Scope repair

[Snakeoil]

I know that many forums prefer that vendors not be promoted or badmouthed by members because it is so subjective. That said, I recently am finding that amongst some serious rifle shooters I have as friends, none of them can recommend a good scope repair shop. Yes, the obvious choice for any quality scope is to send it back to the OEM. But in my case, I'm talking vintage scopes.

I was working on the front mount of my 4 digit serial number Lyman SST. The eyepiece must come off to get the mounts off. Without going into painful detail, I broke the cross-wires in the reticle cell. I was able to make new cross-wires, but had to use what I had on hand, which was 0.004" wire. That's almost 6 times the thickness of the original wires. It works, but make for about a 3/4 minute cross-wire.

I know that Parson's bought all the rights and tooling from Lyman. When the father was running it, the shop did great work. But a friend has told me to steer clear of them. He sent a scope to them about 6 years ago and they kept it for over a year, returned it and charged him, but never made the repairs. He sent it back and when he got it back, it was still not repaired. He will not go back to them.

In talking to the son, there were problems when the father first died. They were swamped with work due to having to absorb the father's backlog of work. I can see folks who are not particularly organized, or overwhelmed with work, making mistakes like this, especially when a scope has been in the shop over a year. When I spoke to the son, he sounded like he knew his stuff. But I'm reluctant to send it to him based upon my friend's bad experience.

So, anyone else have experience with the current Parson's Scope Repair shop? Anyone have another repair shop that they would recommend based upon personal experience?

I may just try to make new cross-wires myself from dental floss strand. I'm going to practice first and if successful, will make a fixture to do the Lyman.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[Brad]

I am fortunate enough to never have needed scope repair.

I wish you luck in getting your scope back in shooting condition. A 3/4 minute crosshair would be fine for hunting but not so good for fine accuracy work.

 

[david s]

More than 5 but less than 10 years ago the reticle in my 16X Redfield 6400 gave up the ghost. I had it repaired by Optical Services Co. out of New Mexico. I dont remember what it cost to repair but I don't remember it being outrageous. Everything went as expected and I have nothing bad to say about the experience. The scope is still in use on a 223 without any issues. Didn't Tac Dot Lee make his cross hairs out of Black Widow spider silk? All you have to do is start cultivating a few spiders and your in business.

 

[Snakeoil]

Thanks for the replies. Supposed to rain tomorrow so going to machine a test cell and string a new set of crosshairs from a strand of dental floss fiber. If I can do it repeatedly, I will use the process to restore my Lyman back to a properly sized crosshair.

 

[RicinYakima]

You know you can buy 0.0005" titanium wire off the internet?

 

[JonB]

Larry Weisz Does excellent work, I have a couple that he refurbished.
He owns L&K Scope Repair in Eldridge MO. (417-426-5041).
His Email is lkscoperepair@hughes.net
40 years of experience working on optics.
Specializes on Steel American made optics, as well as some of the more exotic optics from Europe.

 

[Snakeoil]

Good to know. Thanks. I'm in the process of repairing mine. If I am successful, I will post photos of the process I used.

Thanks for the reference for Larry. I'm going to pass this along to my buddy.

 

[Snakeoil]

I had reached out to Steve Earle, who makes mounting blocks for Unertl and Lyman scopes and he gave me the following recommendation for scope repair.

Bob Seipp in NJ at 973-714-7958

Steve spoke very highly of him.

Rob

 

[Snakeoil]

I am happy to report that I repaired my scope with properly sized crosswires. I use the dental floss fiber method and replace my 0.0007" cross-wires with 0.0006" nylon cross-wires.

Never posted pics here before so will see if my photos are properly sized to work here.

Here is the repaired cross-wires. You are looking at the reticle ring which is mounted to the cell in the scope. The silver tube is the fixture I made to align the wires so they could be installed properly on the ring which has no specific reference points other than the 4 solder spots.



Here are before and after view thru the eyepiece. Before is with the 0.004" cross-wires. After is with the new 0.0006" cross-wires. Looking at the preview, the cross-wires are not as clear as they are in the original photos. That may improve after I hit POST.

Before


After


If these to not hold up, I'll by that 0.0005" tungsten wire on fleabay (thanks for that lead) and do them over with that.

Rob

 

[Pistolero]

Those both are REALLY nice jobs on a ticklish thing. Well done.

Tungsten or titanium? Tungsten is ultra heavy, and titanium is pretty light....with shock loading
as the primary issue, I hope it is titanium. Titanium weighs 0.165 lb/cubic inch, and tungsten weighs
0.70 lbs/cubic inch. For reference, steel is 0.29 and aluminum is 0.1 lb/cubic inch. Lead is only 0.40 lb/cubic
inch, so tungsten is approach twice the density of lead.
Well, it is tungsten.....very heavy, but very stiff, also. Almost twice as stiff as equivalent piece of steel.
This is probably for use in making light bulb filaments, they are fine tungsten wire because of the
also high melting temperature.

eBay 263846562545 not horribly expensive.


Bill

 

[RBHarter]

Titanium doesn't bend well . It springs back a lot .

 

[Intheshop]

Nice job Snake,thanks for sharing.

Try argon instead of nitrogen on the purge. It has a larger molecule size..... only reason nitrogen gets used is cause it's cheaper. Go find somebody with a Tig welder..... a box of donuts or beer or something. Bet he'll give you a quick shot of argon. Do it inside of a plastic bag....only takes a minute.

