Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Lappin' Rings....worth it?

Lap a few rings and you will be amazed how far some of them are out!The worst one I did recently was a Ruger 243 for my daughter. Also, you won't be getting ring marks in your scope anymore.

Will lapping serve to lessen the amount the scope "wanders" when you tighten the rings down? On some scope set ups I'll get the crosshair on vertical, then, as I tighten the scope it will rotate left or right, canting the crosshairs. Don

STOP!
If everyone laps their rings the supply of good scopes being sold cheep just because of light ring marks will come to an end!
I would much rather buy a good used scope with light ring marks than a new cheep scope.

I posted earlier about the ring reamer and didnt mention that i used it mainly because the rings needed some serious alignment help. I would have to lap a LONG time to straighten out some of my mounts. Using this process eliminated the stress on my scopes so that the POI didnt wander. I am just glad I didnt damage the scope before on the other rifles. My rings all get lapped because I dont want to wonder about whether my equipment is causing my poor shooting or the nut behind the butt.

I must be doing something wrong..... I have a whole bunch of rifles that shoot sub-one half moa, I don't have ring marks when I switch scopes around, and I NEVER lap rings..... Of course, I use Badger, NF and Warne rings and I always use a torque wrench to tighten them. Blue Loctite on every threaded connection means that they never, ever, come loose either, until I want them to.

IMHO, perhaps the biggest offender in ring/scope mating is the use of rings that require an end user to align them to the bore and each other. The worst ring/base combinations for this are the windage adjustable ones, including dovetail front ones. Even the dual dovetail ones when assembled with alignment tools are suspect.
A slight misalignment (angular, lateral or both) from one ring to the next will make it look like you have next to no contact, because you don't. Miss-aligned rings will almost always leave marks. I wonder if most conventional wisdom about ring lapping originated in the day of Leupold and Redfield mounts, screwed onto gunsmith tapped receivers?????
Rings that clamp to integral features on the receiver require incredible care to get them to seat properly (look closely), I am thinking Ruger here... The Ruger rings are pretty horrible with respect to surface finish. But, at the correct torque, don't do much harm to a scope.
I personally believe that barring a mfg defect like a burr or a sharp edge, that the next biggest problem, after alignment, causing ring marks is ring design coupled with excessive torque. Tightening the screws excessively does two things, it rotates the "flanges" of the ring where the screws go, causing the ends of the ring to press into the scope (that would be the longitudinal lines you see when there are ring marks). Rings that are too thin in the hoop that surrounds the scope create a flange that is insufficiently "built in" to resist that rotation. Additionally, tightening torque causes the entire ring (which even with a thin Steel ring is much stiffer than the Aluminum scope body) to compress the scope tube to a smaller diameter. This results in both elastic and, if excessive torque is used, plastic deformation of the scope body. The ring mark forms at the junction between the compressed smaller diameter and the larger, free diameter.
If one does not have a torque wrench, holding the Allen/Torx wrench by the short end will typically produce plenty of torque.
15 to 25 in-lbs, depending on ring design, number of fasteners, etc. is the range I use.

I probably sound like one of the unwashed to the benchrest crowd...... and as always, your mileage may vary......

Of the rings I have used I have noticed that the leupolds are the worst at leaving ring marks. After mounting dozens of scopes in warnes I have never had a ring mark when I removed the scope.

Always remember that when you lapp rings, you are really just checking them. If they are ok then it is fine to lock up the scope but lapping is a sure fire way to "know" what you are dealing with. It doesn't mean that you are always grinding metal from the mount.

AGW

Ring lapping assumes that all scope tubes are concentric. Are they...?

Warne rings are awesome.

Lapping assumes nothing. It is a corrective action tool that enables you to validate conformance in manufacturing and validate conformance in alignment to a foreign action that was generically guestimated during design as a matching component.

AGW

For the people who dont think that lapping rings is necessary thats fine, but you wont be able to cinvince anyone who has done it that it isnt needed. I use the reamer because the lap takes too long, but i lap them after that. Its not a slam on anyones rings but most of them dont line up very well even when you usean alignment tool to set them up. I use Leupold Dual Dovetail mounts and rings on my M70 in .243 and they are rock solid now. When the screws were tightened they got tight just like the action screws will do on a good pillar bedding job.

