lapping kit?

[souther33]

Is a lapping kit really worth buying? I have always just mounted my scope myself and never had any trouble but once. I dropped my gun while hunting and it changed my alignment of my scope. My question is not that if it will help but how much.

[silvrjeepr]

I can say that the two sets of rings that I lapped were misaligned. One slightly, and the other pretty badly. In fact, the reason I bought a lapping set was because of a moving scope. This fixed my problem, and I doubt I'll ever mount another scope to two piece rings without lapping first.

[hooligan1]

All my scopes are mounted using Wheelers Scope Mounting Kit: includes Lapping bar for 1" and 30 mm, Aligning bars for both sizes, Wheeler "Fat Wrench" for torqueing all screws properly, and 220 grit lapping compound.. And we use it religously, and we dont have any scope problems.. never..

[souther33]

Has anyone ever had a problem with on lapped scopes

[silvrjeepr]

I have heard that if you lap the rings too much, you can make the rings too loose to hold the scope. i've never seen this for myself though. Someone would have to be insanely heavy handed and work a long time to get to that point. The neigh sayers normally just say that lapping isn't needed or isn't as precise as the factory machining. I suppose they're entitled to their opinion, but was completely sold on the process after my first set of rings. Give it a try and see for yourself.

[hooligan1]

Jeeper, you would have had the worst case of "tennis elbow" before you could truly lap that much material out... There are scope ring reamers that also intend on aligning that will harvest too much material, be aware of those dudes, but 220 lapping grit isn't over aggressive...
When the scope rings are mounted they're pretty much impossible to get absolute pure perfection, thus a little help from the Wheeler kit, I have installed 9 scopes so far and no problems have been incountered.
I must say though, like my handloading procedures, I tend to stay right by the book when mounting scopes.... Therefore No Problems!!

[Nathan]

If you dropped it and it lost 0, this is caused by cheap mounts.

Many, most low dollar mounts will do this because they do not have the strength to resiste ther force of even a light drop.

Buying a quality base and ring set should fix this. Generally, around here this is hard to find at the big box stores and most LGS.

I think the Leupold PRW or Warne products are good basic mounts, but I own neither to be sure.

I own TPS and Larue base with TPS rings on my AR and hunting rifle. These are top end and too much for most rifle systems.

[tobnpr]

Personally- and this is pure conjecture (maybe a smith that has done hundreds would know..) I think it's likely more of an issue where you have rings separately mounted directly to the front and rear of the receiver, as opposed to rings mounted on a pic rail, or a one-piece set.

I think it's very unlikely when dealing with precision machining done with quality rails and rings for there to be issues of tolerances of any consequence. OTOH, if the receiver was d&t'd for two-piece mounts, I find it reasonable for there to be measurable variances that could benefit from trueing.