scope flex

[foxhunter540]

and dalej they were warner rings 30mm

[marxman]

i dont think that bar is better than lapping i think its worse because the rings are not sitting secure where they want to be i think its a backwards approach. if the reciever is not perfectly straight

[gitrdun]

Originally Posted by marxman

i dont think that bar is better than lapping i think its worse because the rings are not sitting secure where they want to be i think its a backwards approach. if the reciever is not perfectly straight

If the receiver isn't perfectly straight as you mention, you have mountainous problems. Most issues come from the D&T holes not being aligned with center of bore. Although standard factory mounts come with a counter bore to allow for the screw head, they cannot be adjusted due to the round profile of the receiver which matches that of the mounts. Thus, in such cases lapping between front to rear rings returns concentricity and reduces scope tube stress.

[Pathfinder76]

Originally Posted by marxman

i dont think that bar is better than lapping i think its worse because the rings are not sitting secure where they want to be i think its a backwards approach. if the reciever is not perfectly straight

Lapping bars aren't all straight.

Take a scope base and loosen it slightly and see how much side to side movement there is. One idea of the bar is to tighten bases while the rings are held in alignment with each other. Kinda like a rail without having to have the horrid rail.

Straight receivers. Part of the key. Good straight inletting. Part of the key.

[gitrdun]

Originally Posted by chuck

Lapping bars aren't all straight.

Take a scope base and loosen it slightly and see how much side to side movement there is. One idea of the bar is to tighten bases while the rings are held in alignment with each other. Kinda like a rail without having to have the horrid rail.

Huh? if lapping bars aren't straight, THEN THEY'RE NOT LAPPING BARS. I have the means to measure straightness, meaning machinist V-blocks and dials to a tenth of a thou. How do you measure this? And I couldn't careless how you hold the rings in alignment while tightening the screws. If a combination of screw outside diameter vs hole inside diameter and receiver to mount profile won't allow alignment, you can hold them ad tight ad you wish, it simply ain' t gonna happen .

Darn it anyways, I'm discussing lapping and alignment with pencil pushers and tool pushes or drywallers, too funny.

[foxhunter540]

some folks just need to get a lapping bar and see how out of wack rings can be just like grizzlys in alberta till ya see one you just blowin smoke

[marxman]

. Most issues come from the D&T holes not being aligned with center of bore.

if this is true then the rings are not the problem as rman keeps insisting they are the solution , if you lap them. there are a lot of red herrings floating around here

[foxhunter540]

there is old school and new school ways or doing things i being in the middle of both. I use to shim base's lay felt in the rings to paper like business cards torn off and now in todays easier life we have lapping tools.Alot of gunsmiths are lappings scopes now a days as well and then some are shimming and monkeyin for hrs on end getting a scope true. Most rings i have had to lap only needed a little off the bottom side.I have never yet had any come of sides of the rings YET is the key word. So...with this in mind off the bottom of the rings is more a leveling problem than side to side issuse.

[gitrdun]

Originally Posted by foxhunter540

some folks just need to get a lapping bar and see how out of wack rings can be just like grizzlys in alberta till ya see one you just blowin smoke

What you speak of foxhunter are the alignment "check" bars, they have the pointy ends. The alignment bars themselves are trued rods which you work rotation and axially with a coating of lapping compound such as the 220 grit which comes in the Wheeler kit or just plain Green Clover, same stuff. Lapping scope rings isn't for everyone, not bankers, accountants, tool pushes, bakers, babysitters, realtors, cops, drywallers, landscapers, or anyone else that isn't capable to form a complete sentence without a more than 50% spelling bee, compose a paragraph without punctuation or capitalization or whose middle name isn't a city in Texas.

[foxhunter540]

lmaoooooooooooooooooo ya i got those too what happened to the days of laying a broom stick on the rings eh lol

[marxman]

[QUOTE=gitrdun; Lapping scope rings isn't for everyone, not bankers, accountants, tool pushes, bakers, babysitters, realtors, cops, drywallers, landscapers, or anyone else that isn't capable to form a complete sentence without a more than 50% spelling bee, compose a paragraph without punctuation or capitalization or whose middle name isn't a city in Texas. [/QUOTE]

hey, ive known drywallers that could spell, sort of, if they were sober

[gopher]

Originally Posted by gitrdun

Huh? if lapping bars aren't straight, THEN THEY'RE NOT LAPPING BARS. I have the means to measure straightness, meaning machinist V-blocks and dials to a tenth of a thou. How do you measure this? And I couldn't careless how you hold the rings in alignment while tightening the screws. If a combination of screw outside diameter vs hole inside diameter and receiver to mount profile won't allow alignment, you can hold them ad tight ad you wish, it simply ain' t gonna happen .

