Cleaning the Rifle Telescope
By C. S. LANDIS
American Rifleman, vol 65, No. 17, Jan 18, 1919, page 327
PROBABLY no part of the rifle man’s outfit receives less care or cleansing than his rifle telescope, and judging by the dull and dirty appearance of the lenses of the average scope, none needs it more.
The Winchester telescopes are probably the most frequently encountered among the target shots. They are very well made and seldom need a more thorough cleaning than cleaning the out sides of the lenses at the two ends of the telescope. However, in time the glass gets so dusty and dirty that when one looks through the scope everything appears to be dull, dirty and hard to see— about like things look during a drizzling rain.
At this stage of the game the owner grabs a Winchester catalogue and reads the directions for taking his doll baby apart, and thereby gets an awe-inspiring lot of directions about various lenses with technical names that he does not understand and ends up with a confused memory that contains a few names like objective, inverter and reticule, and decides to let the scope alone lest