Our friend Norman Griffitts of Southern Precision Tooling produces a couple of scope-base holding fixtures that are incredibly useful to practicing gunsmiths. These are available in a couple of different styles and solve the thorny problem of holding dovetail bases in a mill vise for common milling and drilling operations. Where you are faced with an installation for which no commercial bases are available, then a base must be modified to suit. There are a couple common base types encountered.
With the black gun craze came the Picatinny rail which is used to attach every conceivable accessory. From time to time, some accessory will need to be adapted to some gun and no such base exists. With these holding fixtures, available blank base material is precisely and securely held for milling and drilling operations on both top and bottoms of the bases. The contoured clamping surfaces will not abuse the usual aluminum dovetail surfaces. This pattern of fixture is best used in pairs since some of the bases can be quite long. Most 6 in. mill vises will accommodate a pair and also allow for tapered cuts.
Many hi-power and vintage rifles still use the old classic 1/2 in. (actually just slightly smaller) dovetail bases which accommodate a wide variety of target-style iron sights and traditional scopes with exterior adjustments such as those made by Lyman, Unertl Winchester and others. Quite often, these are applied to both barrels and receivers so are often of different heights or even tapered to a specific barrel. Some of the shorter bases (as to height) are impossible to hold in a mill vise without damage. These holding fixtures allow access to both upper and lower surfaces and make drill/counterbore and tapering ops a snap. Since these mounts are usually used in pairs and neither is very long, one fixture will do. The bases, including blanks for custom applications, are available through Steve Earle Products.
Steve Earle Products 24 Palmer Rd. Plympton, MA 02367 781-585-3929 www.steveearleproducts.com