Hello everyone, for years when I go into local gun shots or gun shows and I handle older rifles - I notice that in many of them the front scope rings can rotate and pop out of the receiver. I never thought to look into this until today. Can someone please explain why this is? Thanks!
-
Having trouble using the site?
Contact support
Front Ring on Older Rifles Rotate - Why?
- Thread starter Old Iron Sights
- Start date
Sounds like you are talking about some of the older Luepold base and ring sets that the rings are droped into the base 90° off and rotated into place.
Doesn't this setup degrade the accuracy? Obviously it was designed to work this way but why only rely on the rear ring?
This is what is installed on 80% of my rifles and most of them produce sub MOA groups on a regular basis. There are pros and cons for the system, but it WORKS.
It is not hard to replace either.
I have used them on several remington rifles in the past i just dont have any of them anymore or remington rifles.
It was at times a necessity with some Remys since the recievers base screw holes werent drilled in line with each other.
And no they dont degrade accuraccy potential or atleast i never had any issues with them.
Yeah, windage adjustable rings- for when you run out of adjustment in the scope because the rem700 action has scope base screws that point 30 deg off the bore line… Fuck you Remington, but the rings work as advertised.
Highly repeatable system that dates back to some of the best Getman optics. The system uses a pair of ramped cams at the front to lock down the front of the scope and often a windage-adjustable rear ring base. Some of these days to the early jaeger scopes that were only elevation adjustable post-reticle.
Many of them were quick detach and went exactly (and I mean exactly) back to zero. The very old Herman Kahles on my .416 Taylor works this way. Had that scope on and off many times. It’s zero is always dead nuts.
Not a “weak or inaccurate” system at all. The biggest downside is that it is very expensive to manufacture and “fit” perfectly. Weaver bad and picatinny rail are cheap and easy.
Sirhr
PS, these bases were often adapted/used on military rifles and worked like a charm.
Many of them were quick detach and went exactly (and I mean exactly) back to zero. The very old Herman Kahles on my .416 Taylor works this way. Had that scope on and off many times. It’s zero is always dead nuts.
Not a “weak or inaccurate” system at all. The biggest downside is that it is very expensive to manufacture and “fit” perfectly. Weaver bad and picatinny rail are cheap and easy.
Sirhr
PS, these bases were often adapted/used on military rifles and worked like a charm.
This is all exactly the way we mounted it back in 1991 minus the green HS Precision stock. My first centerfire rifle. Scope caps are loctited on. And obviously ring/mount makers been doing it for quite some years prior.
Has the two piece since dovetail, rear adjustable leupold mounts. I could have sworn it was dual dovetail. Had to dig it out and check. As mentioned Redfield also did the same style mounts.
Badger Ordinance reproduction M40 rings and one piece rail with single dovetail and rear adjustable to copy the Redfield mounts that were issued with them going back to the mid 60's.
I know for a fact I had one or two dual front and back dovetail one piece leupold rails laying around. But I'll be damned if I can find them. I liked them. I have a single dovetail/windage adjustable "long range" one piece rail laying around that leupold did with a 20 MOA bias. Has letters LR stamped into the underside to not confuse it with other non canted versions.
The average Joe Nobody didnt have alignment bars laying around back in the day. I mildly kinked a scope I remember trying to get the windage adjustment just right like a moron. Have had a set of alignment bars since. Leupold even made a cheap plastic wrench you can buy to aid in turning the dovetail ring into the mount. It works fine. Better than my half idiot brother using his scope as a handle to do it.
You would see a lot of guys running these type Weaver 1" that had cross slot mounting bar to aid in alignment. The dovetail ones mentioned above just seemed like a progression kind of. The rings themselves became more robust and elegant looking. The way the rings held became more robust too. The hardware was cleaner less prone to be fucked with on accident unlike the big thumb wheel screws on the side.
And now today we have rings made from uber solid single pieces of alloy metal on modern CNC machines that are seperated after construction into pairs and have thick crossbars and thick clamping claws and thick top caps that according to the internet definitely need lapped when the old spring steel caps ever got lapped and worked fine.
The rails got more slots to aid range of adjustment forward and back because the dual dovetail or even single dovetail/windage rears left something to be desired in terms of eye relief for some endusers.
Last edited:
I left some ring marks on a scope turning one into place with a particularly tight tolerance Leupold set as well.
Made this afterwards and used with all the 1" sets i installed after that.
Kind of overkill being made from solid barstock 17-4 but the material was scrap so why not.
- Nov 3, 2010
- 9,730
- 20,534
A lot of quality rifles were built around Redfield Jr bases and rings as well.
