I'll say it again - I don't understand why someone would not have the eye to match the basic shapes of the mount, but also an extremely sharp eye to duplicate misaligned machining scratches.
A broken mount, repaired through brazing or welding would leave a lot of excess material, which is then removed. This process can significantly alter the original shape, especially if they had to bridge the gap to the cradle, making the arms a bit longer. They would have to recut the curves and such. It would also explain the original scrapes and gouges in areas that didn't need to be smoothed out. If this were the case it seems they over zealously smoothed out the area around the knob too.
I only see straight lines on the black and white shot from above too. literally, they're white lines against the black.
I understand this weird blaster throws a lot of what we know into chaos. I also understand we've done decades of work on this blaster, but I think it would be improper to not scrutinize things in front of us. We're using scratches to identify the upper rings and also saying scratches can be faked for the lower piece.
Yes, the mounting style doesn't match what we thought and the current setup has had a lot of work done, it's possible something fishy or harmful went down with the gun and the scope and mount ended up like this. I traced out the multiple marks I see because I thought this would be important for the community
