Further Information

The Daisy 853 is a .177" (4.5mm) caliber air rifle. It's designed for the 10m matches, and is considered to be quite precise in its price and weight class. This series of articles will explore the Daisy 853 and air rifles in general. This particular article will look into the rifle itself. 

The M14 and M1A rifles do not normally have a Picatinny rail. They're not quite built for easy installation of a scope by other means, either. Still, these rifles are not without hope in the field of attached optics. Using the existing architecture of the rifle, it's possible to attach all the mounting equipment necessary to install a rail. 

The latest edition of the 6X Short Malcolm scope is a studious, well-mannered look back at the era of rifle telescopes, around the years 1865-1880. Built around an old design and using the latest materials, this scope is built to help you reach out and touch something.

The TD3 is an open red dot designed for fast acquisition and a large window size (28x19mm!), while mounting with as low a profile as possible. Commonly, this red dot will be mounted on a pistol slide that is cut to fit an RMR-profile optic. Find out more about the TD3 here!

You might imagine that finding a range in the city is hard enough. That’s certainly true. Even out past the edge of the city, most ranges taper off around 600 or 650 yards. Chris had been getting too comfortable with those distances, so we needed to find a stretch of land to give him a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, Southern California has a pretty good patch of desert that calls it home. 

When we set up an A.R.T. Scope at the range, we tend to follow the same pattern each time. First the mounting, which has its own steps, setting the CAM, then the close zero and actual zero, the confirmation and adjustment, and finally tuning the CAM and taking the scope out to distance. If you're unfamiliar with the ART scope line, this may seem like an odd series of steps. We thought it might be helpful to film our full setup while talking through what to look for (see the video embedded above), and take the room here to flesh out a few more details. 

A while back, we took a look at one of our show demo rifles (a lovely 1885 High Wall, with the firing pin missing) and decided it was time to turn it back into a real rifle. I particularly wanted to feel the punch of some .45-70. There's just something magical about sending a heavy piece of lead really far away.
So began the Century and Counting project.

Old rifles (and their modern-day reproductions) often have just as much capability to reach out to long distance and touch something. If you're thinking about mounting a scope on your rifle, you may need to drill and tap your barrel or receiver - or use a no-machining kit, to keep your rifle unaltered. Different rifles have wildly different manufacturing setups and can even vary in screw and dovetail size. Whatever the case may be, this list endeavors to be comprehensive. It won't start that way, though - we'll be adding rifles to this list and including whatever relevant mounting information we can get our hands on.