glued in anyway and i dont expect any issues. But for the interim will be swapping another tikka action in and shooting 223 with it until its second barrel arrives from the USA.

[trevort]

Ask Kickinback


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[kickinback]

Hi Brad. 2 strips of masking tape on the top of the lug then epoxy it to the action. Clean up around the lug is critical before the epoxy dries.

Once epoxy has set mix up your bedding compound of choice and let loose.

This advice was gleaned from one of Nathan Fosters books and I have found it to be excellent.

Have fun

Kickin


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[Tony Z]

Brad the single best thing you can do to a T3 or 590/595 action is dump the cross lug altogether. Make up a Rem 700 style lug and use that either bedded or even glued in. I did it some years ago with a 595 and T3 since where the effort transformed the rifle. The 595 got me outright class and 2 Gun wins at the Hunter nationals in the early 2000s. There are a number of US smiths doing it now and i suspect on custom rifles it will be more common in time.
In standard factory rifles and actions not exposed to longer heavy barrels and recoil, the factory lug system is adequate. Beyond that they fail. You are not going to see a single T3 action in PRS blogs of the top 100 since inception back in 2012. I've looked. The lug is their Achilles heal.

[Brad Y]

Tony did you have to make up a jig to get the action in the lathe and turn off the shoulder on the front face?

[Tony Z]

Brad it is advisable to face the actions on T3s to get rid of that silly chamfer so you can get a larger barrel to square up. It moves you from a 1.1" barrel shoulder to almost a 1.2" shoulder. More purchase less likely to bruise and i feel is a must to carry the longer barrels, no matter what caliber. This should be done irrespective of whether you choose the standard lug or not. If you choose to do a tombstone lug, the action face off is a must. It is becoming more common now that the recoil lugs for both Savage and Rems that the tenon thread area does not contact the recoil lug bore in any way and thus now are being supplied with well over size bores. The only contact is with barrel shoulder and action face. The T3 will benefit from this also if you go down that path. Not enough time to explain why but there is a method to the madness.

As to set up, a shaft through the action at 0.700" or thereabouts is a neat fit and can be held in place by two 6x1mm grub screws through the action screw threads. Eight point dial up or center spot the shaft and run the action between centers then face the action to sharp edges, no chamfer of any kind. Or if you have a double cat head for Rem 700 actions and a centering shaft, use those. They fit.
The T3 is a great action but is missing from competition for a number of reasons. Triggers mainly, but that lug system leaves smiths cold. I haven't done this but is worth considering. Flatten off the rear of the action as much as you can by milling it square for as far as you reasonably can. Leave the lug out completely and glue the fucker in. Stolle actions, all the early ones like the short Pandas, used this idea where the big flat rear section was actually the recoil area as such that prevented repeated stress from shearing the metal to glue contact. Later long models had recoil lugs.