Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Reupold et al theories

Threads like this, especially here, are like pushing a rope.....lots of effort for little forward progress.

There are extremists both pro and con. In the middle is experience and common sense. Stress free mounting makes a bigger difference than most believe (or will allow themselves to believe) and can influence tracking, return-to-zero and scope life. The majority of failures are the result of the cumulative effects of shooting. A smaller number are bad right out of the box. The vast majority of shooters discussing how their scopes track or don't track lack either the platform (rifle), shooting ability, testing ability and/or the combination of these three things to properly evaluate a scopes performance. That won't be a popular statement but it's a fact, none the less. The tracking and RTZ simply has to be reliable enough for the size of the 'target'...animal, paper or steel. Once a scope has that, it's adequate for your use. If an optical system doesn’t stand up to the use you'll give it, make changes in brands and/or mounting until it does.

Over a fairly successful competitive shooting 'career', I've won on the local, regional and national level with Weaver, Leupold, NF and Sightron. And also experienced failures with each of those brands. Some were out-of-the-box and some had been worked on both before and after the fact. Aside from the occasional dramatic failure ( the best failures because there's no doubt what's happened ), the long haul average of reliability is the best determiner. When the number of rounds shot each season is tallied by how many empty 1K packages of primers hit the garbage can, the trends are pretty easy to spot. As well as production dates when things started going wonky or getting better.

For what it's worth over my second cup of coffee.........

Good shootin' -Al

That's a good video that explains things pretty well.

For receivers with integral rails, I use this jig to lap and/or bed rings. Just finished up this set (tops and bottoms bedded).






The rings had so much beam strength that it was hard to get good contact with the rail without excessive force on the side screws. A little mill work helped that issue out.

What brand of scope checker is that? Never mind. I see it's a jig that you made. Very nice!

Al, for someone who constantly talks about such precision, I'm surprised to see you bedding rings to your lapping bar. What about dimensional differences between the bar and the actual scope tube that ends up in them? To me, it's kind of like bedding a stock to one action and then throwing a different action in it. What am I missing?

Threads like this, especially here, are like pushing a rope.....lots of effort for little forward progress.

There are extremists both pro and con. In the middle is experience and common sense. Stress free mounting makes a bigger difference than most believe (or will allow themselves to believe) and can influence tracking, return-to-zero and scope life. The majority of failures are the result of the cumulative effects of shooting. A smaller number are bad right out of the box. The vast majority of shooters discussing how their scopes track or don't track lack either the platform (rifle), shooting ability, testing ability and/or the combination of these three things to properly evaluate a scopes performance. That won't be a popular statement but it's a fact, none the less. The tracking and RTZ simply has to be reliable enough for the size of the 'target'...animal, paper or steel. Once a scope has that, it's adequate for your use. If an optical system doesn’t stand up to the use you'll give it, make changes in brands and/or mounting until it does.

Over a fairly successful competitive shooting 'career', I've won on the local, regional and national level with Weaver, Leupold, NF and Sightron. And also experienced failures with each of those brands. Some were out-of-the-box and some had been worked on both before and after the fact. Aside from the occasional dramatic failure ( the best failures because there's no doubt what's happened ), the long haul average of reliability is the best determiner. When the number of rounds shot each season is tallied by how many empty 1K packages of primers hit the garbage can, the trends are pretty easy to spot. As well as production dates when things started going wonky or getting better.

For what it's worth over my second cup of coffee.........

Good shootin' -Al

Nothing.

Al, for someone who constantly talks about such precision, I'm surprised to see you bedding rings to your lapping bar. What about dimensional differences between the bar and the actual scope tube that ends up in them? To me, it's kind of like bedding a stock to one action and then throwing a different action in it. What am I missing?

If you’d like to open your eyes as to what works under the harshest conditions (resembling hunting), you may want to stretch it out a bit

Thanks Al for the insight on scope tube variation. I had presumed that modern manufacturers had those down much tighter than that, like ± .0015".

Thanks for the info, Al. So add a compliant gap filler. Not hard bedding. What do you think about the Burris Signature inserts?

Awhile ago I took a few different brands of 30mm scopes and rings and checked for fit. It was surprising to see the variation in gap and location from one brand (sample really) to another. I then used a centerless ground rod and checked again. All the rings had visible gaps. More than I expected. Either the ring or main tube needs to deform as there's no gap once the fasteners are tightened.

Thanks, Brother Al