Leveling a scope is dumb

[Baron23]

Everyone is built differently. I always have a natural cant, so I do it my way. It works.

My point is that leveling the scope when the rifle isn't in its natural position is not the end.

You brought up shooting offhand, not me. I was merely responding to that. Sorry, that ruffled your feathers.

No worries, Nik. I still love ya like a brother.

What do you attribute your natural cant? Any insight?

So was not familiar with the wheeler system so I googled it. How are you getting the barrel clamp level square to the rifle?

View attachment 8659962

You pull the scope off, put one of the fixed level on the rail so the gun is level (I use a vise to hold it in place but it’s not necessary).

Then you put the barrel level on the barrel and use the little screw adjustment until it show level (cause we already leveled the rifle).

Put the scope back on and level it to the gun….or not if you are trying to compensate for some degree of natural cant.

I guess I am asking for flames, but since I don't really care, here goes.

I am far from an expert marksman, but I took like 500 semesters of math and physics, and even though I have forgotten most of it, basic trig is not a big challenge for me. I have to say that I am not sure about the whole leveling business, according to my understanding, which could well be wrong.

Okay, so you're shooting a round that drops 10 feet at x yards, but your scope is canted away from the direction of gravity by one degree. So you think "down" is 10° from where it really is. Unless I'm missing something, that means your horizontal error, assuming everything else works perfectly, is 10 feet sin(1°). Before you tell me 10 feet isn't the hypotenuse, let me just say you should think twice.

So the horizontal deviation or error or whatever is about 2", always in the same direction. For 5°, it's about 10". I think a 5° cant would be pretty obvious to anyone who isn't tanked up, but it would be good to hear from someone who actually knows from experience, which isn't me.

Is any of this wrong yet? I can't see any obvious problems.

So for 6.5 Skinny Jeans at 1000, I get 5" at 1°, assuming a 285" drop. For 3°, I get about 15". So leveling must matter somewhat once you get far enough out for the round you're shooting. Is that right?

But assuming you get your scope level to your rifle to within a fraction of a degree, isn't it going to be a royal pain getting the center of the reticle and the axis of the bore in line, precisely, with the direction of gravity? I mean, if your scope and rifle are aligned, but your bipod is off, you're still off.

Also, it seems to me that aligning your scope with gravity is better than aligning it with the bore. It seems like the maximum error you could get from being canted with respect to the gun would be the horizontal distance from the bore's axis to the scope's axis, because it won't open up downrange. Is that wrong? But if your scope is canted with respect to gravity, you can be a lot farther off.

I've used machinists' parallels to set scopes level with rails, but don't ask me whether the rails were aligned with the receivers or whether the reticles were aligned with the bottom surfaces of the scopes, which I used as reference surfaces.

Seems to me that if you really want to do things as well as possible, you need to align your scope with your gun as well as you can, once, and align the scope with gravity every time you put your gun on a rest. Then shoot to see how far off things are in practice, and rotate your scope to match the error.

Somewhere on this site, Frank posted trig analysis of the induced error from cant in the scope vs canting the whole rifle and the later results in significantly more error than the former.

 

[Nik H]

No worries, Nik. I still love ya like a brother.

What do you attribute your natural cant? Any insight?

My generally warped anatomy

 

[hlee]

I have a tendency to cant the rifle inboard in the prone position, and while sitting, kneeling, or otherwise behind the rifle. Both of my PRS rifles have butt plates adjustable for cant. You’ll just have to take my word for it that the top of both are canted inboard, matching my natural cant. The result of the butt plate cant is that I shoulder the rifle more or less plum to gravity. And, the bubble level on my scope confirms this.

Why cant? Probably some function of chest/shoulder musculature and face shape.

 

[Glowworm]

Never owned a scope level.
Always installed my own optics by eyeballing.
Always seem to be on target...whether its 22 precision at 250yds or 30-06 at a mile.
So i am fucking good or lucky, according to the "experts".

Ive seen folks get obsessed about it. Hey...if it feels good...do it.

Unless you are hydrocephalic.....your brain and eye will pretty naturally line shit up straight pretty fucking close.

FTW. No need to waste money on fancy levels. Mount your scope with the rings snug. Hold your rifle at arms length, or as far out as you can while still being able to see the reticle, and eyeball it. Adjust your scope so the reticle is "level" to your rifle. Tighten down your rings. Do the other stuff you need to do to get your scope set up properly... adjust parallax etc. Go shoot.

