Hi, I'm Steve Ledin with OpticsPlanet and I've mounted thousands of scopes
professionally since the 1980s. I'd like to share with you how I mount a
standard scope on a standard bolt action rifle. This scope here is one of our OPMOD Zeiss Conquest and as father
OPMOD, this is serial number OP 0001. It's a great scope, it's the last US assembled conquest made in Germany,
assembled in the US. The new ones are offshore. The rifle I'm putting this on is a Howa 1500. It's been to Africa with me a couple a times.
It's a standard bolt action 30-06. It's a gun that I shoot really well
without thinking too much about it. It's been to a lot of western trips. It's not
a very fancy gun but it shoots straight and it always goes
bang when you pull the trigger. It's a standard one-inch 3-9X40 by scope on a standard long action, bolt action
rifle. Of course the first thing you have to do is make sure the gun is clear and check your
magazine if you have one. Stick your finger in the chamber, guns
clear. I like to use Leupold dual dovetails whenever I
can. This is not a Leupold commercial, there is a lot of Leupold products and there's a lot of Tipton products. I'm not trying to
make a commercial, I'm just trying to share with you what I
like and what is always worked for me over the years. I'm using the standard dual dovetail
bases that I took off this gun previously. This is also a dual dovetail base. Dual dovetail meaning, the rings get put
in like this and they're turned 90 degrees to lock
them in. These two bases on the rear look identical. The two on the front
except the rings the same way but you'll see this one is positioned a little bit
further rearward. This is called a reversible
front, so when you see a standard front or a reversible front. This is what a reversible front is and you can see it gives you about a
half-inch less room between the rings. So if you
have a shorter scope or a lot of times you have a scope with the fifty
millimeter or larger objective lens, that objective bell comes back further
on the tube which gives you less room to mount your scope on. If you need a little bit more room or
you have a short scope you might consider using a reversible front. Sometimes there's
reversible rears as well. You can also see that this is
hanging over the ejection port a little bit, this means
zero difference it won't affect anything. A standard two piece base or a
standard one piece base, it's called a standard STD. They use windage screws in the rear and how this works is the ring gets set in the middle, gets position in the middle and these two
screws are tightened in opposing fashion so the squeeze the
ring onto the base. The feature that a standard ring and base will give
you is that you could move them laterally to
adjust for major windage adjustments. I'll give you an example why you must use
these sometimes. I had two friends my two good
hunting partners and they both had brand new stainless
Remington 700s and I was going to mount the scopes for them. Good scope, good guns and I use the dual
dovetail which is not adjustable like the standard base. When I bore sighted them when I was done mounting the scopes, one of them was perfect it was right on and the other one was so far off to the left not only could I not adjust the internal
mechanism of the scope to get a good ZERO but your
scope is also much less strong when it's not with the adjustments in the center
mechanically of the scope. For that fellas gun I had to use a
standard rear base which again adjusted for large variance in windage but generally
I like to use dual dovetails. I like to use non
reversible fronts because it simply just looks very clean. I also prefer a dual dovetail because then you have to less parts and two less
chances of things going wrong. I like the fewest parts possible, it increases reliability and in all
aspects. Were using two-piece bases as opposed to a one-piece base and this is what I
prefer because a lot of people will think a one
piece base is stronger that's really not
necessarily true. This one piece base although it's for a
short action doesn't really fit here. One, two, three screw holes so you have three screw
holes instead of the four used on a two piece
base and also it gives you more room to load
your gun. You will also not have an issue with ejection and extraction with this extra piece hanging over the
top of the receiver. That's not really an issue but loading and especially with frozen
or gloved fingers is certainly an issue so I prefer two
piece bases. Are they stronger? Yes, minutely it will
strengthen the action but you and I will never notice a practical accuracy difference between
a one piece base and a two piece base. Since I've already determined what bases
and what rings and what ring height I'm going to use for
this particular size scope, now I am getting ready to mount the
bases onto the gun. If it's a new gun, these holes generally come with filler screws
and you need a very small screwdriver your wheeler kit has proper size screwdrivers
in there, just remove them. I would advise that you
save those fillers screws. Since I'm remounting these bases on this gun, there was a little bit
overflow from extra Loctite and it leached out of the
