A drop in ready stock means that you can put your action and barrel directly into the stock without having to bed the rifle. Your custom McMillan stock is precision inlet to the exact specifications of your action, barrel, and bottom metal so that you get the best looks and results possible. Our Ready To Ship Rifle Stock selection tells you exactly which action each stock has been inlet to so that you can match it to your rifle build.

So, why would people think they need to bed a stock in the first place?

This can be a long and complicated question to answer. We’ll start by explaining why, traditionally, stocks needed to be bedded. When stocks were made back in the day, they were made simply to the radius of the receiver and barrel channel. These simple inlets had to be additionally cut out by gunsmiths to fit any bottom metals and specifications that had to do with the action. Actions also had more variability back then than they do today, so a gunsmith needed to bed a rifle in order to get the good accuracy and precision their customers required from them. For more on this, read Kelly McMillan’s Should You Bed Your New McMillan Stock blog article from 2017. Since actions have much less variability than they used to and McMillan stocks are now inlet to the specifications of the exact action, barrel, and bottom metal, this is no longer necessary.

So, when should someone bed a stock then?

You should bed your stock if you want to eliminate every variable you can to get the smallest groups possible. If you are competing in an extremely competitive sport like benchrest shooting, you want to remove every single variable that you can from the equation. While a McMillan stock is just as accurate and precise as any chassis is without bedding, you can achieve a higher level of precision when bedding a stock. To the majority of shooters, this increase in precision would not be noticeable, but when you are a benchrest shooter and need to shoot 0.2 inch groups at 100 yards on average to be competitive, every fraction of an inch counts. To get this kind of reliable precision, benchrest shooters typically order flattop stocks with no inletting and have their gunsmith do the inletting and bedding for them.

My gunsmith says I should still bed my rifle, should I?

Our last bit of advice is to trust your gunsmith. If you have a reliable gunsmith and they tell you that they think you should bed the rifle, they probably have a good reason that has to do with your specific rifle components and/or your specific needs.