Right now, the reticule is in"dead center"-- I will CAREFULLY dial down to dead stop the elevation knob,counting carefully the clicks- then again Carefully raise the dial back UP 1/2 the number of clicks it took to bottom it out RWTF
Fox, I think the Weaver scope you have is a late enough version that is has as Lyman used to call it a "PermaCenter" reticle that is always centered in the visual field. What I'm talking about it to get the erector tube which carries the reticle & on which the adjustment dials work as close as possible to the center of the scope before bore sighting. This way, when bore sighted using shims for elevation & the windage adjustment screws in the mounts you should have close to maximum internal adjustment for windage & elevation left in the scope.
To achieve this you need to move the internal adjustment (can be either windage or elevation) all the way to the max adjustment stop for either up or right & then all the way in the max adjustment stop in the opposite direction while counting clicks & divide the result by two. If you then crank in this number of clicks for both windage & elevation from the max adjustment stop you then should have the erector tube & reticule centered in the scope.
Now you want to bore sight using shims for elevation & the windage adjustment screws in the mount to get it as close as possible before using the internal adjustments before final zero.
A couple of points:
Shims may be an inelegant way of achieving a zero but they are much cheaper than having a custom base made & done properly will be stable & cosmetically acceptable. Brownells used to (& may still do) sell blued, drilled & shaped shim packs for Buehler & Redfield type bases. I still have some & they are .010" thick. Loctite the shim to the receiver bridge & the base once you have determined the shim (s) needed for the correct zero & Loctite the base screws. Blue Loctite holds well & isn't all that difficult to disassemble if you use properly fitting screw drivers.
It is not uncommon to need to use a shim (s) to get a scope properly mounted & in my experience the problem is usually in the rifle as opposed to the base & pre 64 M70 rifles are not exempt from this . I have a custom .280 Rem built on a 1950 era M70 that required a .020" shim under the rear Leupold Dual Dovetail base to get the rifle zeroed w/o using up most of the internal adjustment for elevation in the scope.
