You just tighten the bottoms first to nice and finger snug. The top screws are just barely in and only grabbing a few threads. Then you level to scope, torque your bottom screws to 25in/lbs and then when you tighten to top screws the scope doesn't rotate at all. My biggest issue with horizontally split rings is torquing the ring together and keeping the scope level. Maybe it's just me, we seem to have opposite problems.