I was going to include this rewiew in with my Kahles K 6-24X56 review, but feel these rings are too nice not to have the spotlight. So here it goes:
First things first here is a link to APA's site so you can get more info to include pricing on these rings:
http://www.americanprecisionarms.com/products-page/rings/
Second here is a great video showing the strength of thses rings (I am sure most everyone has seen it by now):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OAVBDcfnDuo
On to my review. I should start out by saying I have owned about every ring out there (except the Sphur mount) and these are the best I have used yet. The rings shown in my pictures and in my review are 34mm and the 0.950" standard height. When I opened the package my first thought was damn these feel light! But to be fair I have been using steel rings as of late, Im happy to now have a option of this quality in aluminium. I spent a little time looking these rings over and quickly found they are very well machined, with a LOT of attention to detail. I could not find a burr or sharp corner anywhere on these rings. In my opinion this is where a lot of companies fall short. True it may take more time and cost more cutting into the profit some but it will save a lot of scratches on scope tubes even if you are careful. All the screws have a taper under the head and their seat is chamfered to center the screw in the hole to help keep things aligned. All the threads in the rings were perfect no screws were tight to thread in and all the screw holes were plenty deep to prevent bottoming of the screw. I know that seems like a obvious statement but I did have one set of rings by a high end maker have 1 hole that was not drilled deep enough, or the screw was a little out of spec in length. The APA logo is evenly engraved on the top cap, which I think is a nice touch. So as for first impressions I was very happy.
Now for how they fit. I found the latch system is pretty ingenious, it is cut in a way to allow the latch to slightly float so it can make perfect contact with the base. This is going to add strength to the system even if the base is machined slightly out of spec. The cross bars on the rings provide a good solid lock up for recoil resistance and help to center the rings on the base. I spoke with Jered about these rings and he pointed out that they do not need to be kept in a match set and the caps can interchange due to the machining tolorences. So when I installed the lower half on my Near 25 MOA base I set my 5-25X56 PMII into the ring halves and found it did not bind in any way when rotated or slid back and forth. I installed the caps and ran the screws down to just allow the scope to float and checked for binding and found none. So I took it a step further and put the front ring in the rear and repeated this and found no binding again. So the rings seem to be true to me. I then squared the rings up and mounted the scope. Now sometimes I get lucky and dont have a scope turn too much when mounting and some times it seems like no matter what I do I always get a little cant even with feeler guages (I use playing cards so not to mar up my scope, ask me why). I was able to do this install the first time and never developed any cant.
Over all I am very impressed with these rings from APA. They have passed all my test so far. The only thing left will be the repeatability. I will after I get the scope zeroed check that and report back. However as of right now I will be buying more in the future & will recommemd these rings to anyone looking for the best! And then you look at the price and you will see that at $195 (when I bought these) they are by no means the most expensive out there.
On to the pics:
First things first here is a link to APA's site so you can get more info to include pricing on these rings:
http://www.americanprecisionarms.com/products-page/rings/
Second here is a great video showing the strength of thses rings (I am sure most everyone has seen it by now):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OAVBDcfnDuo
On to my review. I should start out by saying I have owned about every ring out there (except the Sphur mount) and these are the best I have used yet. The rings shown in my pictures and in my review are 34mm and the 0.950" standard height. When I opened the package my first thought was damn these feel light! But to be fair I have been using steel rings as of late, Im happy to now have a option of this quality in aluminium. I spent a little time looking these rings over and quickly found they are very well machined, with a LOT of attention to detail. I could not find a burr or sharp corner anywhere on these rings. In my opinion this is where a lot of companies fall short. True it may take more time and cost more cutting into the profit some but it will save a lot of scratches on scope tubes even if you are careful. All the screws have a taper under the head and their seat is chamfered to center the screw in the hole to help keep things aligned. All the threads in the rings were perfect no screws were tight to thread in and all the screw holes were plenty deep to prevent bottoming of the screw. I know that seems like a obvious statement but I did have one set of rings by a high end maker have 1 hole that was not drilled deep enough, or the screw was a little out of spec in length. The APA logo is evenly engraved on the top cap, which I think is a nice touch. So as for first impressions I was very happy.
Now for how they fit. I found the latch system is pretty ingenious, it is cut in a way to allow the latch to slightly float so it can make perfect contact with the base. This is going to add strength to the system even if the base is machined slightly out of spec. The cross bars on the rings provide a good solid lock up for recoil resistance and help to center the rings on the base. I spoke with Jered about these rings and he pointed out that they do not need to be kept in a match set and the caps can interchange due to the machining tolorences. So when I installed the lower half on my Near 25 MOA base I set my 5-25X56 PMII into the ring halves and found it did not bind in any way when rotated or slid back and forth. I installed the caps and ran the screws down to just allow the scope to float and checked for binding and found none. So I took it a step further and put the front ring in the rear and repeated this and found no binding again. So the rings seem to be true to me. I then squared the rings up and mounted the scope. Now sometimes I get lucky and dont have a scope turn too much when mounting and some times it seems like no matter what I do I always get a little cant even with feeler guages (I use playing cards so not to mar up my scope, ask me why). I was able to do this install the first time and never developed any cant.
Over all I am very impressed with these rings from APA. They have passed all my test so far. The only thing left will be the repeatability. I will after I get the scope zeroed check that and report back. However as of right now I will be buying more in the future & will recommemd these rings to anyone looking for the best! And then you look at the price and you will see that at $195 (when I bought these) they are by no means the most expensive out there.
On to the pics:
