Originally Posted by utah708
Originally Posted by jaycee
Originally Posted by viking
How did you mount the rail, in the stock.


I used a Mesa Tactical 8 1/2" (cantilever) Picatinny Rail for a Remington 870 as it was available and the radius for the top of the receiver works well with the rifle barrel, and shortened it to suit.

I attached the Picatinny rail to the barrel with some of that two-sided foam "tape" that's used for removeable coat hooks, etc, and played with it until the flashlight beam was centered with the iron sights. I then hogged-out the front of the stock so it would not touch the rail when the barreled action was bolted into the stock. All that was left was to mix up and dye some Acraglass and butter-up the stock and portion of the picatinny rail that's inside the stock. I masked-off the section of pic rail outside of the stock, and used Kiwi shoe polish as a release agent on the metal. It actually went pretty slick from start to finish.

If I were to do it again, I think I would use two thicknesses of the foam tape. As mine sits now, there's probably 1/16" of clearance between the rail and the barrel - it hasn't been an issue to date, but I think I'd prefer around 1/8" clearance.


How did you make sure that the rail was aligned with the center of the bore and not the outside of the barrel? That was the trickiest part of my installation, and there is probably a more elegant solution than mine.


Nothing scientific, just eye-balled it - my rifle was already sighted in with the iron sights, so I just made sure the iron sights were in the center of the illumination pattern. I found this easier by shining the flashlight on a nearby wall rather than going for distance. The light pattern gets smaller the closer you get to a wall, and it was really quite easy to center the beam on the iron sights using the double sided tape described above. I then loosely mounted my scope to confirm everything was ok up top with the scope and flashlight pattern, and then confirmed it at approx. 100 yards again before I left it alone and let the Acraglass set - all was good. I suppose there would be some kind of jig one could make up, but I honestly don't know if it would improve any on the final result.