I have a friend at work who claims that he got his AR sighted in “on paper” without a boresighter or initial trip to the range. Is this remotely possible? I am getting a DDM4 in on Thursday and would like to get my EOTech 512 mounted and somewhat straight. Any tips?
Also is there a boresighter that any of you recommend?
Start at 25M with a spotter. You’ll get there faster than you think.
Edit - What kind of optics? I thought you were referring to irons.
The other way of bore sighting is to mount the sight, and then look through the bore at an object such as a corner of your window and then with the upper secured adjust the sight to the same corner. That’s how I did it a number of decades ago and still, once in a while. It usually gets you on paper at 25 yards or so. If he said he did that and got on paper at 100 yards, one of a few things happened, he had a very large paper, he should have bought a lottery ticket, or the truth was stretched a little.
A technique I’ve used was to bore sight the CCO. Shotgun or remove the upper, take out the BCG, secure the upper on a stable platform, pick out an object 50 meters away, look through the bore and align it with the object, then adjust the RDS to the object. This will get you fairly close ‘on paper’ but is not a substitute for actual zeroing with live ammo.
While I’m still laughing, this technique should at least get you close and save you half a box of buck-a-round ammo. There are so many variables in a good zero that burning powder needs to be part of the process.
Moon
This will work,but along with both of these ideals,get a BIG Friggin piece of cardboard & put your target in the middle,even if your 2ft off you will be on paper,adjust from there !!! Happy shooting !!!
It depends on how he does it, for example. The gun shop that mounted my SWFA SS12x42 to my bull barred savage he bore sighted it with one of those things that go into the muzzle and have the lines on it to make sure that your crosshairs are straight.
A trip to the range afterwards put the first three rounds 2 inches lower than the center of the target I was shooting at at 100yds.
Thats pretty good.
Sure. Its called a guess. I just did the same thing with a few new builds. They were mostly within around 12" off, but “on paper”. As long as your “paper” is at least 24" square at 25 yards, any new rifle should be on paper. All of mine started off hitting low with both the RDS and irons. So if your friend “guessed” this, or if he just knows from experience that this is typical, he may have raised his new sight up a bit, and been within a few inches on his first few shots at close range. Still, as others have noted, he’ll still have to burn some powder to really walk it in to where its supposed to be.
Just use rounds to zero
I don’t know which rear sight you have, but center it left to right. If it has elevation adjustments, set it at 300 meters.
Adjust the front sight so the top of the base of the front sight (the part with detent notches) flush with the front sight base, turn it 9 clicks into the base (up according to the arrow). Start at 25 meters (about 82 feet). You should be on paper and reasonably close to start with. Zero the Irons first.
Mount the 512. Align the 512 with Irons and you should be close on it too. Now zero them at the distance you want (there are a lot of threads about correct distance on m4carbine.net).
^^Textbook “boresighting,” right there…
The bolded portion is key; DON’T try to hand-hold the thing to do this, you’d be completely defeating the process.
You will need to shoot to zero. Period. Boresighting and zeroing are two different things. In case it needs to be said, boresighting allows one to save time/rounds during the zeroing proces, but does not replace zeroing.
As for laser boresighters, just about any you find all do the same thing, in the same fashion. Primary difference will be whether it’s an in-muzzle device, or an in-chamber device.
Both work, but I generally advise in-chamber laser boresighters because dry-firing on one of those when you forget to take it out is a less…energetic…response than forgetting an in-muzzle device is still in the bore when you decide to go hot. Don’t laugh too hard, it absolutely happens…
That said, some in-muzzle devices (like the military LBS/PEM-1) come with a streamer-type flag to provide an indicator. Folks STILL forget the things’re in the muzzle…
prone supported at 25 meters i did it the same way in the Military i was on target it less than 10 rounds I used a 300 meter Sight in target i got off here
My brother and I have been doing this for decades, I use it for rifle scopes, ACOGs and red-dot systems. The main thing is to secure the upper or rifle, after that a few live rounds should get you zeroed.
I do this with any new weapon/sight I have. Just like Dash and JSantoro have said make sure the upper/rifle is secured to a stable platform. Then get to a range and finish up properly.
that’s what I was thinking…seems the best way to do it.
Since this can be done about anywhere (at least to the degree that you don’t frighten the neighbors), then a really solid rest should be possible.
I’m even thinking a padded jaw vise to clamp on the barrel.
Moon