Parts 1 and 2 of The Rifle, BYP & Pistol are up at CTKA

[Bob Prudhomme]

I'll play along, Bob.

I'm not a gun guy, but the only things I can see is that the scope is "side mounted" (to allow the use of the iron sights on the barrel, but I don't think that's rare) and the fact that only 2 of the three mounting holes have mounting screws in them. You could speculate that 2 screws, as opposed to three, would allow the possibility of adjusting the scope slightly by using the mounting bracket, if the holes in the mounting bracket were slightly larger than the mounting screws. If you had three screws you would not be able to adjust it much, if at all.

The only other thing I can think of is that the gunsmith is lazy or in a hurry.

Side mounting the scope on this rifle had nothing to do with allowing a shooter to be able to use the iron sights. It was side mounted for two simple reasons. 1. If mounted in the normal fashion, the scope would be directly over the magazine, and in the way of loading the six round en bloc clip into the magazine. 2. When retracting the bolt, the handle of the bolt would run into a scope mounted directly over the receiver.

Making the holes in a scope mount, such as the one on C2766, larger than the screws going through them, or making the holes vertically oblong, is a very bad idea, for the simple fact the slightest bump has the potential to move the scope mount on the rifle. Even a tiny movement of a few thousandths of an inch of the mount can throw the scope way off and make the rifle completely inaccurate. I really do not believe anyone would be foolish enough to make a scope mount with this in mind, although the middle hole on the base of the scope mount does look suspiciously oblong.



Suffice it to say that if the holes were larger than the screws or if the holes were oblong, there is a very good chance that even the firing of a few shots would be enough to move the scope mount, and I am quite sure that Oswald, if he practiced as much as some believe, would have quickly become aware that his scope was incapable of being sighted in. This once again begs the obvious question, why did he not remove the useless scope and mount before bringing the rifle to the TSBD?

Getting back on course, though, the answer to the question is there is no place to put shims that would correct for elevation. Placing a shim between the scope mount and one of the two mounting holes will only move that end of the scope sideways, not up and down. The sad reality of side mounting a scope, and attaching the mount with screws placed horizontally into the receiver, is that if the gunsmith accidentally drills one of the screw holes slightly off there is absolutely nothing that can be done to correct this situation, outside of drilling a new hole.

The very rare thing about the way this scope was mounted is the fact the scope had to be turned 90° in its rings to allow the en bloc clip to get past the scope. Normally, a scope is mounted as seen below:



The elevation knob (up and down adjustment) is on top and the windage knob (side to side adjustment) is on the right side. We are looking at the scope diagram above from the same side as the photo below.



As can be seen, the scope has been turned 90° to the left, as the windage knob would get in the way of loading the en bloc clip. This must have been very confusing for anyone attempting to adjust this scope while sighting it in. The windage knob would now be the elevation knob, and vice versa. How would a person know which way to turn these knobs to get the desired movement of the cross hairs in the scope? Did Klein's include notes with these rifles, explaining the odd scope mounting and how to deal with it?

Considering also how extremely difficult it is to sight in a side mounted scope, and Oswald's complete lack of experience in sighting in rifle scopes, I do not believe this scope ever was properly sighted in.