Adjustable cheek-rest

[The Annoyed Man]

Just out of curiosity, and not trying trying to be rude, why would you go through the severe process of adding an adjustable cheek rest - when you have so much clearance to run shorter rings?

I can't speak to the rings on Andy's rifle, but if you look at the picture of my Remington 700 below, you'll see that the rings are already low, and I need to add a cheek rest to my stock also. The scope is a 5-20x50mm SWFA SSHD with a milling reticle:



There are several issues at play here.....

1. With riflescopes having a 50mm objective lens and a heavy barrel, low-mount rings can't always be used because the diameter of the bell of the objective lens is too big and won't clear the top of the barrel. My Remington in this picture has a heavy barrel, and you can plainly see from this picture that this 50mm objective lens scope would not normally have fit over the receiver/barrel with the low-mount rings I am using.
2. The reason the scope/ring combination on this rifle does clear the barrel is that I've added a 20 MOA rail. This rifle is set up for long-range use, and I wanted the rail there to give me more elevation adjustment at longer ranges. But, the addition of the rail does raise the scope body up that much more, making the ring-height more like a medium height instead of low mount.
3. Could I have gone for a lower-magnification scope with a smaller 42mm objective lens, low-mount rings, and no 20 MOA rail? Sure, I could have.....and lots of very well-trained long range shooters who are much more competent than myself use such scopes. But like a lot of aging shooters with fading eyesight, higher magnification levels and the greater light-gathering capabilities of a 50mm objective lens make it possible to continue enjoying this aspect of the sport.
4. The height of this scope as is never used to bother me when shooting from a bench, but when I started getting some training in longer-range shooting, I was trained to shoot from the prone. On the bench, the cheek-weld is just a tad bit high, but not so high as to make for a poor shooting position. But a prone position places a whole new set of demands on the neck muscles. You are essentially having to crane your head backwards relative to your shoulders and torso in order to get your eye into the eye-box for a good sight picture. This can be tiring even for a younger, fitter person than myself. For someone my age, with an arthritic neck (heck, my entire spine) and poorer conditioning, keeping my neck craned like that gets to be excruciating after a couple of hours of shooting. Instead of being able to rest my cheek on the stock, I'm having to hold it just above the stock.........and all these brains of mine weigh a lot.

I don't need more than about a 1/2" of padded comb on the stock to accomplish the task, so I'm going to take my instructor's advice and add such a pad. He suggested taking an old mouse-pad and some 3M adhesive spray, cutting it into pieces correctly shaped/sized for my need, and building the pad up a layer at a time until it fits me right. I have such a mouse-pad laying around unused. It's made of black neoprene, with a satiny finish on the "mouse-side", and it's about 1/8" thick. It's large enough to cut it into 4 or 5 strips which I can layer accordingly, using 3M spray to glue them together, and to fix it to the stock. But I also have a Beartooth Products neoprene sleeve that slips over a couple of provided foam pads that will accomplish the same thing, but the pads are about 1/2" thick when not compressed under the sleeve. I'll probably try that first since it is a quick fix. If the provided foam pads are not right, I'll go with the strips of mouse-pad material and then use the neoprene sleeve to hold them in place.

And with a bolt action rifle, it's important to remember that the bolt can't be removed if it won't clear the cheek-rest. With an adjustable one like Andy's, that's a non issue. With a more semi-permanent one like mine will be, I have to be mindful of that. It's worth noting, by the way, that a lot of custom rifle stocks come with an adjustable comb. Heck, even my over/under shotgun came with an adjustable comb.

[The Annoyed Man]

Excellent combo.
I'm having a similar issue with my RPR - not sure why ruger felt a full length 20 moa rail was appropriate for a bolt gun, different strokes for different folks. The rifle already has an adjustable comb - but I'm about to ditch the factory railed handguard so I can lower my scope another half inch.

I think that Andy's stock has more drop to it than either your Ruger's or my Remington's. My Remington came with a HS Precision varmint profile stock, with little or no drop to it. So between the greater drop at the stock, and the higher rings, Andy's situation is more pronounced than yours or mine.

Edited to add:
I've just put on the neoprene sleeve with one of the two provided pads underneath it, and included some pictures of the set up.......Ok....so maybe it's a little gun-porn...... Imagine that the top of the stock's OEM comb runs in a straight horizontal line from front to back, with no drop:



You can see that, even with the bolt opened all the way to the rear, there is still enough room to pull the bolt out of the action:


Close up view:


View from behind:


View from above and behind:


View from in front:


Anyway, I tried proning out with the setup with just one pad, and it feels better, but I'm not certain that it's right yet. I'll have to shoot it this way first. I forgot I had this thing just laying around in a box of parts. I had originally purchased it for my old M1A before I chucked it for a Karsten's cheek rest. The stock on this Remington is just too nice to drill into, so unless a gunsmith modified it with some kind of aftermarket adjustable system, I'll refrain from getting another Karsten's rest. But this Beartooth setup is nice and sleek, with no snaggy bits, and it doesn't snatch my beard off my face, so I reckon I'll go with this setup and adjust it as necessary.

Again, here is a link to that product for anyone who's interested: https://www.beartooth-products.com/coll ... loop-black

[The Annoyed Man]

That looks pretty good, actually.

Now, if it were ME, I'd be wrapping layers of cardboard and duct tape on it... on your rifle, of course

heh heh......

Duct tape shall never darken my rifle. NEVER!!!

[Jusme]

If you do have to build it up further and don't want to have to glue everything down look into velcro tape to secure things together. Easier to adjust as needed, and the adhesive will be easier to remove, than glue, or contact cement.