Rifle Scopes My Scope Loosened up... How o I keep it tight?

[fxmech]

I just started shooting. I purchased an R700 and put a Vortex viper 6.5-20 x 50 scope on it. I used Leupold STD rings ad mount. IT was all good and shootig extreely accurate at 600 yd today...until my last 2 rounds.. It suddenly started shooting extremely to the right. I thought I was just getting tired so I started to pack up my gear and found that my scope was sliding around in the 30mm rings AND the rings where loose on the base. I have about 150 rounds fired since I installed the scope. Did I do it incorrecly? Should I have been retightening daily or put a drop of loctite on the threads???

ANy help would be appreciated. I was not to confident about how I installed the scope to begin with. It was so hard to rotate the top ring onto the mount that I was never sure if it was 100square on the base. It looked square and figured that tightening the rings on the scope would help self align it if there was any micro misalignment. Could this have coused it to slip and loosen up???

 

[DirtyRod]

Re: My Scope Loosened up... How o I keep it tight?

I would search the site for the threads on scope mounting and check FAQs as there might be something there as well. If the scope was not sitting square in the rings when you started then something was out of alignment. I would also hit the Net and the Leupold site for torque specs and look into a quality inch/lbs torque wrench to make sure you are tightening to specs. You can estimate it by hand but it might provide some level of comfort to know you are torquing to recommended specs. Some use Loctite some dont. If installed correctly and tightened down to specs it should not come loose.

Your scope should lay straight in the bottom half of the rings before you start tightening the tops and you shouldn't need to force it into alignment. If things are not quite lining up you might want to look into lapping/bedding or upgrading those rings and base.

 

[Snakum]

Re: My Scope Loosened up... How o I keep it tight?

I've always found that a proper, methodical install and keeping a check on the ring screws for the first 100 rounds is what it takes. I always Blue Locktite my bases and then check every screw and bolt on the rings before each session. After a while they never loosen up again.