Basic Steps for mounting a riflescope
1. To begin with secure your rifle in a holder or vice if you have one.
2. Degrease the scope base and holes to ensure good contact.
3. Place the base onto your rifle and start tightening the screws, making sure you do them sequentially. Don’t just do one up all at once but tighten each a little bit at a time. If you are using a bolt action rifle then check that the lever action is still smooth after doing up the screws as sometimes the screws can be too long and get in the way.
Tip: You can use loctite on the screws to really secure them in.
4. If you have already chosen the rings to use now you can secure them to the base. Make sure to use a little bit of lubricant on the ring bases to make sure they fit in snugly. Before moving onto the next step ensure that the rings are lined up so you can move onto the next part.
Tip: You should use an alignment tool, these are usually cheap and at most will set you back around $15.
5. After you have attached the rings and they are aligned and secure, unscrew the top halves of the rings making sure you have an idea of which way round the top halves come.
Tip: After taking them off lay them down in order on a surface so you can keep check of what way round they were on.
6. Now put the scope onto the opened rings and then lightly screw the top halves back on so that you can move the rifle scope back and forth in the rings.
7. Set your eye relief up by holding the scope up and move it further or closer on the rings if you need to adjust it. Don’t let the rings get pushed right up on the objective bell as you can damage it when you tighten the rings up.
8. Using a vertical line on the wall and still looking through the scope make sure the reticle aligns vertically by twisting the scope in the rings.
Once the eye relief is set and the reticle is lining up vertically and horizontal then tighten the rings up.
How to Damage a Riflescope?
There are a few ways you can break or damage your riflescope during the mounting process. Here’s a list of things to avoid doing:
Number 1 – is using your scope as the alignment tool. Definitely never do this, as although your scope is made from strong metal any bending of the tube, which is the part the rings attach to will result in a misaligned scope. If you end up misaligning your scope and messing up the internal workings then there isn’t really anything you can do. Always use an aligning tool.
Number 2 – Wrong sized rings. If you have too small rings then when you go to tighten up the rings you can crack and bend the tube which will render your scope useless, make sure you check the tube diameter before buying rings.
Number 3 – Tightening up the rings over the objective bell. If you move the scope too far up on the rings so that the objective bell is touching them and then do the rings up you can cause cracks in the bell which in turn breaks your scope.
Number 4 – Dropping your scope on its end when fiddling with positioning then you can scratch the glass lens and this can ruin it. Make sure to secure you rifle in a scope mount and you can lay a towel on the bench to prevent scratching if you do drop it on its end.
Final step for mounting a riflescope
Time to set up the sight on your rifle, I’m not going to go through the exact steps to using a bore sighter but you can get laser bore sights for all calibers of rifle. After you’ve finished this then take your rifle to the range and then you can get going.