I was wondering what you guys thought about cantileiver barrel mounts.. I have one on my beretta and I can actually push down on the scope and move it slightly.. gun shoots great but it kinda bugs me a bit.. anyone ever try removing the mount from the barrel and having the receiver drilled and tapped? I will never swap barrels so having the mount on the receiver seems ideal to me..any thoughts? Thanks!
I had the same issue with the 2 slug guns we have cantilever mounts on, and while it's really not an issue, as the cantilever is somewhat 'springy', if you will for the lack of a better term, I didn't like the gap between it and the receiver. What I did was cut and fit a small flat bushing from a nylon cutting board to the bottom of the cantilever so it can't be pushed against the receiver. I cut it, sanded it for a precise fit and crazy glued it to the bottom of the cantilever. It doesn't make the cantilever mount any stronger, but it does prevent it from being able to be pushed down against the receiver. It also doesn't change the fact that a cantilever isn't the strongest mount in the world, and because it is springy, it can be bent, either sideways or upwards, so you need to tend to treat a cantilever mount somewhat gently in my opinion. I took take a few pics, hopefully it will give you a good idea of what I did:
And now I have to respectfully disagree with all the negativity in a few posts here about a scope being mounted on the receiver of a slug gun. I've been playing with slug guns since the early 60's, and can go back to when Hastings introduced the first rifled barrel, and sabot slugs weren't even thought of yet, let alone a cantilever mount on a slug barrel.
Hastings advertisements back on those days, claimed you could increase accuracy 350% with the addition of a rigidly mounted scope on your slug gun, and using Winchester foster slugs. And guess what? The only way you were going to do that was to drill and tap the receiver. And what they were really saying was that if you mounted a scope to your slug gun properly, you really didn't need their rifled barrel.
If your barrel is a sloppy fit, then you have a problem that you can't blame a receiver mounted scope for, either pin the barrel or get rid of it and get a gun with a tighter fitting barrel/receiver. In my experience, if you have the proper fit of barrel to receiver, pinning isn't necessary for the degree of accuracy you need.
I have a Remington 870 smoothbore slug gun that I bought brand new in the mid 70's and the first thing I did to it was drill and tap the receiver and mount a scope. Still have the gun and to this day, I have never had to readjust the scope after removing and replacing the barrel.
Winchester has produced a LOAD of 1300 pump slug guns with drilled and tapped receivers(I know, me and the kids own 3 of em), I have never heard of an issue of a 1300 not being able to hold zero. 2 of our 1300's we have both a smoothbore and rifled barrels for, along with separate scopes mounted in weaver style rings, we swap scopes and barrels all the time, never had a problem holding zero, so much so that we don't even need to check anymore. After all, Weavers were the first of the 'quick remove and return to zero' rings and bases.
Also have several slug guns that we utilize the weaver 'converta mount' on. Thats the saddle mount that mounts to the side of the receiver with a flat base and the saddle/scope screws onto the base with the 2 thumbscrews. Another excellent mount for a multi purpose shotgun that holds zero no problem.
As I said, we've done this enough that we don't even have to check zero anymore when taking barrels/scopes off and on our slugguns, we've proven it out over the years from rigorous testing that they do hold zero.
Unless we hunt in an area where we are assurred of getting a shot in excess of 100 yards we tend to take a smoothbore slug barrel and foster slugs, which means in reality, that 95% of the time, we're using a slug gun that has a scope mounted to the receiver.
As an example, number one son has my first shotgun, an Ithaca 37 12 gauge, 1963 vintage. He has a 28 inch vent rib barrel, a hastings rifled cantilever barrel(shown in above pics), and a smoothmore slug barrel with a weaver converta mount on the side of the receiver. He shoots a limit of pheasants on a Saturday with the bird barrel, and on Sunday night, mounts the smoothbore slug barrel and Weaver converta mount with Bushnell Banner 1.5X4.5 variable. He goes out Monday and shoots a doe at 128 lasered yards, yes lasered, he's not guessing, one shot bang flop. We also practice at that range, it's certainly not cost prohibitive with smoothbore barrels and foster slugs.
Don't tell me a properly adjusted and tuned slug gun with a scope mounted on the receiver won't hold zero, because it just taint so.
