Originally Posted by lemoyne

There is a procedure that I have found makes a quite of bit of difference for me.
I take the tops off the rings make sure that all the mating surfaces are clean mount the bottoms on the scope mounts pushing the forward and holding them there [this is the direction of recoil and removes any slack. After doing this with both ring bases i put the scope on square it and adjust for eye relief then clamp the upper half of the rings down evenly to the standard torque. When removing the scope from the gun and cleaning or what ever I then clean the mating surfaces that are exposed slide the scope onto the mounts and sidle it forward tight as it can be held and lock it down while holding it there. Properly done this should reduce your error to a fraction of an inch.