I routinely see where it is advised not to bed the tang. My question is- Is this something you have seen a differance in? Meaning you bedded the tang and it shot horrible and then took out the bedding in the tang area and groups shrunk?

Or is it just what you do because that is what someone said to do??

I only ask because I went from conventional thinking. I have a savage single shot long action with a 32" barrel in 260 remington in a choate tactical stock. It was assembled and did some load work up with 123gr sierra's. The stock has an aluminum bedding block in it and the tang was completely floated. The best i could get out of it was right around 1 3/4" at 230 yards for 5 shots. I disasembled it and noticed the contact points on the bedding block were uneven. Not consistant on the stock. (action is painted and can see the marks) So i bought some Devcon and bedded the action. I completely bedded the action along with the tang area. I got a chance to take it out today and test the same load that shot the best but shot 1 3/4" at 230 yards. I was only able to shoot at 180 yards today but the results from today don't indicate the load got worse but got better.

This is a pic of the target shot today with the tang bedded. It is 7 shots at 180yards.
[img width=600 height=336]http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/ad32/260shooter/tangtarget.jpg[/img]

I guess now i will have a control target to compare if things start to go haywire and i can remove the bedding in the tang area. What say you?