Removing eyepiece on old Redfield scope

I have a Redfield Widefield 2 3/4x of 1960s vintage on which years ago I crossthreaded the lock ring that secures the eyepiece. I was reminded of that today when I was refocusing the scope. The threads on the scope tube do not appear to have been damaged. What I am considering doing is taking the eyepiece off the the tube, running the lockring off the tube and either restarting it straight if the lockring threads are OK (which I doubt), or trying to find a replacement lockring. My question is, will the eyepiece just screw off of the tube easily, or is there some kind of mechanism that retains it at the end of the tube to prevent home scope repairs? I don't know if these old scopes contained nitrogen or other anti-fog gasses, but the eyepiece feels loose, like there's no gasket under it.
Thanks.

The Redfield Widefield did have nitrogen purging, BUT
they also had a reputation for leaking. It was claimed that the TV optics couldn't hold a seal as well as the round ones.
Burris built a sales program based on their Fullview, a round optic giving the same or greater sight picture.
As I recall,
Pepe Ray