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Rifle Scopes Locking turrets: (Should you have to rotate the dial past the 'click' to lock?)

ToddM

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Jul 1, 2008
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I don't have much experience with locking turrets but on my Vortex Razor Gen 2's I never have to fiddle with the knobs to get the turrets to lock. I just dial to clicks and the knob easily goes into lock without fiddling with it.

I recently got one of the closeout Tango6's 4-24's and the windage knob is fine, dial clicks and it locks, but the elevation knob you have to dial ~ half way to the next or previous click while pressing down to get it to lock. It won't press down in a click. The indicator marks are right on when dialing unlocked but then you end up then rotating between them to lock the knob. I went through the manual thinking perhaps something was wrong/lose in the setup, but everything seemed fine. I did notice there was more "play" in the black inner elevation knob that the marked turret attaches to than the windage knob, even with the center screw tight. Even without the marked turret on you could not dial to a click and depress the inner black turret without rotating it forward/back. Vendor was nice enough to check a couple other of their Tango6's and said they were the same and they suggested that Sig would say it was just the way they are.

Which brings up the question is it common to have to dial past/back from a click to get a turret to lock on a $2900 MSRP scope? Perhaps I just got really lucky with the Gen 2's and this is common. It seems like to me if you have to move between clicks to get the scope to lock the turret you've potentially changed your adjustment. I guess as long as you do it the same way every time and never zero/shoot with the turrets unlocked it might be fine, but if you dial 12 mils it sits right at 12.0 mils unlocked but to lock the turret you have to move the dial half way to 11.9 or 12.1.
 
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Yep that was my guess, they use a inner set of teeth for the adjustment, and a larger diameter set of teeth for locking the knob. Once i figured out nothing was loose/wrong my guess was out of spec parts between the two gearing sets, or an assembly/timing adjustment issue that was beyond what the user can do.