Bore Sight

[stevej37]

I bought my bore sight about 5 years ago. It works great...sight in your scope without firing a shot. It's incredibly accurate.





Now..they have specific caliber cartridges to do the same trick. (maybe they have been out for a while..first I've seen of them.)

https://www.amazon.com/MidTen-Sight-Boresighter-5-56mm-Batteries/dp/B0794YFRYP/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=boresight&qid=1597507947&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzOFhYWVFFRUZKVExEJ mVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNDUwMDIzMlQyRFo4NFhRUllFTiZlbmN yeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwOTQ2MzM3T01DUUNRQUtBOEJOJndpZGdld E5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm9 0TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Makes it easy to have a super-accurate rifle.
Anyone use one of the newer cartridge ones?

[cabmandone]

My experience has been that it gets you on paper. I used one for my 22/250 but then really dialed it in on a led sled using custom built rounds. My friend did a "hillbilly bore sight" by putting his rifle in a led sled, removing the bolt, looking down the bore and zeroing on the center of the target, then adjusting the scope to what should be center of the target. Worked pretty well. But a laser boresight is a pretty sweet tool.

[craigster59]

I have the one you linked in 223/556 and 30-06. Works great, gets you in the neighborhood and a few tweaks to dial it in.

[John Rogers]

My neighbor across the street has a garage door 50 yards away from the stand I have made to sit my rifles on to insure the top of the action or barrel flat is flat. I use the same bore sighter as you with their little reflective target to get my muzzle loaders started at 50 yards. several of the patched round ball rifles and one pistol only go to 50 yards. A couple round ball rifles go to 40 rods and several slug guns I shoot out to 300 yards since that is the maximum our South Bay Rod & Gun Club goes out to.

[stevej37]

The first time using mine...I was surprised how far the led light could be seen.
On a full sun day...not so much.
Try it again on a cloudy day or dusk...amazing!
My .22 is dead on after using this...and I never had to fire a shot to get it there.

[sc_rufctr]

I'm old school when it comes to sighting in a scope but if it saves you time and money then why not?

(I owned a small collection of firearms before the tightening of the laws and "buy back" of the late 90s)

[stevej37]

The nicest part of using one is...you don't have to fire your rifle to set your scope.
The led dot shows exactly where you are going to hit.

[cabmandone]

Originally Posted by stevej37

The nicest part of using one is...you don't have to fire your rifle to set your scope.
The led dot shows exactly where you are going to hit.

What distance are you using this? I set mine at 100 yards for my 22/250 and it got me on paper.

[Bill Douglas]

I set mine for 200m.

[stevej37]

Originally Posted by cabmando

What distance are you using this? I set mine at 100 yards for my 22/250 and it got me on paper.

I had mine at about 75 yards. I couldn't get a dot any further...it was too bright outside.
The collets on mine (in the pic) were in-between sizes for my .22 rifle.
I think the newer ones..in the link would be more accurate yet.

[Jeff Higgins]

I've bore sighted at least a couple hundred rifle/scope combinations of the last 40+ years. Not a single one of them ever hit "right on" to the bore sighting apparatus. The old ones simply held a grid up in front of the muzzle, where these cool new ones project a beam. Either one will get you on paper, but neither will definitively zero a rifle.

There are simply too many variables. For example, say we are shooting the .223 - how does the laser bore sighter "know" whether you intend to use 40 grain bullets or 70 grain bullets? How does it "know" if you are shooting a 16" carbine barrel or a 26" heavyweight varmint barrel? Different bullet weights from the same barrel will produce different velocities, markedly different in this example. Different barrel lengths will produce different velocities with the same bullet weights in each. And these are only two of the more obvious nuances affecting point of impact.

Beyond that, there are issues like stock bedding - is the barrel free floated, or is there some pressure applied to it by the tip of the forearm? I have had the same rifle shift its vertical point of impact at 100 yards by over a foot simply by relieving forearm pressure and free floating the barrel in a wood or fiberglass stock. How about barrel time and recoil? All rifles start to move back at the same time the bullet moves forward. A high velocity, light bullet, heavy varmint rifle combination (like my over ten pound bull barreled Ruger #1 in .220 Swift shooting 50 grain bullets at over 4,000 fps) will be less affected than, say, my eight pound Ruger #1 in .458 Winchester Magnum shooting 500 grain bullets at 2,100 fps.

So, yeah - great for getting on paper, but way too many things going on that will vary from rifle to rifle and even load to load in the same rifle to rely on bore sighting as the definitive zero. We simply must shoot the rifle to finish the job and obtain a zero. There is no other way.