 

[Bret4207]

ITS, I was just going to ask him what he was going to use for a gas in the scope. Thanks!

I have a couple, (okay 4 or 5!), old steel tube Weavers that need repair. Gonna have to reach out to some of these shops.

 

[Intheshop]

Bret,far as I know or understand......

The only time argon is at issue as a purge gas is on "some" lighted reticles. I don't have any so,not a problem. And this info comes from internet "stories"..... meaning,if you start researching it pops up.

It is a subject,that seems for reasons that only todays culture can be questioned? Quite polarizing..... as soon as someone mentions purging,much less deviations from status quo (nitrogen),here it comes....

The camps are..... "heck it's a pos scope and ain't worth sending it out,I'll work on it myself"

VS

"You can't do that,it HAS to go back to the factory".

I will say,there's LOTS of harder projects around. Scopes just seem to have this mystique about them,like it's some kind of magic? The steel tubes IMO have way better ability to be threaded vs aluminum. That never gets mentioned,just interesting.

Another tid bit, "one pce scope tube". That right there gets me going. Like....so,the notion of taking two scopes for a variety of reasons,and grafting a larger objectives or whatever the situation just got tossed out because of......why? Heck,some locktight or thread sealant on high class threading is easier to seal than typical lense "seals".

I like bent scopes.... usually free. Again,to most folks this is some kind of irreconcilable problem? Usually by the same folks who can't grasp purging a scope BTW.... but dang,it's almost too easy compared to say bodywork on the Aston Martin,haha. Especially when the scope was free?

And cheap crappy Chinese scopes ain't exactly hard to find? Get a 3-9 and take it apart to study it's innards.

 

[JonB]

Before I say what I'm gonna say, I should mention Larry (of L&K Scope Repair that I mentioned above) told me he can't "go through" a scope for less than a hundred dollars, so sending in a El Paso Weaver that needs the lenses re-coated probably won't be financially wise.

SNIP...

The camps are....
"heck it's a pos scope and ain't worth sending it out,I'll work on it myself"
VS
"You can't do that,it HAS to go back to the factory".

years ago at a gunshow, I came across a $5 scope...an old 1/2" tube scope for rimfire, It was a long one, longer than typical, maybe 18 inches long? I believe it was a mossberg?
Besides it having cobwebs inside, something wasn't quite right about it, and I suspect it had been taken apart by someone prior to me. This was the first time I took a scope apart. There were 6 or 7 lenses and different length spacers between them. It took me sometime to come to the conclusion that it had been re-assembled incorrectly by that previous person. After I cleaned all the parts, I started to assembling/disassembling the scope (trial and error technique) until I came to a combination that yielded a clear picture that 'seemed' like 4x (compared with another 4x scope on a object 50 yards away). It was a real nice period correct scope for a mossberg rifle I had, I got it mounted/zero'd and was impressed with it's function. I will admit, for this bubba to have success like I did, with a scope with many pieces, which I had no idea of the correct order, is just amazing.

 

[Bret4207]

I have a few of those old Weavers that are surely worth $100 to me. A really, really nice 10 or 12x tack hole dot job, a K6 post and crosshair, a really ancient K4 that I just adore and a V series that doesn't "V" very well. A couple need the adjusting pieces/parts fixed, one has a loose lens and one other one needs the cross hairs or a lens put back in place as it looks like the cross hairs are at a 45 from level. The chances of me actually getting around to any of this is kinda slim, but I'd really like to do it. But, these ahve been sitting for 25 or 30 years in some cases. No sense rushing into something...

 

[Snakeoil]

The old Lymans did not have a gas inside as best I can tell. But did think about a N2 purge just to dry it out inside. I appreciate the kind words.
Rob

 

[Snakeoil]

Tungsten or titanium? Tungsten is ultra heavy, and titanium is pretty light....with shock loading
as the primary issue, I hope it is titanium.

The wire on fleabay is tungsten. I agree with RB that titanium does not like to bend.

One of my thoughts when I used the nylon floss strand was it is both much lighter than a metal cross-wire and less prone to work hardening. I only touched the cross-wire with a tissue twisted into a point and it broke. I am pretty sure that the wire had work hardened from many recoil cycles.

After I made my first test reticle from floss, I decided to see how strong it was, both the glue bond and the strands themselves. I put a .30 cal lead slug on the cross-wires and it supported the weight no problem and sprang back into perfect shape when it was removed.



I suspect that the nylon will take a lot more recoil cycles than a metal reticle will.

Rob

 

[Alstep]

My father was an optical instrument maker. When I was a kid, I remember a neighbor coming to him with a scope in disrepair. He went out to the barn and got some spider webs to replace the cross hairs. Cleaned out the lens system and that scope held up for years. He was meticulously fussy about cleanliness, as a speck of dust looked like a rock when you looked through a scope.

I once met another optical repairman who bought up Got't surplus spider webs. During WW2, the US Gov't bought a certain species of spider webs. They were packed in nice wooden boxes. When you looked in the box, there was nothing until you looked really closely. Have no idea what species of spider they came from.

I'm sure your dental floss repair will hold up nicely.

 

[462]

Spider webs . . . tough material, so makes sense.