I think so too! As I can afford to I am changing out all of my leupolds to warnes.
I never could figure out the facination with leupold rings especially the standard ones with the windage adj. I guess is was availability. The only others I will use are conetrol and talley but for my money it is warnes.

If the rings were the correct basic diameter, with some gap left for applying load to the scope to begin with, when you ream and lap away metal, do you still have gaps between the rings to allow you to drive load into the scope tube, or are you coming up solid on the lower ring?
The more missalignment you have to start with the more the clamping forces are localized on corners, and therefore, the more deflection you will have of the scope tube. This will probally result in additional screw travel.....
I prefer to correct the root cause rather than the symptom.

miket 81, I concur. The windage adjustable ones are dramatically weaker and ensure alignment problems.

Ya I get a kick out of people that use them and bore sight and say "oh man, I am 3 feet left! Glad I have these adjustable windage rings!"
They don't realize that is why they are off in the first place since it is almost impossible to get the rear perfectly centered and I think it is a weak system.

Exactly.
20 pages (about) of rings and bases in the Midsouth catalog and you can throw out 18 of them and never miss a thing (pun intended).

Many rings will mar a scope even if they are lapped. In particular Talley steel rings do this. I bend each ring open just a little and then they don't damage the scope. The screws bring the rings back together.

I might lap rings very lightly, if you overdo it and some do, all you do is get a loose ring of sorts.

We got by for years without lapping rings, so I almost consider it a gimmick for someone to make money off as are most things. However if done properly it won't hurt a thing and may make you feel better.

I use only Talley Rings and bases, My bases are machined to fit the receiver that normally has been surfact ground, I do this for more accurate return to zero of the scope. I have not lapped any of these rings.

Bottom line is I am not sure it works all that well, but it can't hurt unless you over do it.

Ring lapping is of about the same value as barrel lapping...little to none, IMO. It is more of a gimmik to sell product and services. If done, only do it lightly, as you could well get sloppy rings that need to be replaced. ($$). I've had a lot of scoped rifles, and have never had a problem that ring lapping cured.

Also, does anyone use silicone seal in the rings...a little dab'll do ya'.

FWIW....

I made a lapping bar and aquired some lapping compound.

Three rifles going through a scope swap the first two being my son's 700 .243 and my Ruger #1 25-06.

I bedded the bases and lapped the Leupy (windage adjustable) rings on the boys rifle and mounted up a 2-7 Nikon. The lapping showed about 10% contact at first which I lapped to 95% or so. Per the mounting of the scope....it "seemed" be easier to keep the scope level during screw torque and it "seemed" to tighten up a lot..."easier", for the lack of a better word.

Shooting/sighting in the .234...bringing to zero @ 100 yards was a cake walk. After peeking through the tube to do a half ass bore sight, It hit about 6 inches low and 3 inches right with the first shot. Walked the cross hairs from the bull to the bullet hole and the second shot hit dead nuts. Four more shots went into a nice little factory ammo cluster the likes of which this rifle hasn't done before, IOW, no flyers. Looking forward to tuning up some X's now.....

Same/same with the #1. Scope is a turreted M8 6X. The Ruger rings showed a little better contact at the beginning of the lapping, about 30%. Lapped them out to 90 or 95% also. Noted that the front ring recieved a near 100% lap and the rear ring showed a slight lack when I finished...on the front edge of it. As asserted by the "same/same" above, mounting this scope also "seemed" easier. Zeroing this scope was as expected and 100 yards groups were what they have always been with 115 grain ballistic tips....tiny. With the exception being noticed that instead of a tiny little "line" of holes, I now have round clusters. I'll know more about any real differences when I take this rifle out to 200 yards and beyond.

Upon observing what I could in a short amount of time and at a short distance I did notice that things seemed better than they were, for both rifles.

The third rifle is my 3006 which is recieving a turreted 3x9 Leupy. I just recieved a set of talley LW lows from Rick which I need to get color matched to the rifle via Cerekote. For the time being I'll lap the existing Leupy rings and mount up my old Weaver 4-12 for some load development with 168 X's. Mebbe will get that ready this weekend......

I'm beginning to believe that lapping rings is a benefit.......

All one has to do is do it once and you'll immediately see the benefit.