Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Bed or lap?

Kinda getting into long range shooting, for me long range is 700ish. My longest shot ever on game was just under 400 yards on an antelope in SE WY and used my 243 Win. I've picked up a Fierce Rifles Ti action, carbon fiber in 7mm PRC and a Zeiss Conquest V4 scope. Looking at scope mounting and reading about bedding the bases to the receiver and the scope to the rings. In the past, I've always lapped the rings doing the most competent job at it that I could, taking my time with it. I know opinions are subjective, but curious to hear if bedding will be more beneficial. Using Talley Lightweights and at the moment, not interested in another mounting option as I like as few pieces involved with mounting a scope as possible. But admit, long range is new to me after 50 plus years of all of this and not trying to be set in my ways... So... my question after all of that is, to bed or not to bed...

After watching a guy using JB Weld for this on a you-tube video, I'll need a different mind set! Lol!

Thanks,

Dean

Lapping will mostly just keep your rings from marking the scope.

Bedding two pieces bases with a jig or carefully bedding a one piece scope base will correct any planar differences between the front and rear ring.

Which will protect the scope's finish but mostly it helps lighter thin walled scopes to track correctly. The heavier tubed 30mm scopes will generally track no matter what.

I guess you could bed talley lightweights using an old scope or lapping bar to align them.

Don't mess with lapping or bedding. Use Burris Signature rings.

Dean, after bedding the bases to the receiver, I lap the rings and then bed them.

Pro Bed 2000 works great for bedding the bases to the receiver and bedding the rings. AcraGlas Gel is another good product for bedding the rings.

If you opt for JB Weld, use the original...not JB Kwik.

This 700 is a good example. You can see how little contact there was with the receiver:


Bases prepped and Pro Bed on the bases. Screws in lightly to allow for a bit of wiggle:



Lapping bar set across the bottoms to align the rings while the compound cures:


Bedded bases prior to cleanup and chamfering of holes. 100% contact to the receiver:


Bases are on and the lapping process begins. Notice how very little contact there is initially:




Prior to clean up:


This one also needed the tops done as you can see from the marks from the lapping bar:


Good shootin' -Al

What Al said.

It's easy to do both, get the best of both worlds. I like grey Marine-Tex

Burris Signature inserts work great, but they're not available for all applications.

I lap rings, JB Weld them to the receiver top, and set the scope in rubber cement.

Dumb question alert:

How do you remove the bedded scope base and bedding material if you ever needed to?

that`s a good question i would never do that myself , i also would use Picatinny mounts over those mnts. and not glue anything.

I only bed a mount if needed. Most don’t need it. I agree with Pete. I’d buy a one piece rail, and use good rings. You shouldn’t have to bed anything, except for the receiver. Some guys way overthink this schidt and create unnecessary problems for themselves

Back in the day before the nanny EPA banned whatever made epoxy remover actually work, that was the solution. The stuff they sell now as paint and epoxy remover barely touches the stuff. If you plan to remove or separate something, use a release agent like wax on at least one surface.

Of course you can melt or burn it off. Not a good option.

I used to use release agent when I bedded them. Now I bed directly to the receiver when I am certain of the setup and know I won't be changing it. They come off fairly easily with heat not too high to hurt anything.

Al, your posts and photos always put a smile on my face. Thank you for your contributions to this forum.

Thanks for the comments and advice, truly appreciate it. Lots to think about, without hopefully overthinking it, and will go from there. I do find it interesting all the things guys use as a release agent, different waxes, shoe polish...

Not a dumb question at all.

I use a release agent on the receiver...just like you would when bedding an action. If you wish to, you can omit the release agent. If you want to remove the bases at some time, warming them up with a hair dryer for a couple of minutes and a light tap will pop them loose.

Here's another example of how little contact these bases can have.



Bases after bedding but before clean up...100% contact.


Hope this helps. -Al

All or most work OK. Just stay away from anything containing silicone. Avoid it like the plague.

Bed or lap? No and no.

Al's pictures above are excellent and pretty much tell the story. If a scope base doesn't fit the receiver and you don't bed it, you induce stress on the base when you torque it down. When you subsequently install the scope you transfer much of that stress to the scope tube. Draw your own conclusions.

So just torque it all down and go? Where's the mystique in that?! Lol!

Timbermaster;
Good afternoon to you sir, I hope the day down in your chunk of Montana is behaving and you're well.

With the understanding that I'm only a guy who fools with firearms as hobby/addiction and would recommend whatever Al says has been sound as far as my experience and understanding goes - here goes.

Most epoxies are not heat resistant and will degrade or fail above 275°F, though JB weld might need as much as 600°F so they seem to indicate. I've used a propane torch with a small tip as well as a heat gun and prefer the latter for sure. If one is concerned about overheating the metal, a heat gun is much harder to do that with and there are many decent infra red thermometers out there now for about $50 which will let us know the actual temperature of the metal.

Personally, I started using 5 minute epoxy on metal surfaces which did not precisely match - as Al has shown with his photos - in industrial woodworking applications and on our friends and families harder use firearms way back in the '90's. About that time in Peterson's Hunting, a writer who had guided in the Bob Marshall - Ed Nixon - outlined how he'd modified a "do all" BSA that he headed up to Alaska with in the late '50's. He wrote of using 5 minute epoxy for that purpose and that it worked for him.

We'd got into horses and hunting from them as well as had friends in far flung places who hunted from planes, quads and jetboats and as mentioned we were searching for a solution to having the bases loosen off. It made enough sense that I started experimenting with Ed Nixon's idea.

The method we've ended up currently using is that both surfaces are cleaned, then the epoxy is applied in such a way that it will not contact the retention screws. Great pain is taken to prevent that from happening, they're just there as indexing pins. Once the epoxy is cured, we'll test to make sure they can come out and then they're just tightened back up without a bonding agent.

None of the rifles which have that modification have loosened up afield in some regular and some fairly hard use across 3 western provinces and at least a couple in the Yukon too.

As always, my way isn't the only way and might not be the right way for anyone else either and that's an acceptable position to take.

Hope that made sense and was useful.

Dwayne

Al has it exactly right. I only lap rings to about 70%. Perfect way to bed/lap Talley's.
Target quality setup and it's easy to do

Hint.





Fhuqking LAUGHING!.............

Lol! Glad you could find a use for the Leupold....

“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” -Ayn Rand

Good shootin' -Al

As usual, Al is right on the money. If you read Tony Boyer's book, he takes it a step farther. He centers the crosshairs in the scope by running the adjustments from stop to stop then backs off half way. This gets the erector tube in the middle of it's adjustment range. He sets his rifle on a rest with the bore sighted on target. He then will shim the scope as needed to get the scope aligned with the target. With shims in place he then will bed the scope in the rings.