300 Win Mag - Testing my bedding and pillar job

it has been 266 days since my last 300 Winchester Magnum video it was all the way back in February it's currently November everything just kind of went sideways and the project got set to the side so here's a brief history we've got a Thompson Center compass in 300 Winchester Magnum for the first two videos I made about it it was shootin pretty decent the thing has an incredibly long throat we have to load bullets way out at very long overall lengths but we were shooting some halfway decent groups it was all about bullets election stuff that could get close to the lands and still fit in the magazine was shooting great stuff that was way back off the lands was shooting crappy but we were finding some success mainly with the sierra matchking line of bullets the 175 the 220 grain the 240 grain we were seeing acceptable results then I changed the stock I went from the standard plastic stock and put the gun into a Boyd's Pro varmint laminated wood stock and the groups just went to crap so what I needed to do was you know glass bed that Boyd stock I've never done a glass bedding job or installed pillars or any of that stuff so I started researching that process and it's it's just complicated or it's complicated for me because I overthink things I tend to over research you know huh yeah I get jammed up like I get stuck I don't feel comfortable going forward and a project like this ends up on the shelf for 266 days well I finally got it done I've got the Boyd stock I installed pillars I got it glass bedded I'm happy with the result like I think I did a decent job so now it's time to try that out and see if it helped things so that's the whole point of today's video I want to load up some of our successful loads from the past and I want to shoot it in my newly bedded stock and see what happens so here's some load data one thing that kind of sucks is my earlier videos where we were having some success I was mainly shooting reloader 26 reloader 26 has not been available for over a year and as of today I still can't find it anywhere so my stockpile is empty and yeah we've got to switch powders that sucks I was really hoping to go back and shoot exact loads that I had shot previously but it's just not gonna happen with the ones we've shot reloaded 26 with the first load here with 175 green sierra matchking and 69.0 grains of H 43 50 this is an exact duplicate of what we shot back in the first video this shot good groups so that's the first load moving on to the hundred and 75 grain sierra matchking this is one where I was primarily shooting reloader 26 so we're switching it up and I actually want to shoot two powders here the first is IMR 79-77 we're gonna do 70 3.0 grains of that and the second is Hodgdon h 1070 three grains of this as well I think between one of those we should get something that shoots a halfway decent group the last bullet is the 240 grain sierra matchking in the second video we we shot some of these too you know see if they were gonna stabilize in this gun they not only stabilize but they shot some good groups unfortunately that was with free loader 26 so we're switching things up here a little bit first Hatchin H 1000 we're gonna shoot 70 point 0 grains and I'm also going to shoot a lion tree loader 2366 grains of that now these see our match Kings they're all kind of the standard traditional sierra matchking ogive shape so they basically end up at the same overall length the same cartridge base to ogive measurement except that the 175s are a little bit short we need to seat them a little bit deeper just to you know make sure we get plenty of bearing surface to neck contact so the 175s are at three point four to five inches of overall length and the 220 and the 240 are at three point four seven five for primers I forgot to pull them out here they are we're gonna stick with the CCI 250 large rifle Magnum primers we were planning to switch over to federal gold medal match primers earlier in the series but I don't want to do that yet this is what we had success with in the first couple videos so that's what we're to duplicate here and they're good primers now for brass we've been shooting a batch of Hornady brass I've got 25 pieces here this is going to be the fifth firing on this brass so far it's holding up pretty darn good in the last video where the video before I can't remember we did a little bit of light neck turning just to kind of knock the high spots try and make them a little bit more uniformly thick so far so good with this little batch of Hornady brass so 25 pieces want to load five rounds of each of the loads we talked about a minute ago and I'm also going to load up a few ciders because we need to sight in the scope and crap before we get to shooting groups and for those I've got a couple boxes of the two 20s that just have a few left in them and some of them are like a little bit weird on length I don't remember if it was in this series or it might have been in a 300 blackout series but on my my 220 grains sierra matchking bullet stockpile I got some lot numbers mixed up and stuff and some of them were varying a lot in lengths from bullet base to ogive and I was getting funky overall length variation and all of that stuff so these boxes are basically I think they're mainly the ones I pulled out because their lengths were weird so our ciders might not exactly shoot good but I don't want to waste these bullets so we're gonna load them up using the side in our scope it ought to do the job job just fine I'll load those up