Send me a email
[email protected] and i will get you taken care of promptly. I got your phone message, but i am in meetings all day today for our new building. I will try to give you a ring as soon as i can if i don't get a email.
I do need you to measure your scope tube if you can. Our experience with night force scopes is they run quite large on the tube OD and this comes up from time to time so we have seen it before. Our rings are approx .003 over tube diameter, if your tube is .002 or larger over what its supposed to be they will be a very tight fit like you are experiencing. Induce a very tiny bit of tolerance stack up from the base, tube diameter, tube straightness and consentricity from front to back and everything else and you can have the issue like you describe pretty easy. some ring mfg's cope with this by making rings larger so you don't notice and everything "feels" good but thats not always the best practice. If you see a little daylight and if you push "just a bit" and the scopes seats you will do no more damage putting the cap on as you just did and most would call it a perfect fit. If it were mine i would assemble and shoot it. When you tighten a single ring down to a rail all the way the ring can twist. We install our scopes loosely and tighten all the screws after everything is in its place. If the rings are a issue i will certainly take care of you. If you want, i can mount yours up, make sure they are perfect with known gauges and eliminate that worry from you?
Lap or don't, we aren't going to take sides. I don't lap, have allot of un-bedded bases on my Remington and have no issues from cheap scopes to S&B's. Some people prefer to lap. I say if it makes you feel better then lap, but i guarantee you a lapping bar isn't perfectly straight, when you push on it you will flex it more and when you lap the rings you are going to make them larger and the bore will no longer be round. the mating surfaces for the rail and the ring bore is completed in one operation in a very accurate.