Getting the Best of Screws

It flew swiftly, and low. It might have been a bird. But when it ricocheted off my noggin into the bush, it didn’t feel like feathers. It was my rifle-scope.

Once you put something together, you expect it to stay that way, right? Well, such naivety won’t cement your marriage. Nor will it ensure your rifle will shoot where you look, or even hang onto its sight.

The .416 Rigby had shrugged violently at every blast. I’d endured the recoil without a thought to the violence visited on the screws holding its scope in place. Once that mayhem had opened a whisker of slack, the result was certain. Each subsequent shot slammed the screws’ threads – tiny inclined planes no longer bound by tension against their mating surfaces – hard enough to spin them incrementally outward.

It happened to me again. Not at the bench this time, but in the field. Call me a slow learner.

Dusk was pulling the shades when