with the h1000 load because I've got a couple pounds of h1000 but 79-77 I've only got this one pound to play with and that's that's the plan assuming this goes well I'll talk more about the bedding at the end of the video I didn't film it all it was a mess it was you know dirty work epoxy flying all over the place and sawdust and Dremel tools and all that crap I just I needed to focus on the task instead of focusing on making a video about it and the process is well documented on YouTube you know there's lots of videos about bedding but assuming things go well and my stock doesn't crack in half when we shoot it at the end of the video I'll go through a few specific things about the Thompson Center compass to help you out if you're looking to bed your compass so that's it our 25 pieces of brass I did go ahead and wet tumble them a little bit so they're cleaned up I'm not going to kneel them today i annealed before the last firing so we're just gonna size them up and load them up I think I trimmed after the last firing as well so hopefully there's not any major trimming work or anything needed but that's where we're starting so let's get to the press and do a little bit of resizing all right so we're gonna use the Hornady match-grade bushing type full link sizing die I did pick up three bushings for this I've got a 331 332 and a 333 the 332 is what's in there right now I think we picked up the 331 because after we were doing some neck turning thought we might need to go a little bit smaller I'm gonna stick with the 332 and and K unless I find some reason to switch I think this is what we used in the last video so yeah so 332 bushing I did pick up this Lyman 8 station turret press it's like all American eight I think they call it got a smoking deal on these a while back but I couldn't pass up I think 140 bucks something like that so I'm still in the process of evaluating it it's basically a clone of the reading t7 that I've used for years and so far it's a really nice press I haven't found any reason to complain so we're gonna use some reading imperial sizing die wax here on our cases and the plan is to just you know bump the shoulder one or two thousandths so with the Hornady headspace comparator these are currently coming out at two point two eight zero check another one here yep two point two eight zero so we'll shoot for about two point two seven eight or two point two seven nine yep there's a third one there all right at two point two eight zero so here goes the first one went up in there pretty tight but popped right out and now it's reading 2.28 one so it actually grew alright like cartridge base to the shoulder actually grew and you'll see that sometimes when you've got your sizing die set to wear it resizes the body but doesn't quite make it down to the shoulder as this thing gets squeezed and sized it actually lengthens just a touch so we need to keep going down till we get to that shoulder all right let's try it again no change still have it touch the shoulder one good thing about a bushing die is when you're setting up your die you can you can use the same piece of brass without screwing it up too much with a standard die with an expander ball where the neck of the die reduces the neck down and then drags an expander through it if you use one piece of brass to set your die it's continuously getting that neck worked over and over but bushing died no expander nothing to worry about there as far as working your brass with multiple resizes alright still haven't touched it see what it feels like on the shell holder alright there we go that's a little bit better contact with the shell holder hopefully I didn't go too far nope I think we're close though we're basically back to two point two eight zero where we started so let's just go down tiny little bit and see if that does it all baby perfect two point two seven nine so one thousandth of bump move on to the next one our starting value is the same two point two eight zero run it through the die and see what we get and this one's not really showing that bump still getting to point two eight zero or this if I wiggle it a little bit there it is so one more tweak on the die here a little bit there we have all right we barely touched it here to point Q seven nine we're gonna call that good and I'm gonna run that first piece back through one more time to get the new setting okay so I got the first five pieces sent through the fooling sizing guide if you remember back we've got one more step in the resizing process it's this Larry Willis belt sizing die thing remember this it's got to call it that you slide down over the case all the way to the belt and then it squeezes and sizes that portion right above the belt a standard fully sizing guy isn't able to get that spot so that's what the Larry Willis dye is all about and we actually screw it in to the press from the bottom and if you guys remember the top part of this die let me try and focus in on it a little bit better yeah maybe that's better the top part acts as a case gauge where you drop your case in there and this piece actually already goes in there pretty good it hits the little bit of resistance when the belt gets to the top there's the next one yep that one will not go down to the belt so that's what this dye is all about that one doesn't doesn't quite go in so that's what this is all about so here's the first one got to call it on there just like that then we run it up I tell you what I better it's been a while since I've used it you're supposed to lube this stuff I've already