No4 barrel bedding sharing

[Frederick303]

Very good point(s) Thunderbox, but I will have to still disagree based on my experience. I have seen No4 of WWII construction that would on a camping trip shift zero over night due to the wet morning conditions. You could feel the difference in the wood based on the spring of the barrel in the front of the wood and in the shift in the shooting. Seasoned wood, but if it is not cut correctly in the first place, it will move with changes in humidity and temp.

Where I live, we have hot humid summers and both periods of cold/ wet, or very cold-dry in winter plus all conditions in between. Getting to matches in summer means having the rifle in a hot trunk at ~100 degrees for a few hours. I maintain very careful log books on each of my shooting rifles and I have seen shifts on more then one rifle, not all WWII make. Of course my rifles shop does not have heat, so perhaps the shifts are more noticeable then someone who keeps their rifles in a house environment.

In any case on a rifle that has that tendency, central bedding is the cure and it works very well indeed, once properly cared out.

By the by, I do not disagree that a conventionally bedded No 4 rifle can be accurate or that if we did a statistical study that it would prove to be on edge slightly better, especially for long range. I think the postings of Capt. Laidler would support the idea that the front bedded rifles gave the best accuracy out of sniper rifles and hence service rifles. I am not denying that.

But the fact remains that the first post simply stated that center bedding made things worse, and by a significant margin. That is simply not so if it is done correctly and if you are using the tight sling approach used in NRA type competition that there are other benefits that folks that shoot off of the bench will not see or understand. A central bedded rifle, done correctly offers a significant reduction in shifts due to pressure points on the forward portion of the forend. Testing rifles in a conventional bench rest or rifle cradle will not illustrate that point, shooting matches will.

If you challenge that point, how do you explain the popularity of center bedding with the Bisley crowd or the cadets?