Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Scopes that MOVE

Never had this problem before, but twice recently.

Ruger rings on a Ranch Rifle....rings tightened down nicely and evenly....seem plenty tight--scope moved back in rings after about 40 rounds.

Then......Ruger rings on 77/357......same deal.

Is it me? Is it the Ruger rings? I roughed up the inside of the rings on the 77/357 a little and applied a couple of drops of loc-tite to each.

It still moved a little and then seemed to hold. Need more testing to be sure.

Ideas? Is this common? I never had it happen before.

I had it happen several times on a Ruger 77 in 416 Taylor. I ended up putting a drop of Loctite on each ring. It solved the problem of the scope moving in the rings, but the recoil busted loose something inside the scope. Twice! It is on it's way back to Leupold now.

I suspect that whatever is causing your scope to move, might be something other than what was causing my scope to move, but that drop of Loctite sure seemed to hold things in place.

I suggest you try FIRST -

a drop or two of your wife's (girlfriend's) clear nail polish.

I use that on the scope ring screws. So far everything has stayed put.

Good Luck

Might want to consider lapping (don't overdo) the rings and/or apply a light coat of rubber cement.

"Rings tightened down nicely and evenly" is subjective. Why not use a torque set and remove the margin of error?

Try a torque wrench and tighten to proper spec

Rubber cement is the easy cure.

Gutshotbuck:



That is literally astonishing to me. I have some heavy kickers (like 30-378) with some heavy scopes. When I had issues, recoil drove the rifle toward the rear, and the scope attempted to remain in place. The end result was my scope appeared to scoot forward in its rings. In one instance the bases were canted forward and near shearing off. A buddies unit (scope) also moved forward such that the bolt handle began contacting the ocular bell.

My solutions have been things like Talley rings, and/or silicon seal or a few drops of clear lacquer between the scope and rings.

I have no idea how a scope could be moving toward the rear.

Good luck and let us know what the fix is.

Lead Sled?

I'll take a look at it again. I suppose I could have the movement backwards.

Don't we have a physics major here who could tell us which way scopes move and exactly what forces can move them?

Anyhow, I'm just going to start all over and de-grease everything carefully and use Loc-tite on both screws and inside ring surfaces.

I've never measured torque, I just tighten screws about as reasonably tight as I can get them and that strategy has worked for many years. If anything, I probably haven't been degreasing as well as I should have.

I'm thinking the difference I encountered with these two rifles is that they are both likely to put a lot of sharp recoil forces on the scope (the 77/357 because of its light weight and the Ranch Rifle because of the action slamming back and forth).

Seems strange because recoil usually moves scopes forward, piston air guns have a rearward movement and can move a scope backward. Never did hear of a situation like yours...... Rubber cement or nail polish works , cure my light .338 from chucking scopes around....

Make a good cleaning rack........

There are two reasons for a scope to move inside tightened rings:

1) The "hole" inside the rings is a little oversize. This is unusual, since it's usually a slightly undersize, in order to grip the scope. But it can happens when somebody really laps rings.

2) The scope tube is slightly undersize. This happens more often than we realize. Quite a few scope tubes are also slightly oversize--whereupon the rings get blamed for dinging the scope.

Friction tape.

Scopes move forward under recoil. If it is truly moving backward, then something else is going on altogether.

Are you using a Lead Sled or something similar?

For what it's worth, I have found quite a few Ruger rings shipped as cast. The interior surface of the rings is not a good mate for the scope. I had to lap them to get any kind of decent contact. I had a couple of scope slip [forward] on two different 77s in 270.

I have tried a multitude of gripping substances for the scope tube. I have settled on Gorilla glue; a little goes a long ways, it never slips and it doesn't ruin anything-can be cleaned up.

Torquing an action may pay dividends with respect to repeatability but I have had good luck with just snugging the scope screws up to where they are about right from experience. I have a T15 torque wrench that is preset by Warn. It only works on T15 fasteners though. Never had a scope slip simply because I didn't get it tight enough.

YEP! never had a scope scoot backward!

I checked the 77/357 and I can tell the scope moved back because 1. I remember that initially it had moved so the front ring was almost against the front objective swell, and 2. Because the second time I worked on it and put the Loc-tite on the rings, I marked the scope with a lead pencil and it did move back a tiny bit before it seemed to be holding.

I need to shoot it a bit more before I trust that it's holding solid, but I think it is. Screws are all tight.

I had already taken the scope off the Ranch Rifle, so I can't verify that the scope on that was moving backward.

When it warms up a bit in about a month I'll redo the Ranch Rifle and try again.....and also shoot the 77/357 some more to verify that it's holding solid.

I'll report back.

I had the same thing happen when I bought a OLDER Denver Made
Redfield Illuminator 3-9x40 with the High Gloss Black finish
I mounted it on my Sako Tecomate 300 WSM IN Med.Talley lt. wt.
one piece rings.
I snugged it as usual and when I turned the eyepiece to adjust
the focus of the ret to my eye the whole scope turned.
Never had this happen to me before with my other Talley lt. wt.`s but other scopes had a matte finish and all Leupolds or Zeiss Conquests

Yeah, the scope on the 77/357 is a camo Bushnell 2X7 and the finish is smooth as teflon.

This is undoubtedly part of the problem. I did steel wool a little on both the rings and the scope finish where the rings would make contact before I applied a few drops of Loc-tite.

The other scope is a matte finish Burris, but it also feels a bit slick to the touch.