While I sorta agree with you, it goes against everything melvin Forbes from NULA told me. I stopped by his shop once. And the guy is a bedding maniac. I have watched his pencil thin barrels shoot up to 20 shots at one time and never change POI or accuracy. I was blown away.
He always goes back to bedding being the most critical. I was telling him, my accuracy on this gun or that, falls after 3 shots, he said, "bedding". Or told him a gun was finicky, and he said, "bedding". He even had an occilloscope set up showing harmonics of a barrel by tapping with full length beddding vs. just recoil lug. Showing why a gun can be so finicky. I am still not sold, but I believe he is one of the best smiths in america.
A good friend of mine who is a 1000 BR shooter, even hogs out the barrel channel 1/4" and glasses the entire thing. No pressure on the barrel, just laying on the bedding. The guy shoots awesome. When he beds, it looks like the messiest process you ever seen, and he ends up sanding the edges with a belt sander to get even and refinishes.
Originally Posted by
bigbulls
People do it but there is no real reason you need to bed the first two inches of barrel when glass bedding a rifle with a typical sporter weight or typical factory bull barrel.
If, on the other hand, you are to build a rifle with an exceptionally long and heavy barrel it helps to bed the entire length of the barrel to help support the barrel and remove stresses that that heavy barrel will put on to the receiver.
If you want to know the truth... When you fire a cartridge the chamber area expands radially. By bedding under the chamber area of a rifle you are actually not allowing the chamber area to expand evenly around the full 360* of the barrel. What you are actually creating is uneven radial chamber expansion. If the barrel is completely floated all the way to the recoil lug the barrel expands evenly all around the circumference of the barrel.