Everyone who reads this should send me a couple $$ for saving you time/money.

You're welcome.

 

[JR_77]

I think this thread will hit 7 pages. Calling @LeftyJason.

 

[Pharmseller]

You sound like the biggest faggot on the hide. You sound so gay that you had to announce your closetedness when nobody fucking asked.

That’s how gay you are. But besides your homo erratic tendencies that you want to bread crumb for everyone, it sounds like you have zero credibility besides “trust me bro.” So you wasted both of our time with that.

No, what I’m saying is that it is 100% impossible that it works for everyone, every scope, or every brand, or that the level that’s made in China is accurate. Some of us want more accuracy than that. But if I had to put a number to it, I’d say more times than not, no, the scope cap is not good enough. Other people here agree as well.

Tell us some more about how gay he is.





P

 

[Tokay444]

Here is how I feel. If there is one guy here who shoots really well at long distance, and others attest that he is not full of it, and he has numerous guns without super-level scopes, then I will forget all about obsessive leveling. I don't want to waste any more time working on guns than I already do.

Frank doesn’t use a level.

 

[hlee]

Frank doesn’t use a level.

Yeah, someone should tag @Lowlight into this thread.

Oops…

 

[Milspec Longhorn]

DEAD LEVEL RETICLE LEVELING DEVICE

DEAD LEVEL RETICLE LEVELING DEVICE The Dead Level levels your reticle in relation to the Earth taking out any margin of error of the reticle not being perfectly level with the scope body. Simply attach your scope to the Dead Level, level the device with t

www.badgerordnance.com

I like the Badger.

View attachment 8658866

What I use also. Hard to beat

 

[Buck Wilde]

Well, I guess that's a good enough reference. I assume he actually hits what he shoots at, what with him being the Grand Poobah and all and making all those great videos.

 

[Edsel]

No worries, Nik. I still love ya.

What do you attribute your natural cant?

Wait a minute…

Why are you talking about his anatomy?!

 

[Edsel]

Collected these from lordy knows when.

Have I read them?

That’s a totally different matter.

 

[Big Phish]

Why is this in the bear pit?

Because some fuckers that needs attention is just that …not all there!

 

[Big Phish]

Why do people make this so hard?

Wheeler Engineering Professional Reticle Leveling System

https://www.amazon.com/Wheeler-Engineering-Professional-Construction-Gunsmithing/dp/B004TAB7ZO/

For some it’s still too complicated for them.

 

[chevy_man]

Well that just ruins everything!

To get back to rituals, I saw some guy saying to align the vertical crosshair of the scope to a plumb bob, but he didn't say how to make sure you hold the rifle level while you're shooting it. Personally, I can't look at a level AND a reticle at the same time. I wonder if anyone has managed to place a vertical reference inside a reticle.

Okay, I figured it out. Stick an accelerometer from a phone in the scope and display the degree of cant inside the reticle. Now I just need to patent it and keep the Chinese from stealing it.

I don't get the plumb bob thing. Unless your house was built by crackheads, there ought to be dozens of vertical lines in it to align stuff to without hanging things from strings. I certainly HOPE my window frames aren't a degree out of perpendicular.

My SIG tango 6 has an internal level. I was surprised how little it turns on (little arrows let you know when you're off, if they're both off then you're within .5° of level).

You should take a 6' level through your house. You'll be surprised how far off things are.

Plumb Bob is like $15 and dead simple. It's also portable...

 

[Buck Wilde]

I suppose the age and location of the house are important. I lived in Miami, where everything looks like it was built by monkeys. Here, I have a real house built in 2000.

 

[chevy_man]

I suppose the age and location of the house are important. I lived in Miami, where everything looks like it was built by monkeys. Here, I have a real house built in 2000.

I work in multi-million $ vacation houses every day.


I've seen them pack out a wall 1/2" over 6' with mud because it was so far out of plumb. You couldn't see it until they put a mirror up and the reveal grew as you went up the wall.

They may or may not toss a 6' Stabilla up on 1 of the studs when they set a wall. That same level that's been dropped 10000 times and bounced around a job trailer for 100000 miles. Just changing which way the level is will give you different readings .