Are there any machinists here?

[Stud Duck]

I'm looking for a machinist that would be willing to take on a small project. Needing two short bars cut from rolled aluminum stock.

If anyone here is interested in helping out a fellow Rokslider, please send me a PM and we'll discuss.

 

[elkliver]

Without knowing details... i don't think you need a machinist. If you need something precise you might look at send cut send website. Otherwise any local fabrication shop could help

 

[Stud Duck]

Without knowing details... i don't think you need a machinist. If you need something precise you might look at send cut send website. Otherwise any local fabrication shop could help

Probably should've provided more detail, but I didn't want to get into the "buy the Wheeler Kit" conversation.

I'm wanting a two-piece scope alignment bar(s) made similar to what Kokopelli used to make.

Didn't know the send-cut-send site existed; good to know.

 

[wapitibob]

Go to a local shop, pay him $50 to turn and face two 30mm bars, about "this long". Tell him to leave the chuck ends raw.

 

[taskswap]

I love SendCutSend (and a few of their competitors) but for what you're doing you probably don't need that. McMaster.com and a few other sites sell inexpensive steel rods for use as axles and similar. The tolerance on their 30mm variant is 0-0.013mm which should be well more than you need and it's only $33/ft:

McMaster-Carr

McMaster-Carr is the complete source for your plant with over 595,000 products. 98% of products ordered ship from stock and deliver same or next day.

www.mcmaster.com

This product has chamfers on the end but it's still a square cut. Since you want two lengths, you could just buy a foot and cut it in half. If you're worried about the accuracy of your own cut, just flip them around and face the two factory ends together. If you want even more precision you could bring this to a machinist and have them just do a quick facing cut on the end to make sure it's true (and remove some chamfer) and still be saving money since it's just one quick operation. By providing him with a high-tolerance source stock, they'd be able to use a collet or 6-jaw chuck without having to true up the source material first. Probably take 2-3 minutes.

 

[wapitibob]

Or if it was me, just buy the 30mm rod from McMaster, barely snug the ring bases, drop in the bar, square the bases to the rod and bypass the back and forth.

 

[Burnsie]

OnlineMetals.com
They sell all sorts of dimensional stock and custom cut. Their cuts are pretty dead on.

 

[taskswap]

Or if it was me, just buy the 30mm rod from McMaster, barely snug the ring bases, drop in the bar, square the bases to the rod and bypass the back and forth.

That definitely saves a step, but IIRC one of the reasons for a two-bar method was when you insert the bar you have to have the scope rings loose, so it can slide in. Scope rings are almost always thin aluminum rings and they have some flex to them. If you put a solid bar in even just loosely enough to slide in, then tighten down the rings, they'll flex to conform and you won't know you have an alignment issue. You'd have to pass a feeler gauge or something between the ring and rod to detect the gap (or maybe a very strong light). You could finesse it if you're careful but it's still not quite as precise. With the two-bar method each ring grabs one bar without deflecting, and then you can visually see if there's an offset.

IMO this is probably all overkill anyway. I admit I'm not a competitive shooter, but mechanically it seems to me that what matters most is precise alignment of the scope rings to the barrel, not to one another. You could have your front ring 0.1 MOA out to the right and your rear ring 0.01 MOA to the left, and that's still fine once you tighten it all down. But if you correct it e.g. tweaking your front ring to take out the difference, now your scope is 0.2 MOA out overall. The bar-stock method of checking alignment doesn't provide for this unless you add some type of fixture to measure that separately. And any offset is going to get dialed out as you zero your scope anyway... It seems to me the only time this level of precision would actually matter is if you're trying to dial in a scope so finely that it needs zero windage correction at all - in which case what's the point of the windage adjustment?

But hey, OP asked about metal, he got a response about metal.