What's this little screw for?

[gerritm]

I shot a shotgun match 2-weeks ago and did very well. I noticed something was loose in my Tooth & Nail MKA1919 and it needed a good cleaning. I took it to my workshop and flipped it upside down on my gun vise to disassemble the comp and remove the handguard. Took it all apart, cleaned it, tightened everything, and reinstalled the handguard and comp. Flipped the shotgun back over and saw a small cap screw laying in the vise tray. Looked the whole gun over and it seemed everything was in place. Set the screw aside. Cleaned the lens on the C-More red dot on top.

Went to the Loadapalooza pistol/shotgun match this weekend and the 1st 30 plus round stage was a total failure. Couldn't knock down the heavy V shaped plates and struggled through the whole stage. Blamed using the wrong choke-- IC and too light of rounds-- #8.

Changed the choke to MOD and ran some 7.5 on the next 30plus round stage thru 4 different bays with shots on the V plates out to 20 plus yards and it went OK. No real problems. Figured that was the cure.

Shot the last jungle run 30plus round stage from a raised road shooting down and again total failure, skipped several plates when they wouldn't fall, went to the Texas Star at about 10 yards and couldn't knock them off. Went on to the 100 yard slug shot, took 3-shots all over the place. What a mess..

Figured the C-More broke or lost its zero after about a year of shooting with absolutely no problems with it or the shotgun. Got home checked the red dot and it was moving slightly back and forth all over the place, that little screw was the front retaining screw that holds the C-More to the mounting rail. Fell out when I flipped it over and is recessed so you can't see it.

It had Blue Loc Tite on it when I installed it. Check everything, double check everything.

Sorry so long.

gerritm

[Flash74]

How frustrating for one little screw to mess up your day. At least you found the cause and can move on.

[Graham Smith]

I'm not certain which is the worse feeling. Having a piece left over or missing a piece. At least, if you know you are missing something, you stand a chance of being able to locate one. But an extra piece???

[BeerBaron]

yeah I double check everything on my cmore on my open div pistol.

I've had the following happen:

screw between frame and mount come loose (zero shift horizontally - it's a 90 mount)

screw between cmore and mount come loose (same thing, zero shift horizontally)

screws that hold limcat made cmore anti glare shield come loose (moved zero to another planet on both axis, could not hit a mini popper at 15 yards! shot about 8 shots at it!!).

I now do a quick wrench check on my gun after every stage. end of stage, go to safe table and quickly check the 4 mount bolts, 2 cmore bolts and 2 glare shield bolts are all nice and tight. of course now that I check they've never showed event a tiny bit of loosness since....

[newmexicocrawler]

That's the "extra" screw they put in every gun....

If had same thing happen to me, had to take gun apart TWICE till I found were it went