Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Sako ring screws..

Mounted up a scope on my recently aquired Vixen with original Sako scope mounts. Managed to twist the head off one of the ring screws. Anyone know of a source for the oddball m3.5-0.6 screws they used on these? Doesn't necessarily have to match the others as I'd rather just replace them all to match.

Yep, but get ready for the expense. Accuflite did have them, but they want too many $$ IMO. There may be other cheaper sources, but I don't know of any.

Sometimes, I wonder if it wouldn't be best to redrill and tap these mounts to a standard size. I've not measured them, but it looks like there's enough room. I know, it would ruin the value, but if you don't intend on selling them . . .

That's my thought but don't trust myself or the local hacks to do it. Value doesn't bother so much as getting them to work. Everything else mounts the scopes too high and....well...these just look right on this gun.

Beretta bent me over at $3.00/screw when I needed to replace several for my windage adjustable Sako ringmounts. Pissed me off enough so that I spent a few hours on-line looking for an alternative source before I sent another cent to their parts department.



MicroFasteners of Lebonon NJ (1-800-8926917) sells M3.5X8mm socket cap screws (SCM3508) $3.50 for 20. I ordered on-line from their website. Not only much, much cheaper, the MF screws are harder and the heads do not deform as easily as the ones I sourced from Beretta. The head diameter fits my old style Sako ringmounts perfectly but I understand that the head diameter is slightly large for some later versions of Sako ringmounts and need to be turned down a smige to fit. Easy to do with a drill motor, a file and cold blue.

Excellent! Are they blued/blacked?

Ruger scope rings screws work just fine in original SAKO rings. Done it more than once.

Ted

Very dark blue. Pretty much black.

My ruger screws are a no go....

I found every online company except that one when I was searching. Thank you very much. Most of the jobbers I found that had the screw were in UK.

Hmmm, that is very strange. They easily screw into my SAKO rings.

Ted

You are welcome. Any time I can steer business away from Beretta CS, I feel a little bit less violated from the reaming they gave me when they charged me $3.00 per screw.

IIRC, Accuflite wanted $8 per screw...

The older sako rings use a M3.5-0.6 screw. The more modern ones use a 6-40 thread pitch which is same as ruger. Not sure when the switch occured.

Accuflite must have gotten their business model from Emperors Club VIP.

That is good to know. The switch must have been quite a while back, because my wife's SAKO 222 has been in our hands more than forty years.

Ted

I have a two sets of Optiloks, one from the mid 80's and another from the early '90's and both have metric threads. I have another set from the 70's and they too have metric threads. Did, perhaps, very early sets have English threads? Did Sako do both simultaneously? Or, have some just been drilled and tapped for a standard size? This is pretty curious stuff.

Couldn't say on the optilocks as these are pre-optilock sako mounts.

Well, my pre-optiloks (70's version) are metric.

B-Square made replacement screws for some time. There is a guy that sells these on E-bay from time to time. They are hex head.

I have one (1) original 3.5 mm X 0.6 X 6 mm slotted screw for the vintange Sako scope rings. It has been handled quite a bit because I used it as a template and measured it to make 600 new screws for members of the Sako Collectors Club. By the way my calcutations indicate that the ring screws should be torqued to 8 - 10 inch pounds. At that torque there is 300 pounds clamping force per screw.

I'd say $8.00 is getting you off pretty cheap and a good lesson learned..Lay off the bar bells!