For the life of me, I don’t know why people bother using such devices with a bolt action rifle such as this. These pics are not the first rifle blow-up I’ve seen using a collimator.
I don’t own one of the wretched things, never have, never will.
Here’s all anyone needs to do to bore-sight a rifle to get it on target.
Put a target downrange at 50 yards. I prefer a round, black bull on a white background. Use a 25yard pistol target or a 100 yard high power target. Just make it round, black-on-white.
Go back to your bench. Set up the subject rifle on sandbags or on a rest. Pull the bolt. You read that correctly, just pull the bolt out of the rifle.
Now, get behind the rifle and sight down the bore. Look to see if you can see the target down the bore of the rifle. If you can’t, move the rifle until you can. Get the target as concentric as possible with the bore by adjusting the setting of the rifle on the sandbags or adjusting the rest holding the rifle.
When you have the rifle aimed so that the bore is concentric with the black bull of the target, carefully put your head near the stock, but not touching it (or touching it only slightly) in the manner you’d look through the riflescope while aiming. DO NOT take a grip of the rifle with your hands. See where the crosshairs are laying. If they’re not on the target, make a note of how many inches high/low and left/right they are. If you have 1 click=0.25” at 100 yards, remember that you’re going to need twice as many clicks to adjust out what you see at 50 yards.
eg, if you have a 1 click = 0.25” @100yards, you need two clicks per 0.25” at 50 yards, because 0.25” at 50 yards is 0.50” at 100 yards.
Dial out the error on the scope. Get the crosshairs right on the center of the bull, then stand back and sight down the bore again. Repeat until you get the two to agree. When you’re done, dial in about 1” of elevation gain to account for trajectory between 50 and 100 yards. Put in the bolt and send a group of three rounds downrange, and start fine-tuning the zero.
I’ve used this technique on everything from .375’s down to .17HMR’s.
This method is the old-time tried-and-true.
Me, I never say the need for a $100 gizmo to boresight a rifle.
If you have some sort of action that doesn't allow for boresighting in the manner NVDave described, put your target up at 10 yards, or as close as the range will allow and use a big target. Center your crosshairs on the bull and fire one shot. It probably didn't come close, but there are two ways you can get it very close to zeroed without firing another shot.
If you have some sort of rest, use bungee cords or have a friend hold it tightly in place with the scope still centered on the bull, (you can do this after you have shot). Then simply adjust the crosshairs until they are centered on the hole your bullet left in the target. You may want to set them a little high depending on your range. You are now roughly zeroed. If this is done right it can be very precise and can result in a near perfect zero with only one shot. You'll want to fire a group to check it and fine tune it anyway though.
If you don't have any way to keep your rifle steady, then you want to figure out the horizontal and vertical distance between the bull and the bullet hole and figure out the number of clicks necessary for your correction. With a good scope and accurate calculations, this will get you close to zeroed. With a cheap scope, you'll have to repeat this several times. Cheap scopes hardly ever have accurate click adjustments. The adjustments are usually larger than advertised, so if a cheap scope claims to have 1/4" clicks at 100 yards, they're usually 1/2". You won't know until you start making adjustments and seeing what happens, but if you see that your adjustments are overcorrecting, just reduce the number of clicks accordingly.
Somewhat similar for a 57mm recoiless rifle :-).
Tried but true method.
The last time I bought a scoped rifle - the gun shop guys did the basic zero with their collimator. Fast and had me on paper when I went to the range.
For the life of me, I cannot see any reason to bore sight a bolt rifle or AR any way OTHER than the way you described. It’s the distilled essense of KISS, it’s fast, it works, it needs no gizmos, and can even be done in the field.
You forgot to mention you have to reverse the adjustments on the scope. Boresighting brings the crosshairs to the impact. Sighting in by firing brings the impact to the crosshairs.
It gets even more confusing when using a dental mirror on a closed receiver like a Garand.
The better boresights use a modified cartridge.
Great advice for a bolt rifle. However, how do you propose accomplishing that feat on a BLR, Models 94, 36, 71 or Rem semi-auto? There are others that I did not mention for time’s sake.
I’m a gunsmith and use the exact laser boresighter pictured. The failure of that shooter to follow proper gun safety procedure was the cause of that flowering barrel. Calling the inanimate object a “wretched thing” is kinda like blaming the spoon for Rosie O’Donuts yard wide backside.
I believe the shooter in that case was okay and think that someone hyped up the story with the addition of the emergency patient on the litter.
That's the way I was taught to do it.
Thanks. It’s such a simple and accurate technique that I cannot believe people would spend good money on a laser gizmo when they would be better off spending it on ammunition.
Same procedure I use, except I usually go ahead and start with the target at 100. 95% of the time I’ll be on paper with the first shot. Helps to have a really good front rest and rear bag.
That is how I do it too. If the target is in the middle of the bore and also in the middle of the sight, you’re pretty darn close.
Yep, rough bore sighting is fairly easy to do, I never saw the need for one of these laser bore sighting devices. Of course if you are shooting a lever action or other semi-auto where you can’t remove the bolt, you will have to start out at the 10 to 30 yard range to get it on target.
Your method works quite well for 106MM rifles also. just increase the target distance to 3,000 yards or more.