Travis Olander 03.07.23
You simply purchased some shiny new glass, and also you’ve received some rings or a monolithic mount. Before you clamp your scope in your mount and begin cranking down these ring bolts, it’s necessary to verify whether or not doing so – even on the correct torque – will harm your optic. Even with low-tolerance, exact CNC machining, scope rings are virtually by no means completely aligned. More typically than not, a pair of rings (or a monolithic mount’s entrance and rear rings) will show some quantity of vertical and/or horizontal misalignment. Mounting your scope with misaligned rings may end up in harm to your scope’s tube or distortion between the target and ocular lenses.
How to Align Your Scope Rings: Lapping
So, how will you inform your rings are misaligned? How do you repair it and forestall scope harm? Hand lapping is the reply: the method requires utilizing alignment rods that measure vertical and horizontal misalignment, and a lapping rod with sanding compound to hone the rings and align them.
What Causes Misalignment
It’s not all the time the fault of the scope ring producer for misalignment. Simple tolerances on Picatinny, Dovetail, or Weaver-style mounts can introduce misalignment alongside the highest of the receiver. The coatings and coverings utilized to the uncooked metallic on rings also can introduce minor misalignment. This might be evident whenever you begin lapping and honing your rings, as anodizing, phosphate, nitride, or paint will get sanded away to comprehend uncooked aluminum or metal beneath.
Getting The Right Tools
For getting the job achieved, we suggest the Wheeler Hand Lapping Kit. It’s inexpensive, made within the USA, and it consists of every little thing it’s good to correctly hone your rings. We additionally suggest selecting up an inch-pound torque wrench with a set of Torx and hex-head ring bits. Wheeler makes a wrench-and-bit package for this function.
Scope Alignment Rods
Lapping alignment rods are easy tech: precision-machined from strong metal, the rods are turned to type a wonderfully concentric level. Rods are available in two flavors to deal with all normal rings: 30mm and 1″. To visualize ring misalignment, the rods have to be put in within the entrance and rear rings, and tightened to the rings’ required inch-pounds. Importantly, the rods have to be seated within the rings or monolithic mount so their factors meet within the center:
If your rings are misaligned (which, until you’re spending $250+ on some Nightforce or U.S. Optics mono mounts, they most likely might be) it’ll be simply seen. The factors of the alignment rods gained’t line up horizontally or vertically.
Install Your Mount / Rings Before Lapping
Because ring misalignment will be the results of your receiver’s mounts tolerances, it’s necessary to maintain your monolithic mount or rings put in and correctly torqued earlier than and whereas lapping.
Lapping Your Rings
The lapping rod is a threaded piece of spherical metal that features a information lever for transferring the rod forwards and backwards within the rings. This back-and-forth motion, paired with the suitable compound (220-grit paste) is what rounds out and hones the rings to make sure entrance and rear alignment.
You’ll must generously apply the lapping compound to your complete lapping rod. This ensures no scorching spots develop, so materials is eliminated at a constant charge alongside your complete internal circumference of each rings.
Do not over-tighten the rings whereas lapping. Doing so will lead to a caught rod, or an excessive amount of materials being eliminated too shortly, which is able to render your mono mount or rings unusable. The rings’ bolts ought to be flippantly tightened beneath the required inch-pound score. They ought to be unfastened sufficient to permit the lapping rod to freely glide and rotate contained in the rings.
Stop incessantly, and test your work. This is a time-consuming course of, and making an attempt to chop corners will probably imply your rings are correctly alignment. You ought to make roughly a dozen back-and-forth passes and full rotations with the lapping rod earlier than eradicating it, reinstalling the alignment rods, and checking your progress.
As you take away materials from the rings, you’ll see the handled or coated end put on away to disclose naked metallic beneath. Even when you’re right down to uncoated metallic, you should still must take away extra materials to get correct vertical and horizontal alignment. Check for the place a bulk of fabric is being eliminated by correctly cleansing lapping compound from contained in the rings every time you cease to test your work.
Use alcohol and a terry fabric to take away the compound. On our mono mount, we are able to see the place some ring halves wanted extra coating to be eliminated to make sure correct alignment. It’s necessary you be aware of which ring ring halves are paired collectively throughout lapping; mis-matching them after lapping may reintroduce misalignment as soon as your optic is put in.
When you’re checking the alignment rods, don’t neglect to test from all angles – vertically and horizontally – to make sure the rings are really honed concentrically earlier than scope set up. Once alignment is verified and lapping is full, be sure to take away any residual compound from contained in the rings and the bolt holes. Getting any compound in facet the threads may cause cross-threading, which may forestall correct torqueing or render your rings unusable.
