When staying in Germany with a friend who owned quite few very nice guns and plenty of scopes he got me to mount Weaver bases on a few of his rifles as he had come to see the real benefits of low and securely mounted scopes when hunting out here in NZ. As an aside, he also came to see the benefits of good crisp single triggers instead of some of the complex and fiddly double trigger mechanisms that prevail in Europe on many firearms.

To go with his low Weaver rings (the steel strap type) which in earlier years were also made in 26mm tube size, he wanted to use a couple of his expensive rail scopes. We had no access to a mill or lathe so did the aluminium rail removal by use of a coarse file after carefully checking eye relief and scope position and then only removing enough of the rail at each point of ring attachment.

After quite a time sitting in his little cottage in the Black Forest filing away at the rail and sanding to a smooth finish, careful not to touch the scope tube, the deed was done and touched up with a application of matt black paint.

Mounted low in Weaver rings the scopes looked made for the job and he was most happy with our little but careful butchery of his rail scopes.

So if you have a favourite railed scope and want to change to another ring style, it can be done and a lot of the rail left so in the future the 'old' mount system could probably still be used. Just use a lathe or mill to be a bit more professional than we were