YES! You betcha ... I check mine the same way! On my vernier sights, I use the practice of always 'moving up to the value desired' to make my setting. Was taught that method at GE's machinist course and just can't do it any other way.

I once bought two Redfield Olympic sights, one like new, the other looked older and a tad rusted. I tested both as shown. My offhand match AR semi-race gun wears the old set ... old, but reliable and without backlash won the day! It must have never been cranked on.

But to 'adjust the sights' on my 54" barreled flint Fusil de Boucanier muzzleloader ... these dial indicators just don't work, haha! So I had to pull the barrel from the stock pins and bend the barrel using the heavy concrete benchrest bench frame as the fulcrum to bend the barrel to adjust the point of impact to the point of aim . (She wears a front sight only ... My cheek is the rear sight)

Boats,
Did you try this on older steel Lyman sights ?  How did they hold up?  Bob

Thats a good one, worth copying.  Most of the lever silhouette shooters use some sort of method to make up for slack in whatever they have to use. Since switching my Rimfire and Centerfire Levers to Redfield 75's I don't need to do that anymore. When I used a Lyman 66 on the Centerfire 36A you could not trust it to zero changing animals. Bottom out screw was a joke, keep turning the knob set screw hit and the sights arm bent skewing the setting.

My Pistol caliber Marlin 1894 has a MVA tang and repeats perfectly

On early Lymans like the 1A. to be clear I run two 39'A's one worked over for competion using the Redfield other all Orgional

Origional is a Marlin 39A I bought used in 1959 with Muskrat Trapping money. It's about 1950 vintage. Fitted it with a old model 1A when I bought the rifle.  Testing it with my Dial Caliper set up it repeats fine if you can read the graduations which are very faint.  I put a tiny white dot on to index the dial at exactly the elevation line on the sights barrel

Recording my zeros it's like this,  3 + 3/4  means to me three graduations on the barrel and 3/4 of a turn on the knob. My white dot sits at 9 o/c with that setting. Thats the Pig setting, Turkey 4 + 1/4 and so on Think it's 4 + 3/4 for Rams, using HS ammo on the Rams only. 

Works pretty good, not as precise as the Redfield but good enough.  Some reason Lyman cut precise threads way back when, recent sights are full of slop.

Boats

As a general rule old steel Lyman's and Redfields will repeat perfect.  Only caution is if they have been abused, and many were. 

Best thing is to check takes one thing to worry about off the table.

Boats