Lapping scopes Rings?

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nomojo65

nomojo65

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Dec 3, 2015
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How many lap their rings? I have a wheeler engineering 30mm scope lapping and alignment kit and haven’t used it since my C.F. Days. I have bought some of the inexpensive Chinese rings vortex, Arken and found they don’t align to well! Not bad, but enough to have to mount one ring in first orientation second in the other to get the scope to center with out putting stress on scope tube.

Now comes the lapping part, I lapped both set of rings and it did help “marginally”, now I remember that it said you only have to do the bottom ring? In my case I did bottom with top loosely in place. Also these are Aluminum and it goes pretty fast compared to steel.
 
I would lap the rings on my high powered/long distance powder burners, when I was thinking I would try to shoot out to 1000 yrds. (never did happen).

As far as these... Well, I guess it just depends on how accurate you want to be, how far you're shooting, and if the accuracy matters. If you're competing, I'm sure you would be. If you're just plinking and not actually doing any scope clicks for distance/windage, its probably a bit overkill.

Now, if the rings are seriously misaligned where they are obviously sitting poorly, well, its time to get better rings... lapping isn't necessarily meant to completely reprofile the rings, and if they are that bad... I wouldn't trust them to hold the scope anyway.
 
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Yes, high quality rings as seekins, spuhr, etc. are very, very expensive! I have had good luck with eagle vision. I have a couple guns that don’t necessarily need those expensive rings but I do have some expensive scopes that I don’t want to bind plus this usually equals extreme vertical and windage correction, this is not good because in extreme wind or elevation corrections you can conceivably run out of adjustment. As I have done in other disciplines.

I thought some have had to do this on other rings and curious if they lapped both bottom and top rings together.
 
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nomojo65 said:
How many lap their rings? I have a wheeler engineering 30mm scope lapping and alignment kit and haven’t used it since my C.F. Days. I have bought some of the inexpensive Chinese rings vortex, Arken and found they don’t align to well! Not bad, but enough to have to mount one ring in first orientation second in the other to get the scope to center with out putting stress on scope tube.

Now comes the lapping part, I lapped both set of rings and it did help “marginally”, now I remember that it said you only have to do the bottom ring? In my case I did bottom with top loosely in place. Also these are Aluminum and it goes pretty fast compared to steel.
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I would only lap cheap rings with poor QA
 
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Check your rail first and next the rings.
I have a pb project going on, couple days ago I bought a MDT picatinny base, check the top face with a machinist square and it has a bow in the middle. Sits well on Rem 700 box no need bedding, but naaah.
Two days ago I ordered online from EGW, check it again with machinist square the flatness is pristine, but need beddin on front.
Both these are brand new.
Shopping now for single piece - unimount... it will be more expensive then individual rings, but my f-class scope cost a lot more.
 
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I wouldn't waste my time lapping rings on a PCP. There's no recoil, it doesn't take much clamping force to hold a scope solid.

If they are noticeably misaligned, they are junk from the start IMO.

Lapping is a refinement to good rings. Not a way to make junk rings into good rings. Just my take.
 
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I don’t want to sound flippant but unless you check the alignment with quality tooling you don’t know if you’re rings align correctly expensive or not. Trying to keep this alignment is crucial to keeping as little stress on the scope as possible which will allow for more accurate windage and elevation adjustments throughout its range.

If only very minor alignment is needed lapping will help may not totally eliminate but make the rings usable.
 
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thumper said:
I wouldn't waste my time lapping rings on a PCP. There's no recoil, it doesn't take much clamping force to hold a scope solid.

If they are noticeably misaligned, they are junk from the start IMO.

Lapping is a refinement to good rings. Not a way to make junk rings into good rings. Just my take.
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I didn't say that
(You never skimped on rings)it's makes them a tad better than they where it depends on the rifle and my budget as far as rings go
 
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