Scope Were To Begin

I have mounted a lot of scopes from the cheap promo Bushnell and Tasco, higher quailty Bushnell and Tasco to the Bauch and Lomb, Leupold, Redfield, Ziess, with a heaping helping of Burris and Simmonds. I've used Weaver Mounts, Redfield, Leupold, Wideview, Ironsighter, B-Square, and many types of European brands.
I mounted them on $25.00 army surplus Lee Enfields to $10,000 Sniper rifles, and the thing is it dosent matter what the job is, the basic steps apply to all.
Inspect the rifle, I don't care if it's an old crowbar or the latest manifestation of Remington, Browning, Savage, Tikia, Sako or the late great Winchester RIP, right out of the box, you have to check it out so you can determine if the rifle will shoot, I'v see rifles right out of the box that, had bad triggers, poor stock fitting, holes drilled off, reciever poorly milled, mount a scope on one of those without correcting it or at least telling the customer and it is not pretty, been there done it, a 40 min job turns into 6 or 8 hour and you won't get paid for it either. It happens rearly, the manufacture do thier best, but once in a while a bad one gets thru, for the most part its the owners that screw up their own guns, I'll talk about that in later posts.
Once you determine the rifle is OK then check out the mounts, some times you can get a bad one, it happens but its rare.
If your rifle needs to be drilled take it to a Gunsmith with lots of experience, I know alot of you guys have a buddy thats a cracker jack machinist and he'll do it for $2o bucks, screw that, I have had to fix up alot of those, machinist don't have the tooling or the knowledge for gun work, I know this because I started as a machinist and I had to learn a lot before I got to know what I was doing, my instructor in trade school, a master machinist warned me to get a gunsmithing course before I stared to work on guns, because of the specialized knowledge you need, thanks Jackie wherever you are.
Once your gun is drilled and tapped, or if you have a pre drilled, it time to degrease the holes, boys you want the holes oil free your going to put Loc-Tite in there to hold the screws and oil will weaken the holding power of the Loc-Tite. But before you do that your going to do a compleate mounting to see if the scope will line up in what I call center range, with the bore. All center range is the position of the crosshairs is as close to the center of the scope and in line with the bore's center. If it doesent line up you will need to line it up, the easiest way is with shims, the other way requries altering the bases I don't recomend this unless you have a lot of experience.
Now that you have the scope in center range, take it all apart and do the mounting, first Loc-Tite the holes, use a little bit, use blue Loc-tite or Gun-Tite samething only Loc-Tite the base screws, and only Loc-Tite steel to steel, the steel screws into the steel reciever, you should never Loc-Tite into Aluminum. When you tighten the screws, you should have a screwdriver that fits the screw head, I use Forster Screwdrives, I like them best, because there made for Gunsmiths, there ground straight and will fit the screw slot so it wont slip you can get them from Forster or Brownells.
Back to tighting the screws, turn the screw in till it bottoms, with the gun in a padded vise and the proper screwdriver then give it a 1/4 to a 1/3 crunch turn, you'll feel it seat in, To my knowledge I have never had one lossen, and I have remounted scopes I did back in the 80's and they were still tight, 20 years later.
Except for the Loc-Tite thread all the screws the same.
Now that you have the scope mounted in center range and everything is tight its time to bore sight, I use a Bushnell Boresighter, the secret is to check your boresighter with a rifle that is already zeroed at the range, one that you know is dead on, once you know where the zero is on you boresighter you can adjust you newmounted scope,
You not finished yet, now its time for the range, I have a sure fire method to zeroing at the range its simple big target short distance.
What I mean is I set up at 25yd's with a 4 foot target a big piece of cardboard, mark a big cross on it and put the cross hairs over the cross, even is its off a foot, I can still see the hit and adjust for it, 3 shots and you should be on, now its time to zero at the distance you want. it's so simple by half, it paid my mortgage.
Tom