Using a flashlight to sight my rifle

I just got a cool story to share.

I started hunting 3 years ago and it was hunting that turned me into a flashaholic. I just purchased a 17 hmr rifle yesterday and I needed to sight it in for a hunting trip tomorrow. My original plan was to wait until tomorrow and use an hour or so to sight my rifle in the woods. The downside would be that I would cut into my morning hunting time and I don't want to do that.

So I needed to figure out away to sight my rifle before tomorrow. There are many options (ranges, laser bore sights, etc) but time and money are limiting factors for me. I decided to search the internet for solutions and someone mention waiting until dark and using a street light. The basic idea is to have the light from the street light shine down the barrel of the rifle onto the firing pin, then look through the sight and adjust it to the street light.

My first thought was, "What a bad idea…" The street lamp is going to be blinding and it's too large. There were a whole bunch of other reasons why I thought this wasn't a great idea, but I won't list them all.

That's when I had an epiphany. I could use a flashlight and do the same thing. Only the light will be stronger, smaller and I could turn it off when looking through the sight. I decided to use my modified aspheric Dorcy MetalGear and it took about 15 minutes to setup and make the adjustments I needed from 20 yards.

But now I had to test my method, so I grabbed another rifle that was sighted in properly. I aimed at the light through the scope and when I turned on the light, it made a perfect circle on the firing pin.

I'm not sure if the method is going to work, but it should get me closer than where I was before.

I know I'll still have to take a few shots tomorrow to zero in the scope, but it shouldn't take too long. (I hope)

I'll let everyone know how well it worked later this week.

Cool idea! Never thought of that. :twothumbs

Very interesting idea...be sure to post how things go and how well the method worked. Gotta love the .17 HMR for varmint hunting! :thumbsup:

-Robert

Actually, using a far off streetlight is a great way to bore sight a bolt action rifle. So is a bright star or anything else far off. If it is daylight out, even the center of an 8.5"x11" blank piece of white paper on a contrasting background @ 100 meters works well. Keep in mind that the center bore of the rifle is roughly anywhere from 3 to 6 centimeters away from the center of the scope, so if you use something closer to sight in, understand the ballistics of your particular rifle round and look for the crossover point of the bullet travel/line-of-sight (often around 25 meters) and use that distance for bore sighting. Perhaps that's where the flashlight (or laser spot against a wall) would come in handy. Good luck.

It got me on paper. It took me 6 shots to sight it in from 40 yards. Not bad I guess. My first shot was from 30 yards and I was high and to the left by 3 inches. It took about 10 minutes from start to finish.

I have used a similar method to boresight a bolt action .50 cal, although it was daylight and the target was a 55 gallon drum @ 1000 yards. Traditional [shoot, group, adjust] type of sighting in gets expensive on a .50. We were able to get within 1 foot in windage and 2 feet in elevation at 1000 yards using this method. I suppose if we were doing this at night, a light source would be more appropriate