My gunsmith mounted a Seekins Precision 20 moa scope rail on my Remington 700 today. Problem is he forgot to bed the rail to the receiver before tightening everything down and mounting the scope, he is now going to bed the rail for me.
Question is, did he bend this $100 rail by torquing it to the receiver without bedding it first?
Thanks

Not unless the mount wasn't made correctly, which it may have been if it needs bedding. I've installed dozens on rails and never saw one that needed bedding.

The only 1-piece rail I've installed that didn't need shimming/bedding/lapping is one I made to fit after carefully measuring the receiver it was made for.

Most of them you can snug down the screws a bit at a time and look down the edge of it and watch it start to zig-zag. Or you can snug one screw at a time and see if one end springs up. Others have a bow to them from stress in the billet that's relieved when machined out. These you can sometimes bed back straight by selectively tightening screws when the epoxy is still soft, but then they're putting a little tension on the receiver.

Anyway, take the rail off and measure it. If it's still straight then it wasn't bent on the receiver (assuming it was straight before hand).

John, Thanks for responding. I was thinking more along the lines of the tops of many Remington 700 recivers are not true front to back. Some are higher in the back and vise versa.

quote:

Originally posted by SamC:
My gunsmith mounted a Seekins Precision 20 moa scope rail on my Remington 700 today. Problem is he forgot to bed the rail to the receiver before tightening everything down and mounting the scope, he is now going to bed the rail for me.
Question is, did he bend this $100 rail by torquing it to the receiver without bedding it first?
Thanks

Whats the problem? Take the scope off put a straight edge along the top of the one piece rail, if it's flat its good to go and not going to put any strain on the scope. If you have to wind the scope turrets excessively one way or other to get on target then your rail is not aligned with the bore either vertically or horizontally, if the rifle does actually shoot to bore and many don't.

I think its a good idea to surface grind receivers and it looks very nice indeed, then hand fit bases of any kind..Set your scopes adjustments in the middle of its focal plane then when you sight it in it wont be more than a couple of clicks out, if your scope finds zero at about the end of its adjustments, its not going to hold a zero as a rule and its all out of wack, but hell most folks never know it, and the good Lord takes care of drunks and fools!

"I think its a good idea to surface grind receivers and it looks very nice indeed, then hand fit bases of any kind"
I second that! The bridges of a Rem 700 are all over the place. Sure, shims and bedding can fix this but I've never liked the idea of doing this on a custom gun. The best way would be to true up the action and then fit the base.

Having fitted many bases to rifles, drilling and tapping as well as just screwing bases to factory drilled receivers, on some occasions when using the old reticle moving scopes you would have to shim rings on the bases or shim the scope in one or other of the rings to keep the reticle centred when the rifle was zeroed to the point of aim wanted. This was nothing to do with bases or rings but always to do with the rifle that did not shoot to the bore.

The same phenomenon will happen with image moving scopes on rifles that do not shoot to bore despite surface grinding receivers and having the base perfectly match the receiver contour although as Ray has made the point, "most folks never know it" and whisky tastes good

quote:

Originally posted by SamC:
John, Thanks for responding. I was thinking more along the lines of the tops of many Remington 700 recivers are not true front to back. Some are higher in the back and vise versa.

Although I'm not a 'smith, I have checked out receivers for 4 Remingtons, 4 Savages and
one Marlin X7. Out of those, only ONE Remington was true, front to back. The rest all got
bedding jobs on their one-piece mounts.

Good point above about checking the rail with a straight edge. That should be done even
during a bedding job to check if a screw is torqued down too much.

Thanks, great advice!