got lube on the case underneath to call it but I want to put a little bit on the collet so it doesn't get stuck up in the dye better safe than sorry so now we just run it up in there all the way and then drop it out and then slide to call it off takes a little bit of force but it's usually not too bad and then double check it in the case gauge portion goes in there no problem so let me let me find the one that was particularly bad here yeah that one absolutely will not go down into the case gauge part there we go call it on there up into the dye and down slide it off and now goes down in there no problem now if you want an actual measurement this is another piece that won't go all the way down on there and it's reading 512 thousandths right there below the belt or above the belt whichever one you want to call it so we send it up in and they always come out at five ten so that's it that's our resizing process this times pretty cool it was sent to me by a viewer named Eric I think it was yep it was Eric and this is supposed to really extend that life this brass because apparently bulges right above that belt are what gets you with belted Magnum cartridges and what I've been doing my the brass I've been using for ciders I haven't been using this and the ones were you know shooting for groups kind of our main batch of brass I have been using it so hopefully over time we'll be able to tell whether it's making a positive impact on our brass life all right that's it Pierre for resizing I'm gonna run through the rest of the brass and then we'll be ready to check length see if any other brass preps needed okay so resizing is complete now I just need to make sure these guys aren't too long and not getting off to a good start here let me double check the manual max case length 2.6 to 0 and this first one here is 2.6 to - just a little bit over two point six one seven so that one's a little bit under two point six two - that one's a little bit over yeah it looks like I'm gonna I'm gonna need to trim I haven't really checked my chamber yet to see how long I can let grant brass grow you know sometimes a lot of them give you more room than the maximum you know spec but we're just gonna stick to the book for the time being yep I better pull out the Frankfort Arsenal case prep Center all right here we go tell you what for anybody want an update on this piece of gear I've been using it for quite a while now I still love it it's very versatile so it comes with all of these different Yap pieces for the trimming part that covers pretty much anything you'd want to trim some short cases it's a pain in the butt like 300 blackout it's a pain in the butt just because it's so short and it's hard to get a hold of the end of the case but for most stuff it's pretty good it's got a little storage compartment on top that keeps all of the parts there are two main parts there's this plastic piece that needs to be able to slide up the side of the case and there's the little metal piece that the neck needs to go down through it it sits about halfway up the shoulder so on the trimming head the silver piece goes in first followed by the plastic piece followed by this which is still a bit of a pain in the butt to get on it's got a big ring that always wants to slip on me but the more you use it the more you get used to it the other thing that's a little bit confusing is this is left hand threads so you got a at least I always have to think about all right which way am i turning now and you know that sort of deal got it backed way out put a case in here and then tighten this up just a little bit until it grips the case pretty well with that plastic piece and we screw this in until the brass approaches the cutting head so let's fire it up and see if that touches it nope not quite this has markings on it that are pretty close to a thousandth moved five there sometimes you can just kind of push it in and feel whether you're hitting anything and we're not there nope still not touching all right finally got to rock and put the case in and twist it and I can feel it hitting the blade so hopefully this isn't too far see what it gives us I usually spin it about a full rotation and there we are and that's 2.6 1 1 so our trim length is two point six one zero I'm going to call that good enough let's try the next one next one here came out two two point six one three I do always seem to get a lot of variation with this well I'm not a lot but maybe two or three thousandths of variation and I haven't really figured out exactly why because of course it does it indexes off of the shoulder so you need to have your cases all resized or all you know the same because it's basically measuring from from shoulder to case mouth so you know but these have all been resized so I'm not really sure where it comes from this does like right now I do have a 22 caliber pilot in there if I swap that out for you know a 30 caliber pilot in this case and it held the cases a little bit bit straighter into the blade maybe that would clean that up but to be honest with you it's just not something I've really worried about too much because it's not that critical at least I don't think and of course the other nice thing with this once you finish trimming you can go ahead and be burn chamfer that case mouths all in one operation all right I'm gonna finish this and we'll be ready for primers all right primers there we go so lately I've been using this lis hand priming tool this is kind of the the latest design that I hadn't tried before and I love this thing so far like