What Happened To My Scope Rings?

. . .I use blue loc-tite on my rings. Helps to avoid issues like this.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

i loc-tite all screws, bases, and rings.

Gunsafe gremlins, no doubt!

Inverted ^^ is my guess

^^Does not exist 180° out, on my phone

So I improvised...

Some other rifle slammed into it.

How can they get greater tolerance from zero tolerance?

Now everybody gets to watch two firemen

Maybe I didn't phrase it correctly! The rail mount interferes/contacts w/the ring when tightened, so I guess that'd be a negative tolerance!

Also known as "needs a little slack". In this case a gap.

I know good and well what you meant, but I treated you like we were at the table in the kitchen.

LFD, how tight did you have the nuts holding rings to base? Just curious since they both broke in the same spot.... Makes me wonder about mine since I have the same scope and rings but I went with black rings.

They told me 55-65 in/lbs so I did them @ 60 in/lbs.

Lessons earned are lessons learned. Would not go back with aluminum rings, regardless of how popular they are. Everyone is different, but I wouldn't be wasting time trying to determine why they broke. I would get steel rings and move on.

From the pics, those rings look cast. Can you tell if they are CNC’d or cast?

I'm not saying they're not cast, but I've seen machined aluminum fail just like that too. Could be either one. Doesn't make a ton of sense to me to design that as a casting, but who knows....

Fail like this from inch lbs. of torque?

No, but that's probably not what caused this to fail either. Pre-stress combined with impact shock loads isn't good for anything.

You're probably right about it being a casting. I was just saying that I've seen some weird failure modes over the years. You see a bit of everything in the aircraft world though.

I know, w/out a shadow of a doubt, this gun has never been even bumped, much less subjected to any serious impact. The worse thing that's ever happened to it is being shot. That is the most powerful use/abuse this gun has seen.
Talley is still crickets.

It's been 7 days now since they said they were mailing me rings & since they replied to my last email. Not feeling too good about their CS now!

55-65 seems like a lot of pressure for that thread engagement for cast aluminum. Look at the Ø of the fastener. Makes me wonder if they knew the exact model when they gave you that torque setting?

The majority of the ring makers do 65 in. lbs. torque for rings to rail hardware on heavy duty "tactical" style rings.
Badger: 65 in/lb Nightforce: 68in/lb Seekins: 55in/lb Leupold Mark IV: 65in/lb Warne Tactical: 65in/lb
Burris Xtreme: 65-100in/lb Talley Tactical: 65in/lb
They replied back saying the person who I was dealing with didn't know the rings were still in metal finishing. Now they're overnighting me a black set until the FDE are available then sending me a set of those. They still didn't answer any questions I asked.

I know the Seekins, Burris XTR & Talley are aluminum. I believe the others are steel.
Talley claims these are billet. From Talley:
"Heavy-duty scope rings are precision-machined from solid billet aluminum with dual recoil lugs to ensure your tactical scope won’t budge under the heaviest recoil. Full-width ring caps are cut from the same billet as the bottom half of the ring for precise fit and held in place with four stainless steel Allen head screws that won’t work loose when properly tightened."

I know the Seekins, Burris XTR & Talley are aluminum. I believe the others are steel.
Talley claims these are billet. From Talley:
"Heavy-duty scope rings are precision-machined from solid billet aluminum with dual recoil lugs to ensure your tactical scope won’t budge under the heaviest recoil. Full-width ring caps are cut from the same billet as the bottom half of the ring for precise fit and held in place with four stainless steel Allen head screws that won’t work loose when properly tightened." Something ain't right about the information they put out. Cutting them from the same billet wouldn't have anything to do strength, as the compressive strength of any grade of aluminum wouldn't vary from billet to billet. If these are true Ø's and made as a single piece and then split, that may contribute to the fit, but then they would be made as oval to allow for the kerf when cut. Also, using a stainless steel fastener, in cast aluminum gives a mismatch on the strength characteristic; the fastener can handle a > torque. I've never bought these, but would have. I may have missed it, but have we not agreed that these are cast, but sold as machined from billet stock?

55-65 in-lbs is a fair bit when talking about aluminum threads. I've stripped aluminum threads when tightening down a valve cover with about that much torque.

At least they're sending you a pair of black ones for now.

!