M65 with Scope

Happy that I ran across this site of very knowledgeable folks on my
favorite military trainers.

In particular I purchased my Reising M65 in 1965 from a shooting buddy. He had
a 4X scope on it and after firing it at 50 yards I was taken aback by its
accuracy. Lucky that his attention span in holding onto weapons was around
4 months I picked it up for $50.00 ... minus scope though with Lyman metal
sights.

One of the folks on the Jouster Forum told me the story of some of the M65s
being fitted with scopes and so the fond memory of youth came back, but how
to go about it.

To the rescue. Randomly searching the Net, the search engines the Community would
have killed for in the 1980's, I found on Midway arms a kit consisting of a base that
would fit among many .22's the M65. Onto to there was available an off center attaching
Weaver scope mount for the 1" barrel. In keeping with Midways' great customer service
I got the parts and happily found that the four base mounting screws fit perfectly.

Then it was but a simple effort to mount the Weaver rings to a 4X scope.

The next step was to level the scope. As I do not have nor wish to invest in
a solid bench rifle holder I instead figured out another strategy on how to do the leveling.

Without boring you too much I have two old heavy duty tripods, a massive Bogen
for the old TV cameras with damped head, and another Bogen with ball head.

I attached a collapsable bi-pod onto the barrel ... in front near the sights,
after all I have not lost all my faculties yet :) ... and
after leveling (machinist level, bubble, and an Omega enlarger level)
the two tripod heads I rested the bipod on the heavy duty Bogen and
the butt on the other one.

Next I mounted the bubble level onto the top cap of the scope. With the
crank handles on the two tripods I had height adjustment. To further refine
I hung a plumb bob 50' away and tuned vertical the rotation with the line. Right on.

Next I took the barrel bore laser alignment kit and centered the cross hairs
with the bore.

With this as a starting point I shall be going to the range in the middle of the week to zero
in at 50 yards.

Retirement is such a joy. Every day is a Saturday. :clap:

A question. I will be shooting my old Remington .22s to get rid of the 'flat bed' amount
I bought in prehistoric times for 1 cents a round. Anyone have experience shooting
CCI Blazers from these old Service rifles? Will they damage anything?

Great site. Thanks for inviting me in.