everything fits in this nice little case and for somebody like me who's a little challenged when it comes to staying organized I love this little thing got a tray got the tool itself we're going to need the large primer primer head thingy and I think this comes with the shell holder for 300 Win Mag I need to google what shell holder number that is alright so that is the number five and it did come with the kit so we're good there and swapping this head part is nice and easy go ahead and drop the shell holder in and we're ready to rock this primer tre I kind of loved it and hated it at the same time it's nice because it's compact and I think it's the only hand priming tool I've ever used that feeds reliably all the others you end up having to shake it to get the primers to feed right this one just flows them right in there and you never get any jam ups but it's a little bit hard to flip into all right kind of like this you can't really get your pack of primers completely flat on it but yeah let's see if we can go fast enough to not spill anything yeah it looks like it a little bit of a shake gets them all turned then we close it and leave it on the lock position slide this dude right into the top and switch it to on we're ready to go I do kind of use both thumbs just to make sure it gets in there and bottoms out really nicely alright I just love the way it feels they make a bench mounted version of the same sort of setup that if I had a little bit more you know space to permanently mount stuff to the bench I would probably go with one of those bench mounted jobs so all the primer pockets in this Hornady brass still feel good I mean we haven't really had the opportunity to load them up very hot because we've been you know just doing preliminary testing and trying to troubleshoot the gun just haven't really had the opportunity to work up max loads max velocity loads at this point but so far so good and one other last note about that lis hand priming tool I still haven't managed to flip any primers backwards or put any put any of them in sideways so it feeds well keeps the primer straight just really happy with that primary tool so far so I've moved on to weighing out my charges and as you can see starting with h1000 all the other powders are off the bench for safety and the first ones I'm weighing out here these are the I had nine pieces of brass for ciders and then our 25 for testing so not much drama here just weighing out charges all right so it's time to get started with bullets eating I'm using a Hornady custom grade bullets eating die with their micrometer is just stem I've got a case in there screwed it down until I felt it touched the case mouth I'm going to back it out a little over a turn we've got a seating stem that fits this Sierra ogive very nicely so what we're trying to dial in here these are the ciders my 9 ciders with the 220 grain sierra matchking so we're looking for a two point nine inch cartridge based ogive measurement okay we're about a hundred and forty thousand it's too long so there's 50 hundred 140 all right right on the number two point nine inches all right so now we move on to the ones that count versus the hundred seventy-five Green sierra matchking one thing I noticed whenever I was just sitting the bullets into the cases after I weighed the charges we we don't have very much neck tension like I can feel the bullet you know wanting to go on through it almost feels like you could see it with your hands so we should have gone to that smaller bushing back when we were resizing yeah this first one here doesn't seem too bad like yeah it feels like we got a little bit I'll measure it here in just a second so with the 75 I'm running two point eight five zero cartridge base to a dive and then if we measure to the tip it should be right around three point four to five and three point 43 very close but yeah this one feels like it feels okay as far as neck tension goes let me take a quick measurement so with a bullet seated I'm getting about 333 and without a bullet it's hard to hold it this way without the bullet seated but yeah I'm getting about three three two sometimes three three to five so I'm looking at about one thousandth of neck tension which is a little less than I would prefer yeah so this one here felt particularly light when I was seating the bullet came out two point eight four eight and I've been kind of you know just pushing on it seeing if the bullet would would move and I can't get it to move like by hand so the case at least has a hold of the bullet enough to ever should be able to load the gun and all that without you know worrying about the bullet moving on us and we don't have any highly compressed loads today so I think we're going to be fine so that's pretty much it folks all of these are going to be exactly the same so I'll just catch you guys out on the range all right are you guys nervous I'm kind of nervous not like you know afraid of blowing my face off sort of nervous more like a please God let this work sort of nervous first thing we got to accomplish is to cite the in speaking of guns it is a thompson/center compass you all know that already right Boyd's Pro varmints talk I threw my silencer coat Omega suppressor on there I've got the gun basically bore sighted just basically you know looking down the bore and adjusting my scope to match what I see so I don't know let's first of all see if we're on paper and see if the stock breaks in half all right so the stock didn't break in half that's a good start unfortunately I don't see my shot on