Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics M70/Leupold 2.5x8 Rings and bases

That makes things much easier.

Doesn't Talley make a lightweight set with the front base as an extended? Unless I'm reading my dealer price list wrong, it shows they do.. But I must be wrong if you called and talked to them..

I just had the same issue about a week or two ago with a local customer.. We solved it with a set of Weavers - front ring was an extended.. Nothing hung over the port..

Now, if I go with the Talleys...Am I going to most likely see the previous ring marks. Obviously the only real way to know for sure is to take the scope off and look.
Before I pull the trigger here(pun intended)I would like to have a pretty good idea on what I'm getting into. Ken

If you say so. I've never seen it in 35 years of shooting. I can see how the scope tube could want to flex upward in recoil from the anchor of the front ring, and I guess that the heavier the scope is and the higher it's mounted above bore line the worse that would be. I've just never seen it in anything up through .338 class rifles. I do mount my scopes as low as possible and I like the lightest scopes I can get within reason. I've never been a fan of big objectives on a game rifle--I have a $2000 pair of binoculars to spot game with.

You need to seat the ring cutouts in the screwheads carefully and use a thick bladed screwdriver that really fits the screw slots to get them tight, but with that done they are very rugged. Weatherby installed Buehler mounts, which have the same rear windage system, on their top of the line rifles for years.

I first heard of this happening in an article written by Ross Siegfred, then I read something on these forums about it.

I had a .300 Wby. MK V with the plastic stock. I don't know what it weighed, but it was light. It had a 2.5 X 8 Leupold on it.

After about 4 or 5 shots from a bench, the next shot would go about a foot high, and as I tried to adjust POI, the scatter of the shots got worse. I almost never figured out what was happening. I replaced it with a fixed Leupold 12X and it did the exact same thing, a foot high after a few shots.

With the 12X, I was shooting with a baseball cap on and the rear lens recoiled back hard enough that the lens broke when it hit the bill of the cap.

It actually damaged the 2.5 X 8 Leupold from springing the tube where it rode up out of the grooves in the rear mount. Leupold repaired it for me. And also the one with the broke lens.

That rifle was rough on scopes.

I only include this here in the event that someone is shooting and all of a sudden, the next shot goes out of group and about a foot high. I had been using these rings and bases (not the exact ones) off and on for over 40 years, and had never had this happen, but this was the first on a light .300 Wby.

I am relating my experience in case it happens to someone else so they will know one of the many things to check for when a rifle suddenly goes hay wire.

Three shots in about 3/4 of an inch and the next one a foot high and the next one 18 inches left or right and still high will cause one to wonder what is going on.

I forgot to include it in my post, but today I received the latest issue of RifleShooter.

On the front cover is a picture of a Nosler rifle using Leupold 2 piece dual dovetail bases. The rear one sticks out over the rear receiver ring slightly, but the front one doesn't protrude past the front receiver ring. The scope is a Leupold.

These bases might be something for the OP to consider. They appear to be shorter than the Leupold windage bases.

These windage bases, what is the purpose? How do you utilize them?

Well, shoot. This is what happens when you have too many rifles and keep switching scopes around. Forgot that I switched the Leupold dual dovetails for Talleys with the 2.5-8.

Finley already posted a picture of Talleys but here's another one of a 2.5-8X36 on a M70 .30-06. You can see the ring mark right where the objective meets the tube showing where the forward edge of the old DD ring was. I believe you can also see a very light mark hard up against the power adjustment ring where the back edge of the other one was. DD's do work with this scope but there is no room for forward/backward adjustment.



And fwiw here you can see how the dual dovetail mounts fit flush with the ejection port. The scope pictured is a Leupold 6X36.

Jim, is it just me? I see no pics.... Ken

Crappy lighting here, but pic is of a pre-64 .30-06 with talley extended front base and a VXIII 2.5-8x36.

The rear ring is secured by a pair of opposing screws, which allow you to move the ocular end of the scope left or right. When I put a new scope on a rifle using this mount I usually try to get the windage close using the bases first, then use the internal scope adjustments, because it helps keep the scope in the middle of its adjustment range.

The design is intended to compensate for bases that are not installed exactly parallel to the bore. This is less of a problem than it used to be because the vast majority of sporting rifles come drilled and tapped from the factory (unlike back in the day when a much larger proportion of hunting rifles were sporterized military issue), but it still happens.

Oops, my bad. I had linked to them while still in the "Upload" staging area of the pic server before they were actually loaded.

They should appear now.

The real purpose of the design which was introduced in the market in the early 1900's by the Redfield company was to provide for windage adjustment. Some early scopes had no windage adjustments and for those that did, the mount provided a means to keep the reticle centered left to right. Early scopes did not have constantly centered reticles.

RAN

Just noticed, there are two left handed stainless Model 70's shown in this thread.

To those southpaws that don't have one, nyah-nyah...

Yes Jim, your a fellow leftie!!!! A brother from a different mother!!!

Your pic of the Talleys looks good.
I'm gonna take the scope off and see how bad the ring marks are.
I hope I dont have to choose between ring marks or ugly bases.