By John Kleespies
Let’s say that “I have this friend” who was doing a bolt-action build that might be viewable at my website, CloverSpear.com. The last part to arrive was the Zermatt Arms action, and so when it showed up, he excitedly rushed to get the 8oz Timney HIT trigger installed. And, of course, the Criterion barrel was just sitting there, and might was well drop it into the MasterPiece Arms chassis, and since the Trijicon scope was already in the Warne rings…
A dry fire felt amazing, so he tightened everything he could see – from the chassis attachments to the scope rings, double checked it, and headed to the range.
A box of new Lapua brass needed to be fire formed for this new chamber, and the barrel needed breaking in, anyway, so 50 plinker rounds were more or less fired into the berm. Now it was time to sight everything in. A handful of groups at 25 yards looked okay but not amazing. Then 100 yards… were a disaster.
“What the heck…” The scope is loose??? But the rings are tight…
Go back home, pull the scope off, and… of the four screws that were supposed to be holding the rail on, only one was present. After checking the Zermatt packaging – sure enough – three screws were sitting inside… in the same doggone bag that this anonymous friend had taken the trigger pins out of! Turns out that Zermatt attaches the mount with one screw to check fitment and leaves the other three for the “gunsmith.”
It seemed that this unnamed and totally unknown gunsmith was so darn excited to install his trigger, he totally ignored those three screws and didn’t bother to double check them because they weren’t out in plain sight.
Moral of the story? If you actually want to hit what you’re aiming at, be sure to occasionally check all of your optics screws. It’s good insurance against wasted trips to the range… and feeling like an idiot.
