RAfiringline
New member
I bought this rifle about 12 years ago for $90 at Walmart. I've got over 5000 rounds through it, and it's very reliable - the only stoppages are from the occasional dud round.
A few years ago the rear sight fell off (and wasn't fixable) so I converted it to a scoped rifle using the dovetail mount. This didn't work out very well. Despite careful handling, the scope rings would not grip well enough on the dovetail to keep the scope from gradually sliding back on the dovetail - not too satisfactory. In other words, you had to keep messing with the scope ring screws, and shifting the position of the scope, both of which mess with the zero.
I decided to either buy a new 22 with a stock picatinny rail, or convert the Mossberg 702 to having a fixed picatinny mount, somehow. The only 22 rifle I could find with a stock picatinny rail, of interest, also has a lot of operator complaints about feed problems - who needs that?
I had an old dovetail to picatinny adapter mount laying around that previously had not maintained its position on the rifle’s dovetail any better than the scope rings I had on it now, so I decided to see if I could use J-B Weld to solidly fix the thing to my Mossberg 702.
I let it solidify for a few days and mounted the Leupold 2-7 scope that had been on it, and took it to the range to bench sight it in at 100 feet.
The first results were pretty bad, more than a foot off from point of aim, so I brought the scope to mechanical zero and switched the scope ring positions around to see if that might change anything. The next sighting in went fine - she was just a couple inches off from point of aim.
Assuming that the J-B Weld epoxy will hold up for the useful life of the rifle, I took this thing from being effectively useless to being a useful scoped rifle for myself. It's not a bad rifle - it's very reliable and using cheap bulk 22 ammo, it prints 3 shot groups at around 1”, at 100 feet.
I doubt that I'm the only one who has ever run into these kind of problems, so maybe this write-up will be useful to somebody in the future.
A few years ago the rear sight fell off (and wasn't fixable) so I converted it to a scoped rifle using the dovetail mount. This didn't work out very well. Despite careful handling, the scope rings would not grip well enough on the dovetail to keep the scope from gradually sliding back on the dovetail - not too satisfactory. In other words, you had to keep messing with the scope ring screws, and shifting the position of the scope, both of which mess with the zero.
I decided to either buy a new 22 with a stock picatinny rail, or convert the Mossberg 702 to having a fixed picatinny mount, somehow. The only 22 rifle I could find with a stock picatinny rail, of interest, also has a lot of operator complaints about feed problems - who needs that?
I had an old dovetail to picatinny adapter mount laying around that previously had not maintained its position on the rifle’s dovetail any better than the scope rings I had on it now, so I decided to see if I could use J-B Weld to solidly fix the thing to my Mossberg 702.
I let it solidify for a few days and mounted the Leupold 2-7 scope that had been on it, and took it to the range to bench sight it in at 100 feet.
The first results were pretty bad, more than a foot off from point of aim, so I brought the scope to mechanical zero and switched the scope ring positions around to see if that might change anything. The next sighting in went fine - she was just a couple inches off from point of aim.
Assuming that the J-B Weld epoxy will hold up for the useful life of the rifle, I took this thing from being effectively useless to being a useful scoped rifle for myself. It's not a bad rifle - it's very reliable and using cheap bulk 22 ammo, it prints 3 shot groups at around 1”, at 100 feet.
I doubt that I'm the only one who has ever run into these kind of problems, so maybe this write-up will be useful to somebody in the future.
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