thoughts on lapping rings?

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4seasons69

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To those of you who mount your own scopes I'm looking for your opinions on lapping the rings? Im just getting into mounting my own scopes is it worth investing in a kit to lap rings? I'm waiting to get my new vxr back from leupold and want to make sure I mount it properly. It will be going in leupold pwr rings. Thanks!
 
I would like to think the pwr rings are a quality ring but not sure I would consider them a high end ring. I didn't see anything on the package that said not to lap them
 
I've yet to see a need to lap Talleys or NF rings. Heck I've never lapped leupold rings either.
Making sure they look good and are straight to start makes a big diff.
 
I wonder if you could use a hone like the one that was used to hone brake cylinders when a guy use to rebuild those back in the day...It went on a drill and had 3 honing stones and a tensioner..Man would it clean those up nice without taking off to much material.....
 
That would probably work. It's too bad we don't rebuild that stuff anymore or I'd probably already have the tools. It's cheaper to just get new parts nowadays. I like the idea of lapping with a bar cause it would help with any alignment issues
 
Originally Posted By: fw707If you get good rings and a good base you won't need to lap them.

Good to know. My vxr is going on my slug gun which has a cantilever mount on the barrel. What do you guys think of the leupold prw rings? Good? bad?
 
Originally Posted By: Tim NeitzkeI've yet to see a need to lap Talleys or NF rings. Heck I've never lapped leupold rings either.
Making sure they look good and are straight to start makes a big diff.





Yup. Comes down to garbage in and garbage out. You get what you put into things.
 
I have been changing scope mounts to the talley rings on my rifles, I lapped the bottom half removing 50-75 of the finish. The rifles had Burris and Leupold mounts. Very happy with the weight reduction and the durability.
 
I have one of the Rock River Arms solid piece scope mounts and wanted to test it to see if it needed to be lapped and aligned or not. So I purchased the Professional Scope Mounting Kit from Wheeler Engineering. I put the two steel rods on the RRA scope mount and they aligned up perfectly. I mounted my Nikon M223 Scope on the mount and then mounted the system on my AR's flat top. So far so good. The system shoots well and it mounted properly IMHO.
 
Any mass production item can have issues. If you are a nit pickers nit picker, then lap them.

I have been known to change the socks on the angel that is dancing on the pin head of a needle. For this reason, I love the Burris Signature and Z rings with the inserts. All others get lapped.
 
I used to lap all of my rings. Don't even bother anymore. With the precision tooling of 2015, any quality ring/mount set up is good to go.
 
I just use my 1 inch dowel rod to make sure that everything is straight and level. I have never lapped a set of rings. The reason for lapping is to make sure that the ring makes full contact on the scope for maximum gripping surface. I have never seen a properly installed scope slip in the rings. Maybe on a severe kicker, a couplenof 300 weatherby mkv's is all the recoil that I have to judge against.
 
I have and use the wheeler kit. Like everyone else I don't believe you need to if you buy quality rings/bases. I just put extra high Leopold Mark 4 rings on a AR and didn't lap them. I have found little to no ring marks on anything I lap, which helps if you ever sell. Chris
 
The solid lapping bar in the Wheeler kit works great for checking alignment.
The pointed bars are worse than useless for that purpose.
 
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