After market stock bedding

[Awf Hand]

I was wondering what anybody's experience has been with aftermarket stocks.

Maybe I should be asking in the gunsmithing portion of this board, but surely some of you have put a new stock on your rifle and made the thing a "shooter"...?

I have a .308 Savage 110fp with the factory synthetic stock.  I pulled the bbl and action from the stock, and found that the aluminum pillar bedding wasn't even making contact with the action on the front or the back. :shock:

Supwidat??!!

I augered out a bit of the synthetic material with a 1.25" dowel wrapped in sandpaper, and seemed to get good fit, but I'm still a bit aghast that I would have to do this.

If I were to upgrade to an aftermarket stock for this gun, who's would require the least (read - none) work to have a good, solid bedding form which to start my tuning?  Or, do they all require a bit of work to make fit?

The rifle currently is a ho-hum shooter with an occasional 1"-1.25" 100yd group on the good end.  -I took the stock off to reduce the trigger pull to about 3.5lbs from the 12 pounds that is was when I bought it.  I have not tested performance since lightening the trigger pull, or making the pillar bedding usefull.

[Zachary]

I primarily buy HS Precision and McMillan aftermarket synthetic stocks.  I took the barreled action off of my Remington BDL SS and put it right in the HS Precision stock - no additional work required.

Now, this is not to say that you can't do more work.  Although my gun was just as accurate in the HS stock without any other work as the cheap plastic stock, I still had the gunsmith glass bed the action.  I haven't shot it yet, but it should shoot more consistently now.

I don't know if HS or McMillan makes any stocks for the Savage, but even if they do, I would have a gunsmith glass bed the action anyway.

Zachary