Darn it anyways, I'm discussing lapping and alignment with pencil pushers and tool pushes or drywallers, too funny.

Have a look at Darcy's tool.

[Hotwheels81]

Darn it anyways, I'm discussing lapping and alignment with pencil pushers and tool pushes or drywallers, too funny.

....some of us are trades folk too ya know...

[savage shooter]

Lapping scope rings isn't for everyone, not bankers, accountants, tool pushes, bakers, babysitters, realtors, cops, drywallers, landscapers, or anyone else that isn't capable to form a complete sentence without a more than 50% spelling bee, compose a paragraph without punctuation or capitalization

Glass house.

[foxhunter540]

i'm redneck i can fix anything with duct tape and haywire lol. Heck give me a toilet paper roll and i'll make ya a scope. Red thread and we got us a red dot lol .....

[Pathfinder76]

I'm also a long ways from anti lap.

[Pathfinder76]

Originally Posted by Hotwheels81

....some of us are trades folk too ya know...

Some of us are pretty well rounded as far as occupational skills go actually.

[ramonmark]

Hello all.

Can anyone tell me why lapping rings has to be done? I’m serious. From what I’ve found out on the Interweb , it can increase accuracy and/or protect the scope from losing alignment? I’ve never known anyone to have a scope lapped so I’m just curious why it’s so important. I might be ignorant to this subject but if it were important to a scope you’d think that optic manufactures would have lapping apart of their warranty. If they’re not concerned I don’t believe I should be either. Is this the wrong attitude? Or am I wrong. If my Leupold Mark 4 gets wrecked due to not having it lapped am I ‘chit crick’ without a paddle with my warranty?

[Rman]

Originally Posted by foxhunter540

ok so the gun is %100 and the base's are the same that leaves what oh let me guess the scope is wacked some people need to stay in the kitchen and let the big boys play lol

Hey big boy. If your rings are not aligned, it isn't because of the rings. End of story. Maybe you should read more, and type less.
Recommended reading would be to research exactly how quality rings are manufactured in the first place.
My very good friend Chuck provided an excellent link to one such process. After that, please explain how two matching rings are not in perfect alignment to each other prior to mounting?

R.

[Rman]

Originally Posted by ramonmark

Hello all.

Can anyone tell me why lapping rings has to be done? I’m serious. From what I’ve found out on the Interweb , it can increase accuracy and/or protect the scope from losing alignment? I’ve never known anyone to have a scope lapped so I’m just curious why it’s so important. I might be ignorant to this subject but if it were important to a scope you’d think that optic manufactures would have lapping apart of their warranty. If they’re not concerned I don’t believe I should be either. Is this the wrong attitude? Or am I wrong. If my Leupold Mark 4 gets wrecked due to not having it lapped am I ‘chit crick’ without a paddle with my warranty?

What kind of mounting system are you using? As in what kind of base and rings?

R.

[DaleJ]

Here's an example of a scope mount system that I removed from a target rifle. The picture shows a one inch steel alignment bar in torqued down rings. Windage screws were tightened.

After removing single alignment I tightened ring caps on pointed alignment bars. Picture shows the slight but present mis-alignment. The base is Burris, rings are Leupold. Rings and bases like this require a garbage can and that's where these are headed.

Third picture shows rifle with Near 25 MOA rail, Brownels 30 MOA riser and Near Alpha ring mount also in 25 MOA. Got the mount system needed for the job intended without lapping.

[twofifty]

Originally Posted by Rman

Hey big boy. If your rings are not aligned, it isn't because of the rings. End of story. Maybe you should read more, and type less.
Recommended reading would be to research exactly how quality rings are manufactured in the first place.
My very good friend Chuck provided an excellent link to one such process. After that, please explain how two matching rings are not in perfect alignment to each other prior to mounting?

R.

Simple. It can happen after the bearing portion of the rings were perfectly bored out, when the holes for the cap bolts are drilled and tapped.

If the cap bolts don't end up exactly perpendicular to the rings' bore axis, ring contact on the scope will be off.

