I am thinking about mounting a Bushnell 3x9 AO sportsview on my D27/HS807. The scope rail appears to be attached to the compression tube with 5 spot welds. I am concern that if I tighten BKL rings tight enough to prevent scope movement, the tack welds will bust off. Should I be worried?

In my opinion...yes. I've seen plenty of scopes mounted to these guns with no problems, but it can theoretically cause a problem to have a heavy mount on these.

The rail is really designed for the Diana match sight, which attaches to the rail by pulling the sight up against the dovetail, placing no stress on the welded joint.

The contemporary models 35 and 50, and most more modern Dianas, use a taller rail with a shoulder below the dovetail which eliminates the problem. But the simple direct-mount dovetail on the models 25 and 27 is indeed questionable.

MDriskill,

Thanks for your thoughts. I think that I will play it safe and continue just using the open sights.

Carbon12

My pleasure. I'm probably over-cautious, but one would hate to bugger up this classic rifle.

FWIW, I have a 1981-vintage RWS 27 with the later all-metal rear sight. It's such a fine unit that I have just left it on there.

But I use aperture sights on most of my air rifles. The 27's rail can take the light Beeman sport peep with no problems. It's also a lot of fun to use the gun with the Diana Diopter 75 match sight, which is light, relatively trim, and as I mentioned mounts without stressing the dovetail welds.

Yes,I have seen rails tear off the receiver on these oldies but also on Model 52's,which are held on by three little screws.