A week and a half ago I was out at our range on a very windy day and went on purpose so I could see how gusts affected the 540 grain bullets I am shooting from my gain twist barrel at 1450 FPS. The wind was 10 to 35 knots blowing right at me and now and then at 90 degrees from the right. After 6 shots I was starting to look through the spotting scope and was holding the butt against my shoulder and barrel on the cross sticks. A huge gust of wind lifted my plastic container with extra home made shoot-n-see targets and wind meter inside and banged it against the right side of the rifle/scope and it fell over and the threaded end of the eye piece hit the bench and made a small dent. I said a bunch of non technical words and when I looked through the eye piece I saw the vertical cross hair had broken at the top. So that ended my shooting for the day!
I pulled the eye piece off carefully and was able to get the 1/4 inch flat area fixed so it was round once again. I reinstalled the eyepiece while I investigated how and where to get the cross hairs replaced. I emailed several companies and called them and only got one reply and the fellow said about 6 months and roughly $150 plus whatever shipping would be. I found we have a Schuetzen competitor in San Diego and he can do them but he is competing at Raton for several weeks or so.
I found a seller on ebay with the right size wire so I figured to try the replacement myself. I have surgery clamps, magnifier glasses and watch makers tools so as soon as the wire gets here I'll see how hard that is. Disassembly was a snap as soon as the reticle locking screws were removed the ring slid right off as did the eye piece lock ring. The reticle tube was a bit harder even though there is some lube on it I think it had never been moved. The outside of the tube has very fine grooves machined in it probably to hold some grease or other type of lube? I read one forum post of a repair and that person did not make the cross hairs meet right in the center so I have to make sure the wire wraps clockwise on both screws so there will be a meet right in the middle.
If this works out okay I'll do a complete writeup with pictures in a week or two.
John