Are lightweight mounts strong enough to do the job?

[Primus Pilum]

Wow dude, ease up. I'M NOT CLAIMING ANYTHING OTHER THAN I DROPPED MY GUN ON THE SCOPE AND I'll SEE IF IT HELD ZERO. I'm not claiming some rigorous super duper scientific anything. You see, we're having a casual conversation here. My recommendation for you is to take your super stout mount and drop it repeatedly from 10 ft high on concrete over a 6 month period under rigorous controls and then tell us how your scope mount did.

By the way.....just because something is light doesn't necessarily mean it's weak, if it's engineered properly. It seems to be your contention that Aero mounts are somehow weak because they are light, how do you know this?

Weight is not the specific issue. The structural integrity, where the lightening cuts are made, ect all play a factor in it. It's a race to the bottom and most users don't even shoot their toys so they have no idea if it will hold up under heavy use.

Ask yourself, would you be willing to bet you life on this product if you had to.

[WS6]

Weight is not the specific issue. The structural integrity, where the lightening cuts are made, ect all play a factor in it. It's a race to the bottom and most users don't even shoot their toys so they have no idea if it will hold up under heavy use.

Ask yourself, would you be willing to bet you life on this product if you had to.

I personally have no experience with the Aero, but a friend of mine loves his. I'm not sure how many barrels he has worn out with it on the gun, yet, but I will ask. He's been running it for well over a year. It has been issue free, and from what I understand, they are also in use in the sand box. Probably personal purchase items, if I had to guess...point being, noone has had an issue with the Aero mounts that I am aware of.

[TomMcC]

Weight is not the specific issue. The structural integrity, where the lightening cuts are made, ect all play a factor in it. It's a race to the bottom and most users don't even shoot their toys so they have no idea if it will hold up under heavy use.

Ask yourself, would you be willing to bet you life on this product if you had to.

I already do bet my life on it. I own it and shoot it, and if necessary would fight with it.....just like all the other guns and equipment I own. If all I have is a .22 rimfire at the moment of truth then that's what I'm fighting with. And what exactly is a "heavy use"? Something like fighting in a foreign land? If so, then not too many of us are ever going to see "heavy use" and I was in the military. I bought the Aero specifically because it was so light....it's on my 3gun rifle and I wanted light weight. I use this rifle every month...I don't baby it and I don't abuse it, but I do use it.

[TomMcC]

I for one am interested in seeing what happens, keep us posted.

Thanks, I will. If it did lose zero I may have to go to something else......it will need some thinking through.

[elephantrider]

Weight is not the specific issue. The structural integrity, where the lightening cuts are made, ect all play a factor in it. It's a race to the bottom and most users don't even shoot their toys so they have no idea if it will hold up under heavy use.

Ask yourself, would you be willing to bet you life on this product if you had to.

I think this is pretty much the heart of it right here. I cannot believe it took eight pages to get to it. I kept seeing people refer to the overall weight of individual mounts as if that directly correlates to durability, and no mention as to how each mount is designed. The Aero comes in at ~3.3oz, the new Geissele Super Precision at ~5.2oz, and the Badger Ordnance equivalent at 7.8oz. What do you think each mount's capability to hold zero is in relation to its' own weight?

Just take a look at how the Aero Precision mount is designed, and how it works. Look at the bases of the ring halves that are integral to the mount. How big is the cross sectional area at that point? What can that section withstand and not deform if the scope takes a side impact? Answer: I have no idea, it might be just fine under harsh use, but it doesn't really inspire confidence when comparing it to Badger, Nightforce, or Geissele. Perhaps the three I just named are way overbuilt compared to the Aero. If you have to depend on it, or just want to be able to depend on it; I think of the analogy that someone gave to me a few years back: You are going skydiving, do you want one parachute, or two parachutes (a main and a back-up)? How important is it to you that it retain zero for a 3-gun competition? Not condemning the Aero Precison mount, just pointing out that robustness was probably not at the top of its designers priorities when they came up with it. The Geissele Super Precision Optic Mount appears to be an exercise in making the lightest mount possible without sacrificing durability. You can see where they opted to remove material, and where they retained it.

[WS6]

I think this is pretty much the heart of it right here. I cannot believe it took eight pages to get to it. I kept seeing people refer to the overall weight of individual mounts as if that directly correlates to durability, and no mention as to how each mount is designed. The Aero comes in at ~3.3oz, the new Geissele Super Precision at ~5.2oz, and the Badger Ordnance equivalent at 7.8oz. What do you think each mount's capability to hold zero is in relation to its' own weight?

Just take a look at how the Aero Precision mount is designed, and how it works. Look at the bases of the ring halves that are integral to the mount. How big is the cross sectional area at that point? What can that section withstand and not deform if the scope takes a side impact? Answer: I have no idea, it might be just fine under harsh use, but it doesn't really inspire confidence when comparing it to Badger, Nightforce, or Geissele. Perhaps the three I just named are way overbuilt compared to the Aero. If you have to depend on it, or just want to be able to depend on it; I think of the analogy that someone gave to me a few years back: You are going skydiving, do you want one parachute, or two parachutes (a main and a back-up)? How important is it to you that it retain zero for a 3-gun competition? Not condemning the Aero Precison mount, just pointing out that robustness was probably not at the top of its designers priorities when they came up with it. The Geissele Super Precision Optic Mount appears to be an exercise in making the lightest mount possible without sacrificing durability. You can see where they opted to remove material, and where they retained it.

