I have not bedded heavy recoiling rifles, but the varmint calibers that I have, responded well to what I call "bridge bedding", which is pretty much what Al described, except my earlier efforts were done before I was aware of pillar bedding. One more thing about pillars, in addition to keeping the stock from compressing, the higher action screw torque settings that they allow increase the unit loading in those areas that are bedded, increasing the friction between the action and the stock. It is my belief that it is this feature that improves accuracy over what a non pillared stock would give, if the action screw torque is limited to what the stock can handle without being compressed. Factory actions, particularly those with magazine cuts, lack bedding area, and the heavier the bullet, and larger the case, the bigger the problem. A long time back, a long time benchrest gunsmith, and competitor told me that there was no advantage to sleeving an action IF it was to be glued in. I never tried that on any of my rifles because I was not sure that I could do a good job of drilling the necessary trigger pin holes, but somewhere in my collection is a Gun Digest with an article by a fellow who did just that. He did had done various modifications to accurize a Remington Varmint Special in .222 and had tested to see the accuracy improvement after each change. The last thing that he did was glue it in, and that really tightened the groups to a level beyond what I would have expected. Some time back, Kelly McMillan gave me a complete and installed prototype EDGE benchrest stock, and gave me the option of whether to have his gunsmith pillar bed or glue the action to the stock. Knowing that an experienced smith (with a lot more tooling than I have) could undoubtedly do the job right, I chose to have it glued in. It went from a rifle that shot a lot of low 2's to one that has delivered in the teens. I should add that it is a 722 action that has had some work done to it, including sleeving the bolt, and it has a tight neck chambered Hart barrel in .222, a 2 oz. trigger, and 36X scope. No doubt, the shape of the stock makes a great contribution, but I think that the bedding is an important part of the improvement that was achieved. Becasue the barreled action was not originally put together to be glued, it has a recoil lug, and in that configuration I see no reason not to try a glue in on a heavy caliber, but for that application I would use a belt and suspenders, doing a full pillar bedding job (with the tops of the pillars covered) and then gluing and then tightening the action screws as if only pillared. The late Lee Six, thought this approach to be a good one for pure accuracy applications. I was surprised at his answer, when I asked a small group of top shooters about pillar vs. glue-in bedding and his reply was "both". As a competitor and stock builder he was in an excellent position to build and test any idea that he wanted to, so although surprised by his answer, I did not doubt its correctness.