we have arrived at the easiest job in this whole experiment which is installing
the base so I'm using a weaver number 506 it has four screw holes and it comes
with a convenient four screws each of these is going to get a drop of Loctite
on the threads and the long screws go in the back short screws up front
I can't tell if they made these regular screws because it was cheaper or it was
a way to prevent people from over torquing let's just call it best of both
worlds of course just like when doing auto work
make sure that you go back and check the torque on each of these tightening one
tends to untighten the others before I proceed with finding my optimum eye
relief we need to take a look at a couple of things on this base I thought
this would be straightforward but as usual things need a little tweaking I
put the scope on just to see what would happen and I did notice that there is a
difference in the two different sides of this rail so if you put this base on
with the ejection port on the right side where it kind of should be you get more
rail sticking out front over the barrel nut and you get less on the backside
here so what I did is I had to turn this around because the bail of my scope was
actually knocking against that and when I was testing my eye relief just a quick
little test I'm still getting the same problem where this is starting to bump
against the rail here so what I'm gonna have to do is actually shave off a
little bit of the rail right here just to give that tiny bit of movement that I
need so I'm not bumping against the bail
this should give me the extra bit of relief that I need there are all kinds
of calculations out there that make it seem like it's complicated to figure out
what your eye relief is there are measurements you can do from your
trigger or from your butt pad or something then I'm going to use the
tried-and-true method of just looking through the scope and what I've done is
I've kind of simulated the environment that I'm going to be competing in I'm
going to be prone I'm going to be on a high rest so I just have this cheapo
plastic rest here to fill in for whatever I'm gonna use later and what
I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna get nice and comfortably into position close my
eyes and then open them and this should be
looking straight through the scope now I'm finding out one issue already my
comb is a little bit low so I'm kind of looking below the scope right now it's
looking at kind of a dark field I have to cheat up just a tiny bit in order to
see through the scope so I'll probably have to put just a a pad of leather or
something on here so that I can look directly through the scope but this
distance is looking pretty right on okay so get off the rifle get on it nice and
comfortable open my eyes and there we go yeah I'm still a little low but I still
I have a nice field of view when I picked my face up just a little bit so
this is going to be my eye relief I have my longitudinal position for the scope
all ready to go but I need to make sure that everything is level before I lock
it down and what I'm going to do is I'm going to assume that this base is my
level plane and what I've done is I've locked it down in my vise and I've used
a bubble level here on the the flats here to make sure that everything is
level and this is going to assume that the reticle inside the scope itself is
actually level and what we can do is we can use the flat on the underside of the
scope and as long as we get that level with this then everything should work
out okay this is the flat on the underside of the scope that I was
talking about and not all scopes have this but most modern ones do so I can
use this as long as this is level with this then everything should be okay
the rings that I've selected for this experiment are the weaver quad lock rings
they're very inexpensive but they're also quite good one of the things that I
really like about these is the squared off crossbar that fits into the slots in
a weaver rail or a Picatinny rail instead of having a single strap across
the top you get these two and I really have no idea you know what difference
having two versus one makes but I've been using these on my varmint rifle for
a good long time and they work very well the thumb studs if you want you can make
this kind of a quick-detach set up and you can just screw these down thumb
tight and then pop them off later or you can cinch these down really good with a
screwdriver putting one drop of Loctite on each of these screws I'm going to pre
install these and what I want to do is make sure that there is equal
installation on each of these I want there to be an equal gap on each side of
each ring so what I'll do is I will turn each of these a specific number of times
I think I'm going to do eight is what I calculated earlier but eight turns with
each to get them roughly in place and then I'll screw each one down until
they're even
I've applied just slight tension to each of these screws so that the scope can't
flop around but it still can can't and we can move it around just a little bit
fore and aft as we align the the scope position up with our tape ring that we
established earlier so now what I need is something that is verifiably flat and
this steel ruler it looks like is working out perfectly well so here I am
aligning it to the base and there I am applying it to the scope and you can see
that the bubble level is off so I just need to twist this until the level is on
and that should be right right about there at this point everything should be
correct we have the right longitudinal position and we have the correct can't
and now it's the business of tightening these down evenly on each side to
prevent it from canting under the tension of the screws one nice thing is
that as I get this torque down on one of these rings then that pretty well
ensures that this isn't going to can't anymore but one thing I need to watch
out for is over tightening I need to make sure that I am not crushing the
tube because this is a one inch aluminum tube and it can actually crush quite
easily and I need to make sure that there are still those equal gaps on each
side of the Ring
there are specific torque recommendations for each of these screws
but I do not have a torque wrench that does inch-pounds so I'm just going to do
this by hand and I'm just going to make sure that I don't crush things down
using my steel ruler I'm affirming that yes the two are parallel to each other
so that's still looking good but what I need to do next is verify that
everything is plumb since the reticle could actually be off in here it could
actually be canted inside the tube I'm going to go ahead and verify that by
using a string or something else that's plumb and I'll just hang that from my
garage door or something and as long as it goes straight through the reticle and
then straight down the center of the tube as I'm looking through the barrel
then I think it should be in good shape everything's looking good so far I've
taken a peek from the back end of the rifle
and things are looking good but we'll just take that one last step of
verification and then I think we can call this good to go
you