I read a piece a while back on a couple of tricks to use when sighting in air rifles. Does anyone have certain techniques or advise they give regarding sighting a scope? This is my first experience with air rifles and I don't know a great deal about them. It's a RWS 36.

Make sure you have the eye relief (scope positioning) comfortable to your normal shooting hold and attire.

Use a laser boresighter or optical collimator with an appropriate spud for your bore size to get it ballpark close and then open a tin of pellets.

Make absolutely sure all mounts are tight so things don't move around.

Poor man's collimator/boresighting with a break open gun is to break the gun open with the forepart in a gentle but firm hold of some soft, non-damaging vice jaws or even lay it on it's side on a bench pointed at a target at the range you wish to set for and alternately look through the bore of the barrel itself and the scope making adjustments until you see crosshairs on what you see through the bore. Then open a tin of pellets and adjust.

Happy Shooterizing,

Many thanks. I seem to remember there was something about not holding the rifle too tight when sighting in. Is this correct?

Cliff, my RWS's are quite sensitive to too much pressure on the forearm of the stock, esp. when shooting over sand bags. Make sure you have a good mount. I tried plain rifle rings and bases and it shook the scope to pieces. Finally got the RWS C mount and now they both shoot fine. Good luck and have fun.
Bruce

Ah, thanks Bruce. Will do.

There's a very simple way to sight in using very few pellets or bullets.

Get the gun boresighted as best you can. If you have a collimator, use that.

Set up a target 10 yards away.

Rest the gun and fire a round at a small bullseye.

no matter where the projectile hits, rest the rifle again and hold it so it won't move, focusing on the bullseye.

Have a friend at your direction, now move the cross hairs from the original aiming point, aka the bullseye, to exactly where the projectile hit.

The gun is now sighted in for what ever yardage you sighted in at. In this case 10 yards.

As you move back to the yardage you want to sight in at you will have to raise or lower the point of imapct, but the gun should now be zeroed.

Keep in mind that most scopes are set to move 1/4" per click at 1 minute of angle(1.047")

at 10 yards that equates to many clicks at ten yards.

when placing the scope on the gun, try to have the azimuth and elevation in the middle of the scopes adjustment range. Turn the scope dials all the way to one end. Then turn to the other end, counting turns. After you count the turns, cut them in half and return the screw to the middle. This will give you the most leeway in adjuting when the time comes.

The best thing to do is try and set the scope by boresighting as close as possible to the center line by using the scope mounts. At that point you can use the adjustment screws to fine tune it.

If the scope is seriously out of line with the bore after doing this, the base is not properly installed on the barrel/action.

33806whelen

That's making a sometimes fatal assumption that us gunsmithy types have friends that are handy to help out, or even have friends...

You can do it yourself also. You need a good rifle vise though. I have done it myself with my tipton vise.

you must remeber though that a springer air rifle has to be held loosely as they become inaccurate if held tight or in a vise.... it takes a little bit to learn how to shoot a springer with the proper hold to get the best accuracy.........