Picatinney versus Weaver Rail

D

dontcatchmany

New member
I pretty much know the differences between a picatinney and a weaver, but for a bolt action rifle what would be the advantages of one over the other.

Mostly talking two piece rails here.

A scope manufacturer is recommending a picatinney over a weaver for their scope on my Savage and I got interested in the differences.

Thanks again in advance for all of your knowledge.
 
If you use any of the "mil spec" mounts or rings, you may have troubles with the Weaver. I had a lot of troubles with the rail on my SOCOM, and none of my mounts made for the picatinny/mil spec rails would fit properly. My LaRue lever mount would not go on at all.

Now if you use Weaver rings, they will work on both without trouble, or at least the ones Ive used have.
 
From messing around with bunches of bolt-action rifles these last fifty or so years, I wouldn't use anything but two-piece scope bases. To me, one-piece bases just add weight and get in the way of loading or checking to see if the rifle is loaded.

YMMV.
 
In a nutshell, Weaver bases have irregularly spaced crossbolt slots, and the slots are rounded rather than squared at the bottom. Picatinny rails have regularly spaced slots, so a wide variety of accesories can be attached and positioned for best functioing. Weaver rings will fit Picatinny rails, but Picatinny/STANAG accessories will not fit on Weaver bases. The advantage goes to the Picatinny rail due to the increase in the range of adjustments. But in real life, there are few occasions where the Weaver bases will not work, and Picatinny rails look very utility-grade to me. Besides, I like 2-piece Redfield bases, they just look right.
 
One advantage of picatinny over weaver is if you wanted to use one scope for different guns that had picitinny rails this is easily done because the cross slots are all the same on a picitinny rail. In other words if you wanted to drop some coin on a really nice scope and use it for mutible guns it's easily done.
 
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