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Zeiss ZM / VM rail Mounts

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Pivot Mounts without Bases
One Piece Pivot Mounts
Spare Parts for Pivot Mounts

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The design of the Zeiss ZM/VM rail is a 45° prism with an inner niche for mounting elements. When mounting a rife scope to a rifle with a purposely made rail you can easily see the advantages over the more traditional mounting with rings. For starters its quicker and easier, with no additional tools required for the procedure. The only main disadvantage when compared to rings is the price, which is usually a bit higher than rings, and the availability. Not all manufacturers produce rifle scopes which are fitted with rails. When you are mounting your rifle scope with the Zeiss ZM / VM rail you can clearly see the advantages: it improves the stability of the riflescope, it is more robust and reliable, the riflescopes main tube is not under stress and thus its constructionally intact.

Mounting with a rail does not leave mounting marks on the main tube and it is easier to achieve the proper eye relief. When mounting with a rail you always get a perfect horizontal level as the reticle is aligned with the rail. Mounting with a scope rail solutions is always the preferred way over the mounting with rings and in the future most of the European premium rifle scopes producers will exclusively use this approach. We are waiting on the first scope that will be produced with mounting rail only (apart from Zeiss Diarange which contains laser and cannot be mounted with rings at all). Torque values for tightening the mounting elements in the scope rail should be between 4-5Nm.

The Zeiss ZM/VM rail is the most widespread of all rail mounting solutions and it is being used by the following manufacturers: Zeiss, Docter, Leica, Minox, Steiner, S&B (on some scopes, marker with LMZ), Meopta and Blaser.

The main mounting manufacturers that are producing elements for Zeiss ZM/VM rails are: EAW, Recknagel, MAK, Rusan, Henneberger, Blaser and INNOmount

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VIDEO

Pivot mounts are a special kind of repeatable mounts that are especially popular in Europe and mainly produced by European manufacturers. Most notable among them are German Companies like EAW (Ernst Apel Wurzburg), Recknagel, Henneberger and MAK. These Companies were also among the first to produce mounts of this type. Non German companies like Rusan are also following this trend.

Main benefits of pivot mounts, or swing mounts as they are sometimes called are:

  • 100% repeatability,
  • very quick and easy detaching and reattaching,
  • extremely durable; most mounts of this kind are tested on 10000 or more reattachments,
  • size and weight; light and small, elegant.

There are also some minor weaknesses that such mounts posses and they are: they are usually more expensive than other types of mounts, the installation on the rifle should be done by a skilled gunsmith and most of these mounts are higher than 14 mm.

A distinct feature of pivot/swing mounts is the way the scope attaches to the rifle. The front foot of the mount on the scope is inserted in the front base under a 90 degrees angle to the barrel. Then the entire scope is pivoted around the front base until it is locked into position by the rear base.

Pivot mounts of all types enable windage correction on the rear base at the time of the mounts installation. There are three main types of pivot mounts which are distinguished by the type of the rear base:

  • EAW style rear base: produced by EAW and Rusan,
  • Dovetail rail base: produced by Recknagel, Henneberger, MAK and others.
  • Leupold type rear base