the paper down there I don't appear to have shot my camera oh there's the hole it went into the bottom left orange dot I was aiming at the center by the way so that is a little under six MOA left so let's move right five-and-a-half and up about five and a half all right let's see where that puts us all right just about perfect oh I missed that wallop nothing like some nice heavy recoil all right let's move right half minute I'll tell you what we'll go three-quarters of a minute and let's move down a quarter minute and that should put us just about perfect I need more ammo all right we'll load up two more all right not too bad close enough all right let me go hang a proper target and we'll get to shooting some groups all right folks now it's for real I'm a little bit worried about this neck tension if things go sideways here and we can't shoot a group to save our lives I may I may go back to bench dump all these charges resize all the brass again and see if that helps hopefully that won't be a thing all right so we're starting out with 175 grains here match king with 69 grains of h-43 50 coronagraph is armed and ready to go let's see what happens you know what I think I almost got a case had separation on that piece of brass it's got a little bit of a ridge around it keep an eye on that yeah I know that piece is fine from what I can tell yeah the first three shots looked good but then kind of opened up on us there I didn't see any more pieces of brass that had that that ring around them if the first one did yeah we'll have to have a look at that you know I really should have brought out my torque wrench so I could double-check the action bolts you know what I think I'll run in and grab it just to be sure don't want anything coming loose and you know what I'll probably ought to check the scope as well yeah it's worth a yeah it's worth the time okay so the action screws were still nice and tight I went ahead and loosen them up and retorque them again just to be sure scope rings were still tired everything seems okay so we're moving on next is the 220 grain sierra matchking first load is 73 grains of IMR 79-77 so this is the first time I've shot this powder so let's see what happens first piece of brass looks good so that last round I had in my magazine kind of fed a little bit and now I'm looking at it oh yeah I'm just worried about this stupid neck tension tell you what I want a single feed everything from here on out just to make me feel a little bit better that way I can ease it up into the ease it up into the chamber and not worry about any bullets getting setback all right that's not a bad group so our velocity statistics are garbage today and I expect them to continue to be garbage I think it it has a lot to do with that neck tension I'm not even going to concern myself with them until we get that neck tension straightened out because I think with them that loose we're probably getting inconsistent you know ignition or starting pressures that sort of deal so we'll worry about that later all right next up same bullet 220 sierra matchking this time was 73 grains of H 1000 all right got the barrel a little bit warm here I'm gonna take a little break before we shoot the last ten shots I'm pretty happy with those 220 green sierra matchking groups we got 10 more shots to go so I'll keep my mouth shut for right now all right so I took a little break grabbed a bite to eat feeling pretty good the guns cooled down it's still warm but it's cooled down quite a bit let's make these last 10 shots count we're moving over to the 240 green sierra matchking first up it is 70 grains of H 1000 that last one went up I didn't that's okay still not too shabby okay last up reload her 23 60 6.0 grains of it with the two hundred forty grand match king all right finished off strong oh what a relief I think we're back in business folks I think we're back in business feel so good let's get back to the bench and celebrate a little okay so I'm extremely happy with today's results only that first group was over an inch like it was it was a little ugly at at inch and a half but those first three shots you know they looked like they were trying to group and then those last two just kind of screwed it all up the next three groups were just under an inch and then that last one was a 460 that last one was almost a better group until that last shot so a lot of hope here like the guns trying to group even with our crazy neck tension problem that really had me worried but it got the job done like if we look at the last couple targets from the lab my last couple range trips before the bedding job this gun I mean it would occasionally shoot a decent group but a lot of them were two in three-inch groups it was ugly it was really really ugly so vast improvement I feel like we're on the right track so I cleaned up that piece of brass that I thought nearly had a case head separation and I think it is and I looked through the rest of the box and I found one other piece that had a little bit it wasn't nearly as bad as that first shot but it had a little bit of a ring so I grabbed like a dental pick sort of deal and was reaching down in there a lot of times you can feel it you can feel that groove and I'm definitely think I'm feeling something there yeah so what I'm going to do in the next video I want to I want to wet tumble this and then maybe try and chop it in half I hope that can do that with a dremel or something so we can have a look at what's going on in there and I'll try and do that to several pieces so we can just kind of