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Here are several pictures of the inner area of the scope where the crosshairs are located. Last night I thought there was a hair on my keyboard and it turned out to be a 6 inch piece of that fine wire! I have no idea how or when it got there? The one picture shows the piece of Gorilla tape that I used to hold the crosshair tube steady.
Whatcha gonna do? Is it still in warranty?
Is it all back together now?
Yep it was done after half a dozen tries of getting the wires at 90 degrees to each other and tight enough so they are not movable. I found if the wire is too tight it snaps so I used up some learning how to get it installed. I finally would get the loose end tightened in one of the small clamps and then pull it so it was under the right side screw which I tightened. I worked from right to left as that felt better due to me being originally left handed. I would tighten the right side screw well then pull the wire under the left side screw and put some tension on it. Using my free hand I would tighten the far side screw. I had to make sure the wire was on the same side of both screws so it was centered in the middle of the tube. Take a 10 minute break and rotate the tube 90 degrees and repeat. The first 3 or 4 tries I pulled too hard or got the wires off center so their crossing point was not 90 degrees but finally got it. I could not find my set of miniature scissors so I used small craft ones and that left a small "pigtail" of wire that you can see in one corner but I left it alone.
The wire ended up making finer cross hairs than I had originally as I guess my scope had what were called "regular" sized cross hairs. As soon as temps at our range in Dulzura CA gets to less than 100 degrees I'll give it a try to see if they hold up under recoil and handling. I think my original cross hairs were not wire as they felt soft, maybe some sort of thread or even the material from black widow spiders as it was used after drying but definitely not wire?
John
A couple friends were making scopes years ago. They found cat hair worked well for crosshairs. It is fine enough, and held up to the recoil well.
A couple years ago I made a "vintage" 36 inch straight tube scope after reading a series of articles in several single shot magazines and bought a piece of thin wall DOM steel tube, the brass tube to hold the lens and allow focusing and the uncoated lenses. I used cat hair for mine and I am not sure which was harder, getting some cat hair from the cat or getting the hairs glued onto the small tube to hold them. I wanted new, fresh hairs and our cat did not agree with my project! Finally got them and got them mounted well. I found with uncoated lenses as were used many years ago on the first scopes only the middle part of the sight picture was in focus, the outer part was fuzzy. I talked to an expert at the lens company and she noted that is why we now have coated lenses!
I could have let all the cat hair issue go as I have found no matter what you use the lines will always look black!!!
John, while I will attempt firearms repairs, I have NEVER attempted any scope repairs. My hat is off to you sir!
Hey there up in Mazomanie WI, how are things? That scope I mentioned above I put on a chunk gun I got from up that way!!!! If the scope did not have external cross hairs I would never have tried it! I was shocked how easy pulling the cross hair tube out was and once I figured how easy it was to hold the tube steady it was not too bad...….just nearly invisible wires.
Well got to the range today finally as my wife has gotten home from the hospital and recovered from her bad fall. The new small diameter cross hairs work great although I had to do some adjustments and then suddenly on the 4th shot a piece of wire flopped across the field of view! I though it was a broken cross hair but not it was a piece hanging loose as I did not trim the wires tight against the outside of the tube that holds the screws!!!! Whew that sure scared me so I'll did through our large first aid/emergency kit to see if there are some fine pointed scissors in it.
John
Squirrel whiskers. :-)