screw holes a little bit it's a little ugly and it's not perfectly uniform. I'd like to get that off and solvents really don't do it too well it's kind of an epoxy. I have here a stainless steel brush, this
doesn't belong on the exterior a firearm. It's very aggressive and it'll remove
bluing and scratch metal pretty easily. On the other side of the spectrum is the
standard nylon brush, which is really not aggressive enough
it's like a an abrasive cloth almost it just really doesn't do it. I don't have a bronze brush with me
today but I have a regular bronze bore brush and in a pinch that will do a pretty
darn good job it's basically the same as your toothbrush and I don't know if you guys
could have seen this before and after but it polishes up very nicely. You can also use a ultra-fine brass wool if you wanted to use something like that. Now that's clean enough for me. I
like that quite a bit and it's very very important to degrease the screw holes and even with the new
gun you want to remove all the factory grease. A couple things to remember here, a lot of
people will use a product and to degrease you could
use a product made for a gun, you could use some people use brake
cleaner, some people use contact cleaner, there's a variety of manufacturers
that will make degreasers in aerosol and pump form. I like gun scrubber, it's a good product
but keep in mind when you're using some of these volatile chemicals first of all make sure you have
good ventilation, secondly you might want to wear rubber gloves, you might wanna wear glasses so it
doesn't get in your eyes. It stings, really fun when you get it in your eyes. Keep
in mind also that if you're spraying this liberally on the reciever its going to get onto your
stock and this might look like a beautiful
piece of wood but it's actually it's a synthetic stock from
Bell and Carlson and it's an older gun and it's a little
susceptible to modern chemicals. I don't like to liberally spray products on this. You can also drop your magazine plate if you wanted to so
debris will fall all the way through. What I'll generally do is i'll degrease
it just with some gun scrubber right on the top, that's just fine and I will degrease my bases completely. Again watch
where you're doing this, it has a very very strong scent. It dries easily, dries very very well and now no lubricant or rust
preventative is on these bases at all. I like to recoat them with a little bit of
oil but to address the screw holes if I don't want
to spray the degreaser in there. What I
usually use, it's a little bit wasteful but I'll
just take a pointed end up a Q-tip and come in here
and you'll be surprised how much dirt and grease and debris that you'll get outta there even when
you spray the cleaner with the powerful jet into it. This has been pretty clean
but you'll see you what you'll always get a little bit more debris in their and then I like to dry it out. You can use
whatever Q-tips you want. A lot of times you have to use what's
available which means the corner of a rag or the corner of a cleaning patch and a toothpick or a small tweaser or something like that. My screw holes are now degreased, so are my bases and I like to put a fresh coat of oil, whatever gun oil you like to use. WD-40
is not a gun oil. I like to use products that are made for
firearms in general I like the M-Pro 7 cleaners and
lubricants a lot because as a hunter they don't stink in
the field it's also they're also biodegradable. It won't eat your fingernails and it won't start
messing up your skin. In this case I'm just gonna go the easy
path and I use a little bit barricade, Birchwood Casey barricade
which has always been one of my favorite rust preventatives. A little bit goes a
long way. Just put a little, almost a microscopic
coat on their and with the residue that's left over
from the oil, I'll put a little bit on the receiver. You see
it's not getting in the screw holes, it's just a little bit of rust
prevention on the top of the receiver. The screws are also pretty important and I have to clean these up a little bit. I don't
see a lot of Loctite on here so I'll just give these a little shot of gun
scrubber. Watch where you're doing this, if
you're in the gun room or wherever you're doing is on the carpet, these screws are easily lost. You can position the bases where you want them and just
because the spacing is the same let's say between a Remington Model 700 and a Winchester Model 70, the spacing is
the same, the threads are the same, the heights of the bases are different.
Just because something matches up in terms of the hole spacing, does not
mean that they are the proper bases. Try to insure, well you must ensure
that you're using the proper equipment. I really like the Leupold a torx wrench. It's a lot easier to use those, then it is to use the small wrench that comes in
the package. Now this will go both ways. You see it's
sticking over the ejection port a little bit. You can put it on this way but you know
what, then you won't be able to lift your bolt so this only goes one way. Again just because something is
poking over the ejection port that's normally just absolutely fine. Let me speak about Loctite a little bit or some kind of thread locker. A lot of
people make it and it used to be, it was blue
Loctite and red Loctite. Blue Loctite was
removable, red Loctite was permanent but now they make them in all different colors.
