Riddle me this. You have a hardened steel fastener (not grade 5 or even 8) that holds an AL bar against a steel rail and threads into a AL mount.
All these numbers being thrown out seem to assume all like material. They don't take into account an AL Clamp and Mount.
In every system there is a weak line. Sometime by design and sometimes not. In this system. You 100% want the weak link to be the AL clamp bar. If the Mount fails, you are stuck with a $400 piece of scrap metal. The AL is the cheap, easy to replace part of the system. Does it suck when they break? Yea. But it also protects the rest of the system.
I reiterate, based on the number and cycles of torquing I have put on these mounts over the years, I will bet I have more cycles than the vast majority of people complaining about failures. I have ALWAYS used 25in/lbs on the mount clamp. If you use 45, it feels like too much, and you don't need anywhere near that much force. That is why I said you need to be smarter than the enginereds. Common sense and experience have a say in the conversation.
And not to whip out the dick, but I spent almost 2 years doing a "fastener" study with a large agency trying to reduce their costs, increase quality and decrease lead time. I learned ALOT about fasteners , how they work, how they are made, where they are made and how they are sourced.
Experienced mechanics and mechanically inclined people can tighten a fastner by feel. Its not some magic repeatable torque value, but you can properly tighten them taking into account material, size, type of driver and feel. Most of the people posting here aren't that, they can barely mount a scope themselves, much less understand the mechanics behind it. Its no wonder they are breaking shit, blindly following instructions like the good little communist followers they were trained to be in public school.
you make it too easy!