[Leeper]

As far as scope bases are concerned, There can be little doubt that an integral base (providing it is properly aligned) is the best system. This base can be of the Weaver style (a bit homely but maybe the best available) or the Talley style. If the weaver style base is machined to offer a couple of ring location options, it is relatively versatile, strong, and there are a ton of rings made to fit. It does not have to stretch the full length of the receiver so weight is really not much of a concern. When guys insist on mounting a two pound scope in half pound rings, a couple of ounces in base doesn't matter much anyway.
Of course, most production rifles do not come with integral bases so a means of attachment and alignment which tries to eliminate the shortcomings may be beneficial.
I have been glassbedding rings instead of lapping since I was showed this by Bob Forslund in 1977. Not only does bedding the ring eliminate any rough surface, it also allows you to align the scope with the bore.
Regarding flex: At some point, all benchrest shooters find something over which they can obsess. For a time my thing was trying to eliminate any stress bewteen the receiver and scope. To this end, I decided that a single point mounting system, where the base was attached only to the receiver ring, would work pretty well. I didn't make it too complicated but just installed a # 70 base (made for the 600) on the receiver ring and let the back float. I added a screw to the front so I had three mounting screws and epoxied the base to the receiver as well. The rings were aluminum Bushnells which were light and seemed strong enough. This worked out reasonably well. In fact it worked well enough that I won a lot of matches with this outfit but it had some problems. When someone fired a shot from another bench, the scope would vibrate like a tuning fork. So I had to be a little cautious when shooting. In the end, I glued the back of the base to the receiver bridge and everything calmed down a lot and I still won matches.
Another place where flex was really apparent was with the use of very long scopes like the Redfield 6400 or the original Weaver T25. Both of these scopes ended up with a lot of scope hanging out at the front. I made up an aluminum sleeve of 30mm OD which I split and then glued over the scope tube to add some rigidity and dampen vibration and this seems to help a lot. These scopes were too heavy for use on a light varmint rig but HV allowed for some creative experimentation.
I have always been going to make a scope mount which cradles the scope in a saddle and hold the scope in place with a couple of hose clamps just as a protest against the 300 dollar mounting systems so many insist are neccessary. Wouldn't look much worse than a lot of the "tactical" pieces which seem to take their styling from a muffler clamp.
The top half of the typical horizontally split rings are able to adjust them selves to any misalignment. Not the ideal, perhaps, but it's ok. The flexible strap over the top as used by weaver for about the last seventy years is an example of a simple yet very effective system. Weaver rings are cheap and not pretty but they do a fine job of holding a scope.
Leupold, at one time, made a similar mount which was somewhat more nicely made and was just as effective. Leeper

[DaleJ]

[QUOTE=Leeper;1871423 The flexible strap over the top as used by weaver for about the last seventy years is an example of a simple yet very effective system. Weaver rings are cheap and not pretty but they do a fine job of holding a scope.
Leupold, at one time, made a similar mount which was somewhat more nicely made and was just as effective. Leeper[/QUOTE]

The Weaver Flex band was also famous for mangled tubes. Small diameter pipe slips would do only slightly more damage. The Conetrol ring mounts were superior to Weaver Manglers and looked a lot better. I think the "muffler clamp" tactical rings are the way to go. Radius the edges and they look more like Buicks than Hummers.

[Rman]

Originally Posted by twofifty

Simple. It can happen after the bearing portion of the rings were perfectly bored out, when the holes for the cap bolts are drilled and tapped.

If the cap bolts don't end up exactly perpendicular to the rings' bore axis, ring contact on the scope will be off.

Do you think any ring manufacturer worth a pound of salt wouldn't have that issue solved with some very basic machining principles?
It just doesn't happen on a decent set of rings.

R.

Originally Posted by Leeper

Weaver rings are cheap and not pretty but they do a fine job of holding a scope.
Leeper

Yes, the strap Weaver Rings. Countless damaged scopes with those rings. Cheaply made with equivalent performance.

[Pathfinder76]

Well I will say all my scope mounting experience haven't been the same. I have done more than two and I have run into rings that are unusable. Heck I've had more than one set without the bottom halves being tapped for cap screws.

Lets see. I've used and mounted Leupold STD, DD, QR, QRW; Talley LW's, QR's, R's; Burris Zee's, Posi Zees, DD's, Posi DD's; Weaver standard, one piece; Lex Webernick; Conetrol; S&K; Badger;TPS; Near; and I'm sure something or five I've forgotten.

Guess what. They are not all the same nor mounted the same and I have preferences.

[Pathfinder76]

I will also add. Use what you like, mount them how you like. It's you dollar. Lap them or don't. Big harry deal.

[ramonmark]

Originally Posted by Rman

What kind of mounting system are you using? As in what kind of base and rings?

R.

Leupold Mark 4 picatinny rail and rings. Also a Leupold Mark 4 scope.