Customer Reviews

Bushnell Laser Boresighter

5 star:		(97)
4 star:		(73)
3 star:		(52)
2 star:		(39)
1 star:		(88)

 

 

I gave this 5 stars because I figured out how to resolve the problems associated with it. First, the on/off switch is horrible. The sight uses small batteries that fit into a tube and are held in place by a pointed contact and a spring. When you turn the knob to off it pulls the batteries away from the contact (feels firm). When the unit is on the knob allows the contact to connect and the knob feels loose.

The whole unit easily pries out with a small screwdriver and one can clean the contacts and lengthen the spring a bit. This will take the vagueness out of the switch and stop the laser from being intermittent.

Also, don't use an adaptor that fits exactly. Use a size smaller and adjust it until it fits the bore properly. That means tight enough to center but not so tight it gets stuck in there. If you find the exact size without having to adjust it and you force it in the barrel it may get stuck. It also takes a bit of effort to put the adjusting screws in the adaptors (one screw for each adaptor). Once in they will stay put with the adaptor.

Finally, while this is a red laser you do not have to bore sight your gun or rifle indoors or at night. It will reflect back in broad daylight against anything that's reflective, like a traffic sign. The neighbors may think you're nuts but it works great.

Once you overcome the funky switch, it works great. Just remember you will have to go out to the range to do your final adjustments. No boresight is perfect. They just get you close.

This boresighter is not too bad when you make a couple of modifications. The first involves that silly cam switch that so many have mentioned. Well, the fix is pretty simple - a small metal washer. Find a common metal washer (thin - about 1 mm) that is the same diameter as the LR44 battery and use it as a spacer between the switch cam and the battery.

Here's how to do it. Remove the battery compartment by gently prying the rear of the compartment forward and up. Remove the three batteries, drop in the washer, replace the batteries and then re-install the battery compartment. Now the rotary cam switch will work properly and positively.

Next, the spuds are easy to use, but not necessarily intuitive. First, you have to thread the bolts into the spuds. Be sure to use the longer bolts in the longer spuds - the length difference isn't very obvious until you compare them side-by-side. The idea here is to get each spud mated with its own bolt so that about 1/16" of threads protrude from the split ends of the spud. Then, you can thread the spud on the tapered end of the boresighter and the taper will open the spud to fill the appropriate bore.

As a previous reviewer mentioned, select a spud that's smaller than the bore. Then thread the spud onto the boreighter's tapered end until the taper opens it enough to fit firmly (but not too firmly...) into the bore. Once you place it into the bore and seat the boresighter in the muzzel, a small 1/4-1/2 clockwise turn will further expand the spud inside the bore to hold it tightly until bore-sighting duties are complete. Once done, twist the boresighter counter-clockwise to collapse the spud slightly so that the assembly will slide easily from the bore.

Easy stuff!

Let's start out by reminding everyone that this is $25 and not $300. Try to remember this. I've read most of the negative reviews, which prompted me to write this one. Yes, I own and have used this product many times. Bushnell had to find a way to manufacture this product cheaply so that they could offer it to you at this price. Do you all still remember, it's $25. OK, don't look at the front and say it's misaligned because the laser lens isn't centered in the opening of the housing. Doesn't mean a thing. Don't say the arbors fit loosely in the bore because they are expandable. That means you take the one that most closely matches the diameter of the bore, screw it onto the end of the bore sighter until it makes contact with the taper, and then continue to turn it down with the Allen wrench so that it begins to expand. Keep checking the amount of expansion until it fits your bore. And for gods sake, don't spin it in your drill to check calibration. You can't do that. You are assuming the housing is PERFECTLY machined. It isn't. The stem is thin and not perfectly straight. The factory calibration takes place between the TWO tapers in the housing. This eliminates any misalignment in the thin shaft. Clamping on the stem doesn't compensate for this error, not to mention that if you accidentally spin it fast enough you will do irreparable damage to the housing. DON'T DO IT! These bore sighters are designed to get you on paper, not dead on. And that's exactly what they do. The fine tuning is up to you. Yes, the switch is cheap, so operate it gently. The laser isn't bright enough for daylight, so use it in dimmer conditions. The dot on some may not be a sharp red circle, hey, it's $25. Are all you complainers trying to get over on Bushnell? Lets try to apply a little common sense here. And let me not forget to say that I am aware that there is a small percentage of defective products that get out into the publics' hands, and that's with everything. But in this case it appears that most of the negative comments are from people that don't understand how to use the product or not qualified to evaluate it. A few do make some good points, very few. So, before commenting, you should sight your weapon in with the product, after being absolutely certain how to use it correctly. Oh, and let me remind you, it's not perfect, it's $25.

In general, I like this boresighter. I have a lasergrip on my .38 snub nose and used the bushnell to help me tune the lasergrip. Bottom line: A hole now appears where the red light was just shining seconds ago. So that is good. But the sight has had 2 drawbacks for me: (1) If you want to do accurate sighting in a pistol, the barrel may not be long enough for the conical portion of the boresight to center in the barrel. But I took a concical centering device from my cleaning kit (which prevents you from scratching the mouth of the barrel during rod insertion) and put that on the boresight. Then I was able to use this rather long boresigher in a snub nose revolver just fine. (2) The big drawback is that while the .38 fitting was snug, they evidently don't consider a .45 caliber a common caliber between .22 and .50. So I can't use this to tune the sights on my .45. Looking now for another boresighter that does that. But this boresighter will see more use on my rifles and other firearms.

I recently purchased three Marlin bolt-action .22 rifles -- one each for me, daughter, and son. Son owns 20 acres where we can shoot but he's 2 hours away. I mounted a scope on each of the rifles then bought this Bushnell boresighter.