You just have to make sure it says removable on the package. See
this is red, this is a red Loctite but it's a
removable product. Just make sure that it says removable. It's a number fifteenth Torx wrench and if you could see how much am putting
on here lot of people will put on way way too much. Just a
little dab will do it, just a little touch will do you. One of the most common problems that people have when mounting a scope is that they tighten it way way too much. Another issue that they have, let me just put a little bit right there and that's
plenty folks, is that there are long screws and there are short screws in a base
package regularly. You have to determine where the long
ones go where the short ones go. The easiest way is to just kinda figure it out and when
you put them in there, you can feel underneath the reciever bridge and if the screws are protruding, swap them around. It's kind of obvious, longer screws
go in a place with the deeper base and
more of a substantial receiver metal. Again keep in mind that its really easy
to use way too much force and way too
much Loctite. I'm going to use a Wheeler torque wrench, it's called a fat ranch. It's
an actual torque wrench and it's measured in inch pounds. You could see to my left here the
little chart I put on the wall, about how tight to make these. I'll put these base screws in about 30
pounds, I'll adjust my fat ranch to about 30
pounds. How you do that is you just pull it
out and you turn it until it goes up to approximately thirty. You can see even with these very very sturdy steel bases and steel screws, that's it that's 30 inch pounds. Just until it clicks that's all you need
to do and this is perfect. It's never going anywhere I promise you, especially when you use a little bit
of lubricant like the threadlocker acts as. The tube does dry up so keep it capped. My bases are completely done. Since I already took these off, there's no grease in there like normally
comes on a factory base. I'm not using the rings that I
took off of here but I'm using an identical kind because
the very new Leupold rings of the same size. These are medium dual
dovetails, happen to have a really nice-looking Leupold logo on the top of the rings.
They just started doing that not too long ago. I think it's neat and it looks very
attractive and this is what I'm gonna put on this gun in this case. The Leupold ring wrench is one of my
favorite favorite products. Normally to install, now this is greased
from the factory has a little bit of grease on it, that's plenty. Normally you would just
take this and turn it as close as you can get to
ninety degrees. You can kind of eye it up and this really doesn't matter which way it goes on. You can see, you can't
really do this by hand. If you don't have a ring wrench what you
do is you assemble the top and the bottoms loosely and you
could use a screwdriver handle or a piece a wood or something like that. You
generally don't want to use something metal because you'll ding up the
edges and it looks a little bit ugly. There's no reason to be
scratching things up. I want my L's facing the same
way and an easy way for me to do that is I
cheat a little bit. I'll take my custom OPMOD knife here, you might want to use
glasses, but I will remove this ring and I'll put a little scratch right here. Just like that so I know that that
scratch goes to me, to my left. That's always my front
ring. My back one, put a little scratch there it's easily seen.This goes here and the
reason you do this is because sometimes you'll knock them over after you lap your rings or you're doing something and you don't know which way it was oriented. Now I'm getting ready to try to insure
that my rings are parallel with the bore and an easy way to do this is to use a
one-inch rod and you sit it in here. It just happens to be that this looks
like it's almost exactly in the middle. I won't have to fool around with this anymore. Sometimes you could just tap it over a
little bit. You always need to have a hammer with
you. What I'm going to do here is take my one inch alignment bars from my Wheeler kit. Loosely install my ring tops. You could see from the factory there is
Loctite on the rings screws which also acts again as a lubricant. In this case my base screws were all the
same size and there's nothing protruding. You want these points to line up. You
could just snug these bars up. These don't really lineup, you can't
really move it by hand. What I'll do is loosen it a bit, slide it out, use my hammer. Now it doesn't always happen like that but
it looks to be about identical. It looks that the points are very very close to touching. Another
way to do this, a customer brought this to my attention. You don't have to use
the points all the time, you can use the back end of it and it
seems to be a little easier visually to determine if you are lined up square. This is
just a couple thousands off. I'll just and that's it right there. That is
absolutely beautiful. You can understand now that this is
parallel to the bore. You're not going to be torqueing your
scope. The ring is not this way and this way with a one inch bar. You're not
torquing your scope, you're not going to be scratching it up. I know that I'm aligned it now and you don't always have to lap rings but I like lapping rings. Lapping rings
is removing a little bit of metal around the interior of the
rings so you get really a 360-degree purchase on the scope. There's also no sharp edges
or nothing is going to be sticking out. You can tell how many times I've used
this lapping bar because all the bluing is rubbed off on it and you put a handle right in the middle another thing I like to do is to put a
little piece a tape around this handle because when you're working this
back-and-forth you can is a leading these rings up in
you know when you fall down a hill when you're hot minute scratcher going up