inspect it we got five firings and from what people were telling me about the Hornady brass that actually might not be too bad a lot of folks claim this stuff is junk but we've got more of it like you know I bought quite a bit of it so we'll be able to continue testing it but for now this first batch is done they've all been fired the same number of times and once I see a problem like that the whole batch is done so wool yeah well I have a closer look in the next video maybe see what's actually going on inside so I've got three projects here for the 300 Winchester Magnum that I am extremely excited about now that we've got a decent shooting gun I want to put a few more rounds through it to be a hundred percent certain and then I want to jump into a couple things first of all are these 230 grain Hornady a tips I bought this box like it's been a while intending to shoot them in the 300 Chester Magnum and just haven't been able to so we're gonna get to the 8 tips really soon another one is another sierra matchking this is the 200 grain the number 2 22:31 one of my supporters over on patreon was asking me about these and asking if I would do a video I got to be honest I didn't know these existed until he asked me about him I've just haven't been paying very much attention this year to some of the new products I think these came out right around the beginning of the year now if you look here it says nine-inch twists are faster well my 300 Chester Magnum is a 10 10 inch twist so how does that make sense a 200 grain bullet with a 9 twist recommendation well have a look at this thing lined up next to the 240 grain match King they're pretty close in length you've got to load these crazy long like even though our Thompson Center compass has a pretty generous magazine we're gonna be loaded to me even longer like these are single feed only SuperDuper long Fieldy style bullets the the ballistic coefficient is ridiculous so I'm looking forward to trying these out and I'm not worried at all about that 9 inch twist recommendation because that's more for 308 velocities from what I'm reading like you get into lower velocity 308 stuff with a bullet this long and it's that's when you're running to stability problems so with a three-in-one mag and our velocities up we're not going to have any problem whatsoever and you know the 2 40s or another kind of example here you know right there on the box that says 9 twist barrel zone link well our 10 twist we saw today shot our best group with them these have shot really good in the 300 Winchester Magnum so the third project that I'm extremely excited about has to do with these a viewer sent me two boxes it's actually 34 pieces of mark 248 mod 1 this is a military round it shoots the 220 grain sierra matchking as far as I know we're gonna wear a tear a couple apart we're gonna give them the full inspection and we're gonna do our best to clone their performance a lot like we did in the mark 262 video over in 223 556 I've got the same sort of series planned here but from what I know it's a 220 greenseer match king with H 1000 powder the same combination we shot today but the charge we shot today was 2,700 15 feet per second I think these are gonna be a whole lot hotter and I think you know cloning their performance is going to be a pretty good challenge the question is going to be so I think these are probably standard overall length actually they're not I think the you know the Sammy max overall length is three point three four zero is that right I think that's right we double-check yep and these are out at three point four six two is that this one that I'm reading right now so that's only thirteen thousand shorter than what we've shooting today that is awesome that's really good so we already know that the bullet is capable of shooting in this rifle at that overall length so extremely excited about this project here because as far as I know these are not commercially available like you can't buy these so happy to have them I can't wait to try them out the other thing back to the brass where you know we are probably going to ditch that this first batch of Hornady I'm thinking we might move to Norma if you'll recall a viewer had sent me some Norma he was having problems with it and wanted me to try it out we've we took ten pieces and we've shot him a couple times I've still got plenty left here 30-something left so I think this next batch maybe we'll just we'll go with Norma and shoot it for a little bit see how it goes I mean in the earlier videos we already determined it's much more consistent weights and it's just it's just better brass so I want to give the like the Hornady a tip and that 200 green sierra matchking I want to give them the best opportunity to shoot well so we'll we'll do that in some Norma but I think with the - 48 mod 1 I've got a shoot federal brass right I think we'll get to that later so I think that's pretty much it I did promise you a look at the stock I'll tear it apart here and we'll look at it I'll kind of point out a few mistakes I made and stuff like that there are lots and lots of resources lots of great videos and I'll link them down in the description couple in particular or the the social regressive goes through the process with a Boyd stock really well I think he was betting a savage so a few minor differences with your compass but it's good foundation to work from and kind of see the process so I watched through those videos several times gun blew with a gun blew 490 has got some great videos really long and in-depth and you know he