Pillars
 

Some fellows like to place their pillars to get a metal-on-metal contact with the receiver, and some like to leave them slightly short to let the bedding compound flow between the receiver and the top of the pillar. I have done both with good results. What are you fellows currently doing?

I had gone back and forth for many years, until Boyd Allen advised me nearly 10yrs ago now to float the action on the bedding with a slight offset. I’ve been floating ever since, and have had more consistency in the resulting bedding jobs.

One reason: epoxy shrinks slightly as it cures, which leaves the pillar to stand tall from the surface, ever so slightly, as a pressure point. Equally, the epoxy will flex more than the pillar, so even if they were perfectly level, the pillar would be a pressure point.

I use a small shim washer placed on top of the pillar during the bedding process to create the offset.

That is the same thing I have been doing recently. When I place the pillars short like this I epoxy the pillars as a separate step before doing the glass bedding. I know that some guys do the bedding compound and then place the pillars short in a single step but I do not see any real benefit over the two step method except for the time savings..

When I did metal-on-metal pillars it was done in a single step. Metal-on-metal is nice looking but I currently like to leave them a tiny bit short.