just wowndering how many remember the old pachmeyer mount. it mounted on the side of the receiver and the swope could just swing over to use or not. I think i still have one or 2 and though they were big and ugly, the damn things worked every time

My dad's buddy has a custom stocked M700, I think Fajen did it. It has a swing away Pachy mount. You are right it just works.

Very reliable. I have 2....on Mannlicher Schoenauer carbines. I would rather have Griffin and Howe sidemounts, but these work fine.

These were great for sporters that could still be loaded using stripper clips. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that they were made of aluminum. Nicley designed, but they looked cheap.

Not found too often on benchrest or varmint rifles, I've noted.

The challenge for such a mount re-aligning consistently is obvious, but for "hunting" accuracy when game is relatively large and relatively close they probably worked just fine.

The intended purpose of allowing quick access to iron sights was probably never a practical application for the swing-over mount (even less practical than "see thru" rings), but as KurtC mentions, they might be about the only mount that would give a shooter the option of using a stripper clip or some other type of access to a receiver which required access to the top.

Pachmyr was perhaps the most prominent manufacturer, but I think Weaver and others also offered such a mount. Thank goodness my experience with them is tangental (pun unintended, but satisfying, nonetheless.)

Yeah they were butt ugly, you had to losen the cone knob to flop them and then reighten it after loading (with a stripper clip ??? LOL).
The stock usually had to be hacked up and extra holes drilled as well.
G&H and Jaeger were far better, if for some reason, you needed irons. Today's quality scopes are far more rugged than any iron sights except a few express sight designs. Pachmayr did good gunsmithing and still makes good pads and buttplates but that mount was a solution in search of a problem.

By contrast a handsome QD mount: