Help with a Number 4T

[Peter Laidler]

Right, once again, lets cut out the crap......... It is all rather academic whether a) it's the front pad that's high or, b) the bracket that's faulty or, c) the rear pad that's low because, cutting out the superflous crap again, you CANNOT alter the geometry of the rear pad because there's a bloody great 1/4" BSF hole drilled and tapped.
You cannot alter the bracket because the mating recess and thumbscrew is where it is - so forget it.
All you can do is to alter the front pad by bringing the bracket mounting spigot - the part upon which the bracket rotates - down so that the mechanical axis of the telescope tube which is (or should be) optically matched to the mechanical axis aligns with the bore of the rifle.

There really is no more to it that that. John, you've been sold a pup and I suspect that you have a bog standard No4 that's been made to look like a T. That is only my opinion I have to say. Others with more experience might choose to disagree and I don't mind at all.

What do you do to correct it................? Mmmmmmmmmm. There's only ONE thing that you can do and that is to listen to Big Duke when he says that a couple of mm's error on the rifle/pad/bracket fiting equates to many yards out at 200 yards when you take accumulative error into account and even then, we're not talking linear here, we're talking logarithmetical curved scales. So all you can do is to
a) make a new front pad that mates up to the bodyside and existing screw holes AND
b) ensure that this new front pad is very accurately machined so that when you screw up the front thumbscrew, the collimated graticle falls in the exact vertical linear plane of the bore of the barrel and
c) That the same accurate machining does the same, but this time brings the point of the collimated grat slap bang onto the horizontal linear plane of the bore.

How do you do that and rectify what you've got? You can't. That is why I say in the paper that tells you all in very simple laymans terms how to make a good repro that the first thing to do is to FIT TTHE FRONT PAD, secure it and work from there. You can tilt the front pad left and right by fine hand fitting before you secure it. But you can't do the same with the rear.

Now, please............ let's not have any more cr............. OK, I've said my piece

Oh, and Jimmie Z. There was NEVER, ever, never a replacement pad in any Armourers kit, never, ever, regardless of what anyone has ever told you. In fact, the pads were NEVER, ever even obtainable even from Ordnance. I appreciate that those more experienced than me will dive into their parts list and gleefully point them out together with the part number, but you tell them that Peter said that the parts list was just that. It was a list of PARTS and not a list of AVAILABLE parts.

And RobD. Look at the geometry of those crap and 'real' front pad photos again. You STILL think that this one is the same height? Go on, be honest!