How do sling swivels work

A partial band clamps to the barrel or magazine tube for easy fitting, without needing to dismantle your firearm. A permanent option for fitting to barrels or tube magazines. May require dismantling your firearm, gunsmith required. For larger quantities please check our Insert Screws spare page. Be certain your firearm is unloaded before installing sling swivels.

Firearm safety starts with you. Always follow these rules when using sling swivels. With QD swivels always make sure that the rotating gate is fully engaged on the pin, so that there is no gap.

If not fully engaged it can become detached from the base. A friend of mine who is a law enforcement trainer tells his students, "A sling is a holster for your rifle. The problem is, not all rifles leave the factory with sling-swivel studs. Luckily, installing your own is not that difficult.

To do the job right, you need the sling-swivel studs and the swivels, a power drill with bits of the correct size, a drilling guide and a thread tap both available from B-Square , some masking tape and a bar of soap.

The B-Square guide comes with the correct-size drill bits and facing and clearance cutters. You'll also need either a padded vise large enough to hold your stock or a cleaning cradle. A bottle of Loctite will come in handy for the front stud.

Luckily, everything you need except the soap is available from Brownells. I'll cover the traditional Uncle Mike's threaded-stud installation this time and later cover the installation of the QD quick-detachable flush swivels.

You may wonder why you need all this stuff? All you need is the drill, bits and the studs, right? After examining thousands of used rifles over the years, it was impossible to look at many without seeing crooked sling studs. They were off center, angled, tilted or some combination of odd orientations.

Most of these, I'm sure, were a result of, "Hold the stock still, Bob. I'm going to drill straight in. We'll do the rear swivel first. Take the cleaning cradle and place it on a table where you can get a clear view of it. Don't worry about drilling just yet.

Clamp the unloaded rifle upside down in the cradle, and position it so it is held exactly upside down. Leave the rifle assembled for now; you need it together to check alignment. Most of the time, when you clamp your rifle in the cradle it will shift and squirm and not be quite perfectly upright or upside down.

You want it as close as you can get it. Take the B-Square drilling guide and position it on the bottom of the buttstock. The question always comes up, where to drill.

If you drill too close to the toe of the stock, you risk chipping the wood and will have to repair the split-off section. If you drill too close to the grip cap, it can look goofy. On some rifles or shotguns, putting the swivel in the grip-cap area is desired. If your rifle is a hunting rifle that gets hard use, or you're putting a sling on a police or defensive shotgun, the grip cap is an option. When slung muzzle down, the grip-cap location keeps the muzzle out of the mud, dirt, water and brush.

It just looks a little strange. On hunting rifles that are to look normal, I settled on locating the rear swivel three to three and a half inches up from the toe of the stock. Slide your guide to the desired location and place the drill bit in the guide.

Step back from the stock and look down its length. Is the drill bit pointing straight up from the belly of the stock? Adjust the guide until the bit is straight. Use the masking tape to hold the guide in place. Once taped, look again.

Pull the rear swivel-stud drill out of the guide, lock it in the power drill, and drill your hole two inches into the wood. You needn't go deeper; the stud isn't more than an inch and a half on its threaded portion. Your guide hole is now straight up and down and on the centerline of the stock. Had you done it by hand, you may have gotten it straight, and maybe on the centerline, but not every time. Pull out the drill bit, pull the tape off, and remove the guide.

Install the facing cutter in your drill, and power it down the hole until you have just faced a circular shoulder for the stud to screw down to. Why the facing cutter? You need a solid seat to screw the stud down to. If you don't have the seat, when you screw down the stud it will crush the wood fibers on the high spots, and the crushed fibers will not always break evenly or cleanly.

The cut seat gives you a clean installation. Now take the wood tap and screw it into the hole, cutting the threads for your stud. I used paper towels for this part. We want the gun to be balanced, and the section you are working on to be as close to the center of the vise as possible, otherwise you will have a hard time keeping it steady as you drill. Heres where the tricky part comes in. Measurements will vary depending on the rifle you are using.

For my rifle, I placed the fore end swivel roughly 11" from the front of the trigger guard, as that was the farthest it could safely go, although the instructions for the swivel said 13"". One good way to tell where you want your front swivel to be is to raise your rifle as if you were going to shoot. Once you have measured with your ruler or tape to where you want to put the hole, place a small strip of tape across the stock.

This will not only help you remember where you want to drill, but also will help prevent cracking and splitting of the wood as the drill bit goes in. Before you drill, you need to make one more measurement. In your kit should be two screws for mounting the swivels.

The shorter one is for the front swivel mount. I made this mistake myself and had to go back and fix it. If you try and put too long of a screw in, you risk going all the way through the stock and hitting the barrel or in my case, the tube magazine. The stress can not only make the rifle less accurate, but it can also crack the stock.

Furthermore, it will be more likely to come out. If everything checks out, proceed to step 5. If not, keep reading To make your screw fit, simply place it in your bench vise and cut it to the desired size with a dremel tool. Make sure not to booger up the threads while doing so, or you will be making things very hard on yourself. Now that you have the correct length screw, we can proceed on to the next step.