My Garand had been in quarantine for years due to the fact I could no longer see iron sights. Finally, I decided to do something about it. Read about the Ultimak, but 1) Not a fan of scout scopes and 2) Unsure of how they secure the mount to barrel. Original handguard is held in place by a spring "C" clip that fits in two grooves in the barrel and front fits in the rear barrel band. Part of the accurizing procedure is to glue the rear handguard in the barrel band and assure read end does not butt up against receiver. This eliminates movement of handquard, but is a fairly fragile link and would not support the added weight of an optic hanging on it. Perhaps Ultimak has devised a stronger clamp of sorts to hold base solid??? Still, as LoonWulf stated, scout scopes are not my thing, either.
When Burris introduced their Fastfire II, the size/shape got me to thinking it might replace the rear sight of a Garand using the existing holes for elevation pinion in ears of receiver to hold a special base in place. Sure enough, it would fit.
I made a wooden model of the base I wanted, took it and my Garand to a gunsmith friend and asked him to machine the base from aluminum. A couple of months later, he advised me it was completed.
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First mounted a FFII, which worked, but the red dot was a bit too large and beginning cataracts cause the starburst the LoonWulf has experienced. Better than irons, but still not quite target quality. A bit of scrounging in my junk box turned up a Millett red dot sight. Hmm, it would fit and not interfere w/clip loading/ejection
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Clean red dot helped accuracy, but my 80 YO eyes sure could use some help. If only someone made a compact red dot w/a little magnification. Oh well, I can shoot targets about as well as I could w/iron sights so I was pretty proud of the accomplishment and, thinking that there must be others out there w/same problem that might like to tackle such a project, posted pictures online.
To my surprise, someone posted a link to Hopco announcement they would soon be offering a very similar mount at a reasonable price. (In fact it was within a few bucks of what I had in mine)
https://m14forum.com/modern-m14/107947-hopco-usa-micro-red-dot-sight-mount-m1-m1a-m14-platform.html Had the Hopco been available, I would have jumped on it rather than build one myself.
A year or so went by and I discovered the Primary Arms 3x compact scope and the Garand graduated from plinking to some serious paper punching to predator rifle in one fell swoop.
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The coyote in post 4 above was first for the Primary Arms and was taken @ 175 yards, and removal of the two pivot screws on scope base allows iron sights to be installed (about a 10 minute job), restoring the rifle to original configuration.
Regards,
hps