[Crowbob]

I don’t think the bore sight is meant to measure drop, windage, caliber, grain, weight, temperature and shoot the weapon for you.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

I don’t think the bore sight is meant to measure drop, windage, caliber, grain, weight, temperature and shoot the weapon for you.

Clearly. There are, however, lingering misconceptions regarding this. Some expressed right here in this thread.

I hunted with a guy once (just once) in the late '80's who was then dating my sister in law. He had a Remington M700 in .30-'06 that he had owned for over a decade. He still had some left in the only box of ammunition he had ever bought for it, proud of the fact that every bullet down its bore had been directed at a game animal. I asked him how he zeroed it... He answered, of course "with a bore sighter". Claimed it zeroed the rifle absolutely, removing human error from the equation. He did manage to shoot a deer on that rip - at about 15 yards, thereby "proving" his method. He claimed to have shot deer at "over 500 yards" with this setup, because it was so spot-on. I asked him how far over the animal he had to hold... His answer? "Whaddaya talkin' about? .30-'06's shoot so flat you don't have to do any of that..." Like I said, I hunted with him once...

[Crowbob]

Well played, Jeff.

That guy sounds more like a fisherman than a hunter.

[vash]

I pull the bolt and (looking down the barrel) center the barrel onto a target 100 yards away. Then with everything locked on bean bags, I’ll peek thru the scope and move windage/elevation until I’m also centered. That first shot is always on paper.

[aigel]

Jeff and Vash's post = wisdom. Really nothing to add. Only time I see a laser sight making sense is if you are a gunsmith or a gun dealer and you do this for a customer when installing their scope to get them close.

[john70t]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

I don’t think the bore sight is meant to measure drop, windage, caliber, grain, weight, temperature and shoot the weapon for you.

Need to talk to these guys:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/darpa-bullet-can-change-direction-mid-flight/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/army-smart-rifle-getting-afghanistan-field-test/

The second probably covers my idea of making a 30mm round either AP or air-fragmentable, depending.
That would allow the A-10 a great deal more flexibility in missions and lower ammo use.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by john70t

Need to talk to these guys:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/darpa-bullet-can-change-direction-mid-flight/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/army-smart-rifle-getting-afghanistan-field-test/

The second probably covers my idea of making a 30mm round either AP or air-fragmentable, depending.
That would allow the A-10 a great deal more flexibility in missions and lower ammo use.

Notice how old those stories are - neither ever came to fruition. The XM25 seemed the more promising of the two, but after it proved unreliable in the field about a decade ago it never did get officially deployed. I think it finally got cancelled fairly recently. The .50 EXACTO "guided bullet" was a bust from the get go.

[John Rogers]

There are a couple of things the bore sight laser will tell you. I mentioned that I made sure the top of the action and/or barrel flat were level and to expand on that some, you can also check to make sure the tang sight is perfectly vertical or that the horizontal cross hair in a scope is really horizontal. With the reflector that came with mine it has vertical and horizontal line (squares I'd say). When I mount a scope and the red dot is centered on my neighbors garage I can test to make sure the red dot goes up and stays on the vertical cross hair and does the same going down. I then check left and right adjustments to make sure the dot follows the horizontal cross hair and I usually note the dot movement to make sure it matches the scope makers specs.

All my scopes have external adjustments as all are Unertl with USMC mounts so I try to make sure the scope can move back and forth and the red dot returns to the same place.

[Jeff Higgins]

That is probably the single most important utility of the old grid type bore sight devices (we actually called them "collimators" back then) - making sure the scope cross hairs are properly oriented. I've lost track of how many rifles I have seen with crooked scopes.

The vertical tang sight is a different story, though, at least the ones used in long range competition. With these, we actually mount them at an angle to compensate for "spin drift" at long range. If the rifle has a right hand twist, we lean the sight to the left, if it has a left hand twist (pretty rare) we lean it right. Mine are all tilted about two degrees left, established by a lot of shooting and trying.

Doing this keeps the windage more zeroed as range increases and the rear aperture climbs farther up the sight staff. "Spin drift" is more of a visual representation of what is going on here than it is an accurate terminology. Imagine a bullet "rolling" in the direction of the rifling twist. If a tall long range sight staff is truly vertical, we could run out of windage adjustment, even on a calm day, as the bullet "rolls" or drifts in the direction of the rifling.

Here is one of my long range match rifles, a C. Sharps '74 in .45-2.6". The aperture is set on about its 200 yard elevation. At 1,000 yards, it's most of the way up that staff. With about a two degree tilt to the left, when the aperture is still centered on the windage scale, the rifle is still hitting center on the target. On a calm day...