that's one thing when you add doing it up from doing careless a careless things it it's pretty
aggravating so I just pull up East a partner I a lot of times up I'll I'll hit the
ring anyway I don't mean to but it happened ship now you could use your 220 grit lapping
compound in this is very very messy edelstein
everything like crazy so watch what clothing you're wearing
have a garbage can with with a bag in it maybe throw your your stuff in you can pretty much liberally apply it
you don't wanna put all that much on it because then you just have to clean it off when you're done and it's
pretty messy you don't wanna drop any addition your action up and you can leave your job open because
you're going to be using it for a while I just the guy I saw the new wheeler lapping market and in it Commons a new kind of lapping
bar that I would really love to have it's
the same old one inch lapping bar that accepts the handle but now it has a flexible rod that you
could put into a power drill this is one of these a hot things that no one
had thought of before so now instead of me going back and
forth like this for a long time little elbow grease now I could just take this on a drill
insipid that should be done in a few minutes but I don't own one of those yet so
we'll do it like I always have done it up and too little bit loose you wanted a
little bit more snug was pretty snug right now up can you're
gonna start by just working instructor back and
forth back and forth and it is going to take a
while transient I have new range the inside arranged were Buddhist and by the time I'm done
with this most about will be sober each show I'm pulling op when I'm doing mashed and pushing down 1
I'm doing this I'm going port and starboard when I'm
doing next schedule may be grabbed it gets easier as it goes along you might need to take
another little fraction overturn on the Rings crews to make it tight again ship can feel free to use more lapping compound his twenty use it a
little judiciously of you see how r hit loosening up on me here when I take
these off you'll be able to tell he minuscule amount but surface material that was removed and you can also see haha would really
like this flexible rod he usually do this for
about five minutes you should be good I think that's enough for now me remove these and now be careful so or some other the chunks %uh lapping compound that you see around the range don't fall into your action anything sandpaper in your action
is not a good idea and make sure to watch where that goes
into you get a chance to clean it off you conclude start cleaning the stuff
with whatever you like I use disposables for the big stuff and I taken off and we will decrease everything nicely again it's very important to get olive
this abrasive paste of %uh view range and certainly out of your action my guns cover cool when we started that ring was this color all the way around now it is this color you could see how
burnished it is you can see about the eighty-five percent evolve the surface
area has been completely smoothed out not only the top ring but the bottom
ring and what's neat about those little
scratches again is the you know how to orient that ring back in
the exact same place where you just polished it up Ste and they make chemicals everyday feel free to use them you don't
have to really be sparing with these things I suppose the most important thing is is
to take an extra couple a minutes if you feel you need to
because you only have to do this one time and you have to do it one time the right
way save your old t-shirt year old sock
church I'm even though I clean these pretty well already I'm gonna do it again one time the right way units really nice to have those marks so
I know which way these Rindge are oriented when you do this a lot of time some
debris will get stuck on the corners or underneath so I use a my socks in my old church and I like a
lighter colored rags then you could see if you missed
anything and missed a little bit right there you
could see it coming up on the lighter colored red okay i'm satisfied that that is a very
good job there wasn't a lot to it and you could
see I'll shiny these are now most above the
surface metal has been removed in that is just a beautiful fit when you
drop a scope into something like this it just drops all the way down to the
bottom it's absolutely perfect now you can see here by the way there
there's a little bit a room here and a lot of people would say that my
rings are too high well they can they can say that all day like
I also have lowering sure about just a little bit is there about a tenth will of an inch lower but keep in mind
that I have a pretty good size I box here and working my bolt vigorously I don't in my knuckles so attentive an inch
higher of the barrel for the Oct for the
objective lens really mean zero don't trouble yourself about these little a picky on issues I'm ready to mount my scope you always wanna marchers
cope at its highest power in the reason for
that is that your I relief that's the
difference between the a ocular lands in your eyeball is a little bit smaller when you're at
higher power in again this is pretty cool my little
scratches right there I know that is towards me to my right here's my little scratchy Renault its
towards me to my left even though I was throwing these around
I know that this is the position they were in when I
lapped those rings most there's already lubricant and these screws out of the box because that is the
factory blue removable Loctite that Leupold gives you and some folks really really torque these things down because there's gaps between the top in bottom ring they're supposed to be gaps your job is to make sure that the gaps
are equal on all four sides I usually like to poor
up a little bit and that looks pretty good a like I preface this by saying I i've