Actually, Geissele is 7.2oz. It's the Nightforce Unimount in the 5.2-5.4oz arena.
https://geissele.com/scope-mounts.html

This places Geissele within 1/2oz of the most popular QD mounts on the market. IMO, not a good place to be, for a fixed mount, considering how proven today's QD options are.

[elephantrider]

I'm not a fan of SPUHR. The surface area that is clamping the scope is so large that they requir rosin/glue for .308 and up in lighter guns, or the scope will walk.

See, people think more surface area is mo-better! but it's not necessarily so. See, scope rings work by compressing the scope tube. The tube springs back against the ID of the rings, in response, as physics and the elastic nature of it dictate. Now, when you compress more surface area with the same amount of torque, you get less deformation. SPUHR recommends relatively low torque on their mounts, and the rings are relatively wide. This means less scope tube than is idea is getting displaced, regarding amount of displacement. In the end...you need rosin or glue for the SPUHR mounts to hold of to serious recoil, per Mr. Spuhr. This is why you see NF, badger, KAC, and virtually all others sticking with ring-widths of around <0.86 while the SPUHR is =1.26". It doesn't mean the SPUHR is gripping any better...it's just compressing more surface area with the same torque which equals less PSI on the optic tube. Scope tubes are generally not designed for that much surface area displacement, and thus the recommended torque is not appropriate.

Long story short, SPUHR, in my opinion, has fixed something until they broke it. That, and even the EraThr3 mount is still 7+oz, even though it's skeletonized and makes liberal use of Ti.

SPUHR recomends 15-25 in-lbs.
Badger Ordnance: 15 in-lbs., but I've seen as low as 13 in some of their instructions
Leupold: 15-17 in-lbs.
Nightforce: 25 in-lbs.

So how are SPUHR's recommended torque values relatively low? Relative to the overall width of the ring? Standard Badger rings are .625" wide. Badger MAX-50 rings are 1" wide and ad one more screw. Are Badger MAX-50 rings broken as well?

Per SPUHR instructions: "For higher recoiling guns like .300WM, .338 etc we do highly recommend the use of powdered rosin between the scope and the mount/rings. The powdered rosin have extremely high friction." No mention of "glue," or "deformation," but I do see the "F" word in there (friction).

[elephantrider]

Actually, Geissele is 7.2oz. It's the Nightforce Unimount in the 5.2-5.4oz arena.
https://geissele.com/scope-mounts.html

This places Geissele within 1/2oz of the most popular QD mounts on the market. IMO, not a good place to be, for a fixed mount, considering how proven today's QD options are.

My bad. I was working off of my memory, of what I guess were inaccurate, or mis-understood early reports of it being ~5.2oz. It looks like Geissele decided to make their ring caps and rail clamping interfaces wider than those that you would find on a Badger or NF mount. That and some of the I-beam shapes might explain why it almost comes up to the Badger in weight. Plus it is just flat out longer than the NF.

[WS6]

SPUHR recomends 15-25 in-lbs.
Badger Ordnance: 15 in-lbs., but I've seen as low as 13 in some of their instructions
Leupold: 15-17 in-lbs.
Nightforce: 25 in-lbs.

So how are SPUHR's recommended torque values relatively low? Relative to the overall width of the ring? Standard Badger rings are .625" wide. Badger MAX-50 rings are 1" wide and ad one more screw. Are Badger MAX-50 rings broken as well?

Per SPUHR instructions: "For higher recoiling guns like .300WM, .338 etc we do highly recommend the use of powdered rosin between the scope and the mount/rings. The powdered rosin have extremely high friction." No mention of "glue," or "deformation," but I do see the "F" word in there (friction).

The SPUHR rings are over an inch and a quarter wide. 25% larger area of the scope tube being compressed than the MAX 50. Not only that, but the SPUHR's have ridges to make room for scope glue, etc. in them. This gives you a large amount of tube that is to be deformed, and yet a small surface area. The rigidity of the scope tube, coupled with the narrow spacing between the ridges in the SPUHR, means that the scope tube will not deform into the spaces and add traction. It's like a macro if NiB coating. Peaks and valley's, just on a macro and not a micro scale. Or maybe peaks and a plane. Regardless, they slip more readily than other designs from what I've read, as well as the physics of the beast backing it up, and comments from Mr. SPUHR himself on other forums about the necessity of rosin when no other mount seems to require it on .30 caliber platforms when torqued to spec.

[TomMcC]

Well at my 2/27 3gun match I gave my rifle a quick drop test on the concrete slab (this of course made me very sad). I have an Aero lightweight mount. The rifle fell from about 3ft up when the zipper on my range bag failed and I didn't notice it. The rifle first struck the muzzle break then sort of flopped over onto the left side of the scope buggering up the illumination knob. Not a severe test, but a real world hit. Before leaving the pad I fired a round at a steel target roughly 12" wide by 18" tall at about 250 yds and hit it. I will be going to the range to bench it for a zero test (I must have some peace of mind). I'll let you know how it went in a couple weeks.

Back from the range today, the rifle was hitting about 2.75 " left, right at 9 0'clock at 100 yds. So it doesn't look like it held zero, this is of course is disappointing. The up side is that the shift wasn't so dramatic that the rifle became useless for self defense even at extended range. Further, I don't know if the deflection was a result of the mount or something internal to the scope. Someone with more knowledge about the internals of a scopes would have to comment on that. This of course is all anecdotal, and I don't know how a weightier mount might have fared in the same situation. YMMV