I snagged a fixed-power 4x24 PSOP last October ahead of deer season, for my Saiga. It's pure sexeh. I love that thing.

But, recently I noticed it wasn't holding zero, and part of the dovetail bracket on the scope has been peened or scraped down. It's causing the scope to push out and then past the 'corner' on the rifle's rail that is supposed to prevent it from moving farther forward. That throws the horizontal alignment off - way off.

The optic itself is like new and I love it, but the mounting bracket won't stay in place reliably anymore because of this. I tightened the scope in place according to the manual (and checked it against Tantal's instructions on his Kalashnikov / Dragunov page), and I haven't shot any recoil-heavy loads out of my Saiga - just Wolf and Barnaul milspec, plus a mag or so of Barnaul HP hunting loads which are 124 gr versus 123 gr.

The kicker is, I've got a weaver-rail top Belarussian mount that also fits on that dovetail. I have a cheap red-dot on that (which has held up surprisingly well). The same thing has happened to that mount. Is it my rifle, or am I not tightening it right? I snugged it down like the manual said, so I can't imagine it's from over-tightening or something...

I already emailed the company I bought it through - from everything I've heard, they'll make it 110% right, so I'm not going to name names. I'm positive this is a fluke (or even potentially my fault, although I have no clue how).


Any ideas what the heck's going on?


Here's some pictures:

I noticed I was having a problem with my scope a while back too. I ended up covering the entire slotted section in machinist blue and checked it for clearance. It turns out that I had a bunch of high spots and shit. I took a file to the high spots until everything was making contact evenly. Now it's fine.

I'm having a similar problem with my POSP (8x42) on my .308. I don't know if it's the mount or what. I have the vertical adjustment cranked all the way up (sorry, don't know what the technical term is for the vertical adjustment, I'm new to optics), and it's still not able to zero in, according to the cheap-o laser bore sighter that sticks in the end of the barrel. I'm thinking of buying one of the bore sighter's that's a .308 shell with a laser pointer inside it. I don't know what those are called either.

If you're checking it with a laser bore sighter the scope should line up with the laser at 100 yards. If you're setting it up at 50 yards like I did, you want to have the laser 2" under the reticle of the scope. I'm assuming you already know how to get more adjustment out of the scope. If you're not sure how to get more adjustment out of it shoot me a pm.

is there such a thing as "over tightening it"? just curious.

Essentially it's just a nut and bolt, so yeah, you could overtighten it. It would be near impossible though seeing as you use your fingers to move the latch. I doubt you could get enough torque on it with just 2 of your fingers.

Getting back to the OP's original problem. You could take a sharpie or whatever and just color in the flat spots on the brackets and slide it on and off a couple of times. I am sure the flat spots are not making even contact.

It's not an incomplete contact problem, it's that part of the bracket has been scraped away (probably by recoil slamming it into the rifle's dovetail bracket). And now it won't stay in position because the scraped area jumps the corner on the rifle under recoil.

Here's a top view diagram. Red is the scope bracket, blue is the rifle's dovetail bracket.

Brother looks like you havent push the mount all the way on the rail, as the part you are showing on the
picture is not the stop of the mount on the rifle rail, if you using that part to stop the
mount on the rail that is why is shave.

The rail stop is all the way in the back inside the braket on the scope mount.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Oh, poop.

It does appear that I hath screweth up.




...Yep, on further inspection, after filing down that burr and persuading the mount all the way forward with a rubber mallet, it looks like:
- not only were the bracket and rail in need of some de-burring,
- I didn't have it all the way forward (because it wouldn't go all the way forward by hand),
- AND I'd bent the scope mounting brackets by tightening them when they weren't on all the way.

FIXED! De-burred and tapped both of my mounts (POSP and Belarussian MTK-83 rail) all the way on with a rubber mallet to de-bend them. Tapped them back off because they were too tight to remove by hand. Tapped them back on. Now they're very, very stiff, but removable by hand, they're un-bent, and they're aligned.

And to top it off, Kalinka Optics got back to me very quickly and is sending me a replacement lower bracket set for my POSP, for free. I need to call them and let them know I've discovered my screwup, so I can pay them properly for those parts and postage.

On an unrelated note, this household is now an all-Kalinka family. Superprops to them and their awesome no-questions customer service.