done it a lot this this might take if you turn Jets okay use take me a few turns to what I do now is I'm going to adjust my eye relief and you want to adjust the scope to your eye not your head to this goal show in this
case what I'm gonna do it I i dont know this scope is gonna fall off in its loose
enough for me to turn in the range 4na half without scratching
it up so I'm just controlled my gun open my
eye and I should get a full picture right
there and you know what I i'm I'm done right
here show a measure twice man that's just
absolutely perfect absolutely perfect so this is where I
want this scope you can see there's plenty room between
the ocular Bell in the end at the base plenty room
between the objective lens and the barrel there's plenty room for
clearance working my bolt I can gradually I noticed my radical was
straight this this comes with practice in even
though I'm on it all the scope day I still will have to remind the scope I two or three times sometimes to get it
absolutely perfect everyone's I is different your eye is gonna tell you your radical is free
when I pick up your gun and I don't think it straight straighten
radical for you not for me you're shooting it not me there are
other devices that will let you adjust your scope this is called the level level level by wheeler allow people like these a lot I don't
use imp I like to adjust my scopes by I so I'm going to insure that Meyer rain gaps are the same on all four sides before I get too tight make sure that my radical a straight and if you wanna know how a easy it is to a think that your Scopus trade and then
not shoulder the gun with a different arm in a different time it always seems
different so it's not only from person to person but it's from shoulder to shoulder and
eye to eye I feel pretty confident that I like the
way that radical looks in terms of straight Nash I'm snuggling this up making sure that
my gaps are the same you know that your that's
really the mark of a professional job when every all the details are correct a if you do these things I'm saying
you'll be very proud this job you'll never have to do it again you can see that my fat ranch is
adjusted to 25 inch pounds in and like to bring attention to the
chart behind me this information is also included when
you buy a fat ranch or lapping kit for something like this with a torque wrench but you can see that aluminum rings 10
to 15 inch pounds they're very easily stripped a lot of these aluminum
as well not have torque screw still just have standard I allen wrenches steel a rings 15-20 pounds bass strings 30 windage 30 to 35 pounds these are the windage crews that I spoke
to you earlier about that are used with the standard base either one piece or two piece and a
half-inch 1913 mil-spec or what people know is a
picket any rail that's about 65 inch pounds on the
half-inch cross bolt a pic rails are another issue we can
speak about those at a later date I also wanted to bring to your attention why I really
like a screwdriver kit made for firearms this a wheeler kit is fantastic if you get
the full kit it'll have a lot of gunsmithing tools that most folks will never use let alone know
what they are but gunsmith screwdriver kits have
blades that are flat ground in in this amazing illustration here you
can see that off flat ground screwdriver this is a
flat ground bit Fitch perfectly into the screw it fits
nation flat your Ace Hardware regular Stanley
screwdriver that you get does not fit into the screw slot well so you can
bring up these little pieces in round of the corners and maps just another way to be unprofessionally
it shows people know that you're monkeying around
with stuff in 701 what you're doing so even one or two good sizes of
screwdrivers to fit the screws are in your particular gonna
your application I member hollow ground flat ground this is all done here and now i'd I'd like to actually had a bore sight a
gun there's a couple a different ways to do this the old school way was called the bore sighting because this is what you do you bore sight it
you would actually take the gun put it in a vise and moved advice around while looking
through the bore to you can see a bulls-eye through your
bore right there so so you can see a bulls
eye right there then you adjust your scope up down left and
right until your radical is also on that balls I that's why it's called
bore sighting you're looking through the board another way to do it is with a magnetic borscht writer or a column
eating bore sighter this just happens to be the Leupold bore
sighter it's a magnetic borscht writer it has a
little light on the top stick it on yes it will work on
stainless guns I know stainless is not magnetic
but stainless firearms are not completely
stainless they do have carbon steel are and their and
they are magnetic now what you would see here is a
grid-like on a piece a graph paper with a zero in the middle in you simply
adjust left-right up/down moving your windage
in elevation adjustments so your crosshairs are in the middle love
this grid my favorite way to do it is with our new up my ride: laser bore sighter this is the best product on the market
for more citing a gun it's a laser its green which is many many times more visible to the net to your human I than a red
laser and clicking on and all you would do his to me show you
here you would simply aim to set something fifty or a hundred
yards away in you would adjust your windage an
elevation dials so they meet that dot it that distance think we've covered a lot of things I'm
looking forward to in other chapters to explain how I mama scope on maybe a 3/8 inch dovetail rail born 11 millimeter or 13
millimeter air gun or a twenty-two or a 19-13 mil
standard or Picatinny rail I'm glad to share
these things with you I hope you enjoyed it thanks for watching the
