From Russ Chastain,
Your Guide to Hunting / Shooting.
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Bedding the action consists of creating a stable and consistent contact surface between the action (a.k.a. receiver) and the stock. This is most often accomplished using compounds designed specifically for this purpose. These are available in kits, which include directions and a release agent to be applied to the action.

Bedding compound is often a fiberglass resin type of material which is applied to the stock, and then the action - with release agent dutifully applied everywhere it will contact the compound - is installed into the stock, and the action screws tightened. That's when you'd better have plenty of release agent properly applied, because that's what keeps the action from sticking to the bedding compound as it dries.

Still another type of bedding involves simply bedding the recoil lug of a bolt-action rifle to its inlet in the stock. This provides a solid and repeatable mating surface between the recoil lug and stock, eliminating uneven bearing between the two. When you read that a run-of-the-mill factory rifle comes bedded from the factory, this is usually the method they use. It uses the same compounds and release agents as full bedding of the action, but on a smaller scale.

Finally, full-length glass bedding is something that's done on a larger scale, with the goal of providing complete and constant contact between the stock, action, and barrel. This is the most difficult type of bedding to do properly, and it's probably the least-used method of bedding. Usually, a rifle can be made to shoot with acceptable accuracy without resorting to full-length bedding.

Any or all of these methods may yield good results with a given rifle - and then again, they may not. There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to accurizing a rifle. Try several different brands and/or loads of ammo in your rifle, and if it won't shoot one with acceptable accuracy, then it's time to think about trying something different with the rifle itself.

The best advice I can give on this subject is to start small, and try various loads in the rifle after each small change. When you get it where you want it, STOP! Fiddling with it more may undo all the good that you have done, and trying to get your groups under one inch at one hundred yards is often difficult, and more often utterly pointless. One inch per hundred yards is minute-of-angle accuracy, and the vast majority of shooters need no better level of accuracy - especially for hunting purposes, since most big game animals are taken at relatively close range.

- Russ Chastain