My neighbor's workshop is about 60 yards away from mine across flat ground. Just after sundown I used this device to boresight all three rifles. It was simple -- screwed the .22-cal adapter into the end of the boresighter; jammed it down the muzzle of the rifle; put the rifle in a bench stand on the concrete porch of my workshop; aimed the rifle at my neighbor's workshop and turned on the boresighter; looked through the scope; there was a red dot on my neighbor's workshop wall 60 yards away; fiddled with the UP/DOWN LEFT/RIGHT knobs on the scope to put the crosshairs on the red dot and that was it. Maybe took five minutes and most of the time was spent screwing the adaptor onto the end of the boresighter.

Yesterday took the rifles to my son's place where we set up a bench rest then put paper targets at 50 yards and 100 yards. At 50 yards all three rifles shot within the rings with the first three-round shot group. Two more groups and we were tearing up the bull. Nine rounds per rifle to zero the sights. All rifles were dead on at 100 yards also, with slight Kentucky windage correction for elevation.

Negatives. Instructions could use a better illustration. The plastic adapters should be marked with their caliber. The on-off switch is dinky and can be turned on by sliding the boresighter into its little case. I put a piece of masking tape over the switch to protect it and keep it turned off. This device is lightweight and not exacly "robust." The device probably won't stand up to a lot of rough handling -- it should last me a lifetime because I don't throw my things around but some folks delight in treating their gear as roughly as possible.

If you're a big-time shooter who is all the time mounting and un-mounting scopes, fiddling around with various rifles, and the like, then, don't buy this thing -- check out Midway and get yourself a big bucks CNC machined boresight device complete with machined adapters for various calibers. If you're like I am -- one rifle every ten years or so -- this thing will do what you need it to do.

For the cost of ammunition needed to get a brand new rifle with a brand new scope to hit the paper, this looks like money well spent.

I did notice the sketchy on/off cam switch but let's have some perspective: this thing costs about as much as a couple boxes of good .223 these days and I don't see anyone saying it simply wouldn't turn on. I don't like the button cell batteries either but if you're resourceful those can be had for $1.50 each.

I'm not sure every reviewer understands how it is supposed to align the beam to the bore. Assume the beam is aligned really well with the physical body of the sighter. The body's front end is centered by making sure you've forced that big taper all the way down into the muzzle exit. The back end is centered in the bore with one of the assorted plugs. They are all designed to expand to the ideal snug diameter in the bore as you tighten them down onto the conical tail end of the body. The interface between these 2 tapers is a little abrupt and I don't see a good reason why. Just keep twisting. When you get those 2 tapers working right with each other you'll feel a decrease in torque as the plug diameter increases. You can fine tune this fit by twisting the sighter in the muzzle.

Users suspicious of the alignment of the bore sighter itself can pry the end cap off the laser and manipulate some tiny screws as one reviewer described. You could also rotate the bore sighter 180° and split the difference. Keep in mind that this bore sighter is only to help you get started. At the end of the day you need to observe some rounds landing downrange to zero a weapon.

My biggest complaint is about installing the screws into each plug. It's good that they provided an Allen wrench and enough screws for every plug but some of the holes are very tight. It's easy to start a screw crooked and hard to get it right afterwards. I would rather they used looser holes, tapered holes, tapped holes, or stepped diameter holes in the plastic plugs so that any ham-handed shooter could put the screws in straight the first time.

I noticed a couple reviewers who could not get it to work for certain pistol calibers. My instructions showed 5 different sized end plugs but the bore sighter arrived with 7, and they seemed to be marketing the compatibility with 12 gauge and .50 cal so maybe I have a newer version of the kit.

I haven't been to the range yet but I did check this bore sighter against one pistol and 2 scoped rifles that are zeroed well. The pistol was right on, and the rifles both aimed a couple inches right of the laser at about 70 yards.

Update: Had trouble at the range, problem was with the scope. But I brought the bore sighter along. Before I even got there I had lost the arbor for .22 caliber. By the end of the day, fully aware of loss of the first arbor, I had lost 2 more. They just seem to fly out of the pockets of that little case when you're not paying attention.

I called Bushnell and the support guy was very understanding of this problem. He sent me 2 full sets of (7) arbors at no charge. From now on, those arbors stay at home in a toolbox, not in the mysterious leaking case.

I purchased this device to bore sight a shotgun. The directions are concise and the gadget performs perfectly. It did the job on the 12Ga shotgun in a matter of minutes. I tried it our on a .270 and again, it was right on. This is well designed product which should give years of service, but the parts and attachments are small and have to be carefully handled and stored in the velcro case supplied.

Works great easy to use very accurate. Best of all does every caliber you may have plus it does shotguns. Worked with my 9mm, 40cal, 25cal, .308 and 20ga shotgun. Thumbs up!

Saves lots of time sighting in your gun at the range. The on/off switch has some issues. Sometimes when the switch is in the on position the laser pointer will not be on. Lightly tapping the switch usually fixes the problem, but it is annoying.

i ordered this bore sight not knowing that it was redesigned and i was expecting to have to do a little modification in order to get it up to snuff. to my surprise the unit has been redesigned and no longer has a dial to power the unit on and off. now you just twist the cap on and off and it works every time. another new feature is four allen screws that position the beam so it can be focused to dead center; before this was a fixed position. overall, this worked great and i was pleasantly surprised with the update. i wish they would update the user manual, as they still reference the older model in the diagrams and they don't touch on the new features. i would recommend this to anyone. it's definitely going to save you some time when zero-ing in your sights.