I have soap boxed before about poor choice of scopes, in particular making sure they can be fitted to the rifle. Thirty years ago most scopes had 32mm objectives and there was no problem fitting them to pretty much any rifle. Soon after that 40mm objectives appeared and soon became dominant. Now 44mm is common and we see even 55mm occasionally. But the nominal diameter of the objective is not the whole story. My old Nikko Stirling 3-9×40 is 48mm dia at the objective but a newer Nikko 3-9×42 is 58mm despite the objective being only 2mm bigger.
So what, you might ask ? There are two common effects. First, the scope can’t be fitted because the objective fouls the barrel or the back sight. That would be taken care of by higher rings, and I choose rings high enough for the job where I am fitting a scope from scratch. But many of the scopes I fit are upgrades from cheaper scopes so the rings are already on the rifle. As it is traditional to use the lowest possible rings they are often too low for the new scope.
The second problem can’t be solved by higher rings. Most scopes are variable. All else being equal variable scopes have shorter tubes than fixed scopes because part of the tube is occupied by the adjustment ring. The result is that many scopes barely fit between the rings. It is worse with the big objectives because the objective bell is longer and the tube shorter. It is a common problem.
Yesterday I fitted a Swarovski Habicht 3-10×42A scope to a rifle on an FN 98 action. The old scope was a Tasco 4×40 in Millet bases and rings. These are the same as Redfield, Burris and Leupold rotary locking bases and rings. The objective clears the barrel by just enough to pass a business card, but the ocular lens is so big that the bolt can’t be inserted into the action. They are low rings so the problem will be solved by higher rings at the owner’s expense. Tube length is only 138mm and the scope fits between the rings with no fore and aft movement to set proper eye relief. Extension rings will be needed to fix that.
You might say that those are easy problems to fix. Indeed, but why are owners so ignorant that they can’t figure it out when they buy the scope ? More to the point, why don’t the camera shops that sell the scopes tell the customer ? Because they don’t know, that’s why. They sell expesive scopes about which they know nothing and which they don’t know how to fit to the rifle even if they could legally have the rifle in their possession. I’m not desperate for the peanuts I earn from fitting scopes and I wouldn’t fit scopes I haven’t sold on principle. I do it because my boss says so.
That doesn’t mean I object to camera shops selling scopes. As a free marketeer I accept the right of anyone to sell what he or she likes, and the right of customers to buy from whomever they like. My point is that it makes no sense to buy expensive scopes from people who know nothing about them, then expect those with the expertise to fit them, and in many cases complain about the modest fitting charge after having given the real profit to the camera shop. It takes me at least two hours to fit a scope properly, sometimes as much as four hours if I hit glitches. We charge R300. I’m thinking we should charge R500. After all, we are doing the real work.
As a side issue I’ve said before that rings are never properly aligned unless they are worked on to make them so. In fact I’ve never found a pair that was straight before I made them so. This pair wasn’t straight either. But more interesting was that they were lined with a layer of some sort of plastic adhesive tape. Can’t imagine why unless the guy who fitted the first scope figured he needed to do that for some obscure reason. Whatever the reason, there’s no substitute for precise ring alignment and concentricity, which is itself a good reason to buy scopes from those who know what they are doing.
[Originally posted to SATalkGuns -- Admin]