Thread: When you dial

Do you just dial and stop. Do you dial past and come back. Do you tap the turret. What's your system?

Dial fast to major number on dial, then count clicks for the decimal places.
Why would you tap a turret?

Originally Posted by quentin

Why would you tap a turret?

old school when scopes were shite and nobody trusted the dials . . seems funny now

Well I still do it. Habit I suppose.

Dial the required adjustment, shoot and record, then return to zero.

The practice of clicking in from the same direction (eg up or right) each time originated with target aperture sights, which were recognised to have a little play in them (backlash). These didn't have a spring tensioning them.

I haven't done it with my dialling scope but I do consistently find that shots fired at 2 to 5 mRad from zero are more widely spread than those shot at zero. This is for groups built up by dialling in from a variety of directions for each separate shot. It would take a bit more testing to be sure it's truly backlash and not some other error like cant. So, I wouldn't discount it.

F class shooters would probably have the best handle on this.

Originally Posted by quentin

Dial fast to major number on dial, then count clicks for the decimal places.
Why would you tap a turret?

People believed (some still do) that tapping the turret would help settle the optics.

This video will explain it better than I can

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh14NTFZX5E&t=514s

dial up or down and shoot.

With regard to tapping, this used to be recommended 30 - 40 years ago. You use an empty cartridge case.

Even now it’s common to see, when sighting in, that an adjustment apparently makes little difference to the fall of the next shot but after 3 or 4 more the group settles on the new mpi as you’d hoped. There are several possible reasons for this :

Moving a few 1/4 MOA clicks in the hope of correcting a group that’s 6” out at 100yd. (This would really need 24 clicks so 2 or 3 is homeopathic .

Adjusting on too few shots for the grouping of your rifle . eg firing 2 shots 1” apart from a gun that really a 2” grouper and expecting 4x1/4 MOA clicks to bring it to a zero. In this situation you don’t really know where your group centre is. The tendency for subsequent shots to fall closer to the true mean pint of impact (regression to the mean) will make any random adjustment appear effective as long as it’s a small one. Most often your gun was shooting fairly close to where it should and small adjustments just shift that centre around confusing you and undermining your confidence in gear and skill.

Third is the truly sticky scope. This is not too uncommon in my experience. On most hunting rifles, with capped turrets, adjustments are made only rarely and the spring can be weak and lubricant a little gummy inside so the reticle doesn’t move at first but will after a couple of shots and the tapping is meant to encourage it. It’s pretty hard to be sure this is happening because it’s bound to move immediately if you try it a second time ! With scopes that are regularly dialed back and forth I think this is less likely and newer scopes all claim to have “improved” spring systems.

Personally, I wouldn’t like to tap my scope regularly with something metallic but there are good reasons why people do.

Originally Posted by blair993

dial up or down and shoot.

That’s what I do but I paid $3000 for a good scope and I’ve tested it.

Another aspect to this is that it’s one thing to wind on 80 clicks and be pleased the group moves closer to 20“ than 19. and another thing to find your tweak of 1 or 2 clicks truly Centers your group in the 10 ring. This sort of reliable response to small adjustments when sighting in is beautiful when you experience it . It’s largely a matter of gut intuition when you realise that your scope is actually doing this.

I just dial and wait for it to come back to zero

I still bang the rifle butt on the ground after every scope adjust

these days its just for good luck I imagine