Scopes of the PAST

[Lloyd Smale]

My favorite old school scope has allways been the bushnell scopechief 2.5x8. Its compact, rugged and had decent glass. Not up to some of the newer glass but in its day it would hang with about any scope. At one time I had 5 of them. Down to just one now.

[HangFireW8]

My favorite old school scope has allways been the bushnell scopechief 2.5x8. Its compact, rugged and had decent glass. Not up to some of the newer glass but in its day it would hang with about any scope. At one time I had 5 of them. Down to just one now.

The ScopeChief was Bushnell's top of the line in the early 70's. I bought a variable one on a rifle in the mid 90's but it was locked up, sent it in for service and it came back fixed and marked corrected elevation max to center. The mounts held low so the previous owner maxed out elevation and got it almost zeroed but then could not adjust windage because it was bound up.

The lens glue turned yellow soon after and I got rid of it. Since then, I've read that prolonged UV exposure can undo lens glue yellowing, but I don't really miss that scope, its replacement is more compact and works better with the rifle.

[izzyjoe]

I'm sold on the Refield revolution scopes, I had a weaver k4 on my 760 Rem, and replaced it with a 2x7. And another 2x7 on a Marlin 30-30, and a 4x12 on 223 savage. All were less than $200, best bang for the buck! And when I get the coin I'm going to replace a few other older weaver, and bushnell scopes.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Mechanically speaking newer optics are far superior to older optics. That doesn't mean that older scopes are useless, it just means that the manufacturing techniques used in making the new stuff are better and thus over all the new stuff is better. This is a perfect example of "Trickle Down Economics," or more properly "Trickle Down Manufacturing" at work.

Point being when new techniques are employed they start out making the higher end stuff better,,, and then the processes trickle down to the less expensive stuff simply because they are usually more cost effective as well.

Most older optics were designed to be a "set and leave it alone" type of operation. This was due to internal design and the fact that screw making technology was not as precise as it is now. Now screws and their design have little or no backlash and thus your ability to tweak frequently and have a reasonable expectation that the scopes controls will repeat is greatly increased from just 10-15 years ago.

As far a s the optics themselves, there has been substantial advances in "Lens Coating Technology" which has increased the light transmission of glass to new heights. 20 years ago light transmission above 85% was considered pretty good. Now even the cheap stuff (Tasco, Barska, Simmons, etc. are above 92% and the good stuff, Zeiss, Swarovski, etc. are above 94-5%.

In reality all this means is the new stuff is better than the old stuff, but it doesn't mean the old stuff is useless. As long as the lenses are not delaminated those optics can be utilized with just as much success as they were originally, and on certain guns are just as effective for their intended uses as newer optics would be. Plus that new optics don't look right on older classic guns.

My Weaver K2.5 that I had L&K rebuild for me will be mounted on my 1958 Marlin 336 .30-30. This will be a perfect scope on a gun I normally wouldn't scope but since I already have the scope, and nothing else to do with it,,, it will be a good match.

My Grandfather had a Win 94 with a side mounted Weaver K2.5 on it from about 1955 on. I remember the side mounted scope from when I was a kid and always thought it was weird until I found out why they had to do it. He got a Deer in Michigan every year until one year before his death at 95 around 1995. IE: He hunted until he was 94, with the same rifle. I'd bet that that gun never had even 60 rounds thru it. One shot a year was all that was needed. I know one year around 1958-9 he shot his deer in his back yard on their little 10 acre farm in Okemos MI, dragged it up to the back porch and butchered it and we ate venison for Saturday night dinner.

Things might be different now but not everything has changed that much,,, or needs to change at all.

I'm sure you can see my point here.

Randy

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Mechanically speaking newer optics are far superior to older optics. That doesn't mean that older scopes are useless, it just means that the manufacturing techniques used in making the new stuff are better and thus over all the new stuff is better. This is a perfect example of "Trickle Down Economics," or more properly "Trickle Down Manufacturing" at work.

Point being when new techniques are employed they start out making the higher end stuff better,,, and then the processes trickle down to the less expensive stuff simply because they are usually more cost effective as well.

Most older optics were designed to be a "set and leave it alone" type of operation. This was due to internal design and the fact that screw making technology was not as precise as it is now. Now screws and their design have little or no backlash and thus your ability to tweak frequently and have a reasonable expectation that the scopes controls will repeat is greatly increased from just 10-15 years ago.

As far a s the optics themselves, there has been substantial advances in "Lens Coating Technology" which has increased the light transmission of glass to new heights. 20 years ago light transmission above 85% was considered pretty good. Now even the cheap stuff (Tasco, Barska, Simmons, etc. are above 92% and the good stuff, Zeiss, Swarovski, etc. are above 94-5%.

In reality all this means is the new stuff is better than the old stuff, but it doesn't mean the old stuff is useless. As long as the lenses are not delaminated those optics can be utilized with just as much success as they were originally, and on certain guns are just as effective for their intended uses as newer optics would be. Plus that new optics don't look right on older classic guns.

My Weaver K2.5 that I had L&K rebuild for me will be mounted on my 1958 Marlin 336 .30-30. This will be a perfect scope on a gun I normally wouldn't scope but since I already have the scope, and nothing else to do with it,,, it will be a good match.

My Grandfather had a Win 94 with a side mounted Weaver K2.5 on it from about 1955 on. I remember the side mounted scope from when I was a kid and always thought it was weird until I found out why they had to do it. He got a Deer in Michigan every year until one year before his death at 95 around 1995. IE: He hunted until he was 94, with the same rifle. I'd bet that that gun never had even 60 rounds thru it. One shot a year was all that was needed. I know one year around 1958-9 he shot his deer in his back yard on their little 10 acre farm in Okemos MI, dragged it up to the back porch and butchered it and we ate venison for Saturday night dinner.

Things might be different now but not everything has changed that much,,, or needs to change at all.

I'm sure you can see my point here.

Randy

That is mostly very true, although micrometers haven't got any better, and they are screw-operated. The manufacturers could have made screw scope adjustment to modern standards, but they didn't see the need. Indeed for most forms of hunting I don't either. The time to zero a rifle is before the hunt, with a shot or two to check against damage if you have the chance, or the use of a boresighter if you haven't.

I don't think optical glass has got any better, and the principle of colour correction, by using a doublet or triplet of different glasses which produce colour fringing in opposite directions has been known for a long time. What has improved is coating of the lenses, and good coating has moved downmarket in terms of price. But its value is mostly a matter of reduced light dispersion rather than improved transmission per se.

Photographic lenses still go in graduations of f2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11 and 16, meaning the ratio of lens focal length to aperture setting. As light transmission is proportional to the square of aperture, each of these numbers puts twice the light intensity on the film as the last one. Half a stop (e.g. midway between 4 and 5.6) changes the light intensity by 50%, and is about the least the human eye can detect. It is against that that the difference between 85% and 95% transmission should be seen.

My Pentax 400mm camera lens with a telescope adapter attached gives about the same magnification as my British army Telescope, Signals and General Service MkVI, which I bought in the antiques market in Bombay. (I wish I could see all that it has seen.) Both show up the moon extremely well, but the brass and leather relic gives more of a halo in the dark sky around it. Light is energy which we can't create or destroy, and if some of it isn't being properly transmitted, it has to be going somewhere. However we rarely use a scope on anything with more than a fraction of that much contrast.

[HangFireW8]

Screw making technology was perfected 100 years ago, and has little to do with the dynamics of scope adjustment.

20 years ago 85% light transmission was considered just as awful as it is today, as affordable fully multicoated optics had already been on the market for years.