I have heard some people critisize the Diana scope rail but I have never had one come loose myself, and never heard of any one coming loose so why are machined rails better?
Barry.
From what I can figure out, the rails on Dianas are primarily intended for a rear aperture sight more than for a scope. They could probably be a bit more robust. A perceived "weakness" is the large screw at the rear of the rail which is supposed to be for the sight and not a scope stop. If used for the latter, it has been known to shear off. Personally, I prefer scope rails and not receiver grooves.
My 460 R model came with slightly elongated scope stop holes - I thought it was worse than it was. I called Umarex and asked if I could replace it. They advised that just taking those little phillips head screws off would not remove it (if I could even get them off....). That was enough to stop me.
The general complaint is the stop holes are too shallow to do a good job of holding the stop pin. The Leapers Droop mount solves that by the front overhang used in conjunction with a stop pin (as well as a substantial rail clamp). The Leapers one piece mount works with a substantial rail clamp and positioning the pin at the rear of the hole to start. The RWS droop compensated mount uses two stop pins the size of the holes as well as substantial rail clamp. I swap two piece rings with my Talons so the RWS guns have a stop pin per ring and the Talons have none....lots of relatively easy solutions!
There is no nice way of putting it about the scope mounting of a Diana gun, the provison they have used now for many years as Redfeather mentioned is the serrated dovetail scope rail, if this rail was always inteneded for aperture sights it still fails. I have a Diana 65 which is a Giss gun which has no recoil and the rear sight still loosened up. Why? because they had a large thumb wheel on the old sight which was made to lock into the serrations of the scope rail to hold it in place which has coarse threads and still unthreaded even on my match gun! If you put a old Diana Aperture sight on a new sporter you would have to loc tite the thumb wheel threads, shure it will hold the serrations but what good is that if the thumb wheel unthreads on you without loc tite. No they never really thought of scope use on their guns and there have been so many problems. Sporters can have aperture type sight but how many people want those type of sights on a rifle for sport or hunting? And even if they use them with aperture sights over there the barrels from all of these guns I have owned not only have to be corrected for droop but also for windage and that goes for the 75 match gun, bottom line is they probably press the barrels in crooked and do not worry about it. Untill Tom Gaylord quits defending these guns for having crooked barrels and someone tells Diana hey put your barrel in straight nothing is going to change.
Not had the rail come loose, but one problem encountered on my 54 is that the rail is not mounted centrally - it is angled to the right thus it creates cross over.
One problem, peculiar and specific to the American market is the use of very large and heavy scopes in recoiling airguns.
Yes, there is a value to higher magnification, but higher magnification will never replace good marksmanship. There used to be a time when 4X was enough for anything and aperture sights were regarded as almost as good as a scope.
We now want 12X if not 24X as an airgun scope and even though we KNOW that those heavy things have too much inertia and will, in the end, get destroyed, we still want them.
But let's get to the rail itself:
The rail is a metal piece machined from solid. It is not that hard as steels go, so it may get dented if you are careless. The three "screws" on the top are not screws, they are rivets. They need the "phillips" screw head for the machine that positions the rail and rivets the attachments. Rivets are places like construction rivets, HOT. And when the whole thing cools down, the tension of the rivets is enough to hold almost anything in place. Except large, heavy scopes.
Yes, I've had a few rails come loose and yes, I've repaired them, it is not that hard. You clean everything real well, tap the holes, align everything and mark the spots (if you want, you can droop it, but there are better solutions to the droop "problem"). Then you spread JB weld on the rail and attach, checking that you are well aligned. Of course the prior check is to make sure that the screws have been cut to the right length, otherwise they will interfere with the gun's working.
My 52 had rail problems after about 20,000 rounds of heavy usage with a Mil-Spec HorusVision 4-16X56 scope (well over 30 ounces). Since then it has sported several, lighter scopes without ANY problem.
Nowadays there are compact/light scopes with plenty of magnification, so I do not see any reason to change the current arrangement, or to make a serious comment to Diana on this point, but I may be wrong, it's a question of discussing this at length, seriously.
As I sometimes use a heavy scope on my 460, but I have a lighter scope on my TX so I think that I will swap it over after your tip, only problem is the weight of the TX.
Thanks Hector.
Barry.
As I sometimes use a heavy scope on my 460, but I have a lighter scope on my TX so I think that I will swap it over after your tip, only problem is the weight of the TX.
Thanks Hector.
Barry.