takes his time and explains what's going on there's one on Iraq veteran 8888 the the gunsmith on there right is that in a name yeah the you know the gunsmith over there on that channel he did a good video or two on the video or two on the betting process so I'll have plenty of links in the description I just don't feel remotely qualified to try and demonstrate it at this point maybe after I've done three or four more and I'm probably never going to do three or four more Plus this is a reloading channel we need to get back to reloading let's let other people worry about stock betting all right let me get this guy torn apart we'll have a look alright so here's a look at the final product I used the DEF CON one zero one one zero and I bet it all the way back and all the way up sometimes you'll see people just bed around the recoil lug and the action screws but I wanted to go ahead and get the entire thing and as you can see I did install pillars there front and rear and this is one place where I've still got some cleanup to do here on the bottom but on the top the action sits right down onto the aluminum pillar front and rear and with the entire length bedded the way it is like it fits down in there like a glove so for comparison this is the stock from my 6.5 Creedmoor it's the same Boyd's pro varmint just to kind of give you an idea of the starting point and one of the big problems I had with this where trophy show you here with the Creedmoor let's move move the camera up a little bit so it's sitting down in there but you can absolutely rotate this guy left to right and there's a good bit of slop forward and backward into that recoil lug so these stocks I mean it's just it's super sloppy to start with and that made it difficult because well what I ended up doing I installed the pillars first I did two completely separate operations I installed the pillars and then laid the bed afterward I guess with some rifles you know most factory actions even the factory plastic stock for the compass it fits the action very nicely like it goes down in there tightly it doesn't slop around like you just saw the Creedmoor doing so I think whenever you've got something that fits a little bit better you can do the bed and the pillars at the same time but I just didn't feel like I was gonna be able to get things aligned if I tried to do it that way so I started with the basic stock drilled the holes and installed the pillars and once I felt like the action was sitting you know firmly on the pillars then I was able to remove all of this material and fill it in the biggest mistake and to be honest I just set the whole project aside for a couple months after this happened whenever I was drilling the hole for the front pillar the freaking stock cracked and if I can get the light just right hopefully you can see this entire section of wood here was lost so this is nothing but the Devcon epoxy here behind the front pillar I really thought the stock was ruined and I mean to be honest until this video when I shot it like I really didn't think it was going to hold and I'm gonna be keeping my eye on that in the future but I think you know I've got it bedded to where the contact between the recoil lug and the barrel is really really good so hopefully I don't really have a lot of force going you know down into this area anyway so hopefully it'll hold the other thing that kind of freaks me out is you'll notice there's a little bit of betting epoxy on top of the recoil lug yep and it is just it is the tie this little skim coat just an itty tiny little bit now in an ideal world there wouldn't be any of that I would be getting perfect contact between the top of the recoil lug and my barrel but it just didn't work out that way and with these Boyd stocks these recoil lugs are pressed in and they are glued in so I read a hundred different forum posts about guys trying to remove the recoil lug from a Boyd stock and it didn't sound easy and it I think it usually ended up with them needing to heat it up to melt the glue and crap and then even once that was melted it's pressed in pretty tight and it's a gigantic pain in the ass to get out of there so I didn't move it and whenever I did the pillar installs there must have been some you know some wood material that was keeping that up off of there just the tiny little bit I mean it's a tiny tiny little bit but once the pillars were in place at that height then I mean that's where it is forever if I wanted to fix that what I would have to do is Dremel out all of the epoxy all of the bedding compound and then maybe file down the pillars a little bit while somehow monitoring this gap to get a little bit more you know full contact between those two surfaces I didn't do that and I'm not planning to do that I don't think it's gonna be a problem whatsoever especially because if you look at let me grab the 300 Win Mag action if we look at the part of the barrel that makes contact with that recoil lug you see the shiny spots there and there that recoil lug is not a perfect fit to this barrel so to really get that tight I would need to reshape the recoil lug to sit in here a little bit better that that's way outside my comfort zone so I just didn't worry about it like I was mentioning still needing to do some cleanup what I want to do here on the front recoil lug this is also where the mag catch is I'm still using the standard Boyd's front magazine catch which is just this piece of plastic what I want to do is make one of these of metal which it may not be pretty but I think I can do it myself so if I could get one of these that was metal I would really like to bet it in there like permanently because to me it just seems stupid to have a pillar where you're wanting you know metal on metal contact all the way through and then you put a big plastic washer in there you know it kind of defeats the purpose a little bit I think maybe a little bit but this is extremely hard plastic like you can see a little bit of marks there from where the from where the washer rides but I went to 60-inch pounds and it you know it felt like it was okay and and you know it shot okay today but I would really like to install a metal one to get better contact there same thing in the rear this is where the trigger guard sits and I don't quite have it perfectly flat in there of course so what I want to do is just drop a little bit of the betting compound in there make sure and grease this up so it releases pretty well and just kind of make sure that that that I've got a really good connection there where the rear rear pillar meets the back of the trigger guard so those are kind of my two biggest concerns I want to fix them but I don't really expect to see huge games you know on either of those it's more about just cleaning it up and feeling like I got the best connection I possibly can one place I really kind of well I mean it was fine but it's just extremely ugly is right here around the tang you can see that groove but you can see where the actual action sits and it's in there nice but the problem was I had so much epoxy in there and it was squeezing out and while I was taking paper towels and crap and everything trying to get this wiped off my stock I just didn't get that nice flat surface that I wanted around that area but that's okay it's kind of a little reminder you know staring right at you every time you grab the gun that yep you suck at betting and I do mean that like I really did a terrible job the first time through if you follow me over on Instagram I post a few pictures as I was going along and the first time I tried to lay the bed I did not put nearly enough epoxy I'll show you a picture of basically this front part the first time I tried it like just huge voids I used less than half the amount of epoxy I should have so I had to Dremel it all out and start all over and the next time like by God I used a ton of epoxy and I had it squeezing out all over the place and trying to you know clean it up and not make a mess was a huge challenge but that second time through it came out nice I'm really really happy with it and like I mentioned the action now sits down in here goes really really tight even you know no action screws or anything you can't get any movement side-to-side or you know front to back like it just fits like a glove just like you'd want it the other thing about this stock which is I've never had a problem with my 6.5 Creedmoor stock but this one especially right up here at the front the clearance to the barrel wasn't nearly enough like when I first installed it it was actually making contact with the barrel and then I had sanded it out a little bit and I think in an earlier video we had slid a dollar bill under there and all that just to make sure I went ahead and hogged this thing out quite a bit more and I did a pretty crappy job I just used instead of buying a barrel channel reamer or whatever I ended up using like sanding drums of various sizes and just going up and down this guy taking out a bunch of material so it's all uneven whenever the barrels installed you can kind of see it's all wavy and uneven but it gets the job done like I definitely have plenty of clearance now so I think that's pretty much it like I hopefully that maybe tells you what to do and what not to do maybe gives you some idea of what your compass bed might look like there's part of it like dizzy this big ugly kind of section right there it's up into the magazine well so like that didn't matter I could have cleaned that up and made it a little bit prettier same thing on the other side in that same area but overall I'm happy with it I'm happy with today's groups we'll see how it goes we'll see if that that front front pillar you know that epoxy job behind the front pillar works the way I did that was I got a heavy piece of plastic like from a you know a plastic clamshell type of container for something and I cut it out to fit that and I actually super glued it in place and then filled behind it with the epoxy and it worked okay it was clear so I could see through there make sure I didn't leave any voids as I was you know trying to get the epoxy down in there and filling the area so I think it's okay I think it's gonna hold up we'll see over time but at least for today it did pretty good so that's it folks thank you for joining me thank you for the patience because this gun was bought with donations like back a live stream about a year ago I had no interest in 300 Winchester Magnum whatsoever but some viewers on livestream persuaded me started donating some money to get the compass so I have done an extremely poor job of repaying that generosity by letting this project sit idle for 266 days so I sincerely apologize for that hopefully we're back on track now we can start making some progress and I hope you will join me along the way alright see you guys next time

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 34,378

Rating: 4.9531951 out of 5

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Id: E2Nv1jsvSVk

Length: 50min 19sec (3019 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 20 2019