hey guys Dan Turvey here in the Eastman's Gear lab and today we're going to talk
about mounting rifle scopes and how to properly do that okay so for the first
phase we're gonna install the bases and the thing you're gonna want to do is
make sure the base that you have is for the action of your particular rifle the
easiest way to do that is contact the manufacturer tell them what base your
rifle you have and then they'll match the base up for you so the first thing
we're gonna do is we're gonna lock tight the screws I use a purple loctite which
is the lowest bonding strength and what that does is it keeps the threads from
backing out on you during recoil and so we'll drop the base on and we'll get
this one started
and then we'll do that for the next one you don't need a lot just a little bit
on the threads and then it'll spread itself around as you screw the screw in
so now that we've got them both in we're gonna tighten them all the way down
you'll notice we have a torque wrench here and depending on your manufacturer
and their specifications I usually torque the bases down on non
Magnum calibers to about 20 pounds sometimes a little less so and then you
just adjust your palmer's with this dial here so we'll get it up to 20 and then
we'll crank them down
when you hear that click that's the poundage that hit
okay so the next step after we get the base is installed is we want to level up
the action and we're going to use a set of of wheeler levels here and we'll put
that on the action screw and it's got a little magnet on the bottom and it'll
hold itself there and then we're going to install the barrel level on the end
of the barrel and then what this does is it allows us to get the crosshairs
perfectly horizontal and perpendicular with the axis of the bore which gives
you the most accuracy possible out of your rifle okay so then what you want to
do when you have the level solve on the action you'll need a gun vise for this
to it you'll rotate the rifle slightly left or right depending on what you
need until the bubble reads level then you'll go up to the front of the barrel
here and there's a set screw on top where you can make micro adjustments to
gain level up front as well and once your barrel level reads level we can
take the action level off okay so now we've got our bases installed we've got
our level set and then the third step is to install the Rings on the scope okay
so we're going to put the first half on this is kind of tricky here put the
second half on I'm going to drop our screws in
these bottom screws you can put a little lock tight on them if you'd like to with
this case we probably will with the bigger guns I like to as well
and then you'll just want to tighten these down very loosely because once we
take the scope to the basis we're gonna want that flexibility to be able to get
it to marry with the base well so just a loose setting there and then we will do
the same thing on the front so now that we have our rings on the sculpt we're
gonna take the sculpt and the whole assembly and we're gonna put it up on
the gun and install it on the basis
that's that so just double check once you get the scope and the Rings on that
you're in the base real solid if there's any slop in there slide it forward in
the ring until it hits the front of the base and then you'll go on and go ahead
and tighten your screws down don't tighten them down too tight you want to
leave enough slack in there to be able to set the eye relief on their scope
okay so now that we've got the scope on the bases and the screws on the Rings
aren't set incredibly tight we're gonna set the eye relief and to do that you
need to pick up the rifle and shoulder it look through the scope and if the
view is perfectly clear the eye relief is good if you see a black halo or an
edge inside of that scope you'll need to take the scope and twist it forward or
backwards depending and you'll see which way you need to go and once you get a
perfectly clear view when your shoulder the rifle your eye relief is set
okay now we've got our eye relief set the last step or second for the last
step is to level our scope and that's why we use the barrel level earlier so
depending on the scope you have you can level right off at the top of this
turret or you can remove the turret cap and you can level right off the turret
itself I always like to level off the turret itself if I can and so now what
we'll do is we'll twist the gun in the vise until our level on the end of the
barrel reads level and now that that's set we'll twist the scope until it reads
level and now that we do a double check make sure this is level make sure the
other level is level so now that we're all leveled up we're going to take the
level off going to put our turret cap back on and then we're just going to
tighten down our screws we'll double check make sure we're 20 pounds for our
bottom screws
and for the top screws I like to go a little less than 20 by 18 pounds or so
they don't need to be terribly tight a lot of guys have a tendency to over
tighten them so keep them in that upper teens range and you'll be set now that
we've got all the screws tightened down and the scopes ready to go the next step
is bore sighting and then we're ready to go to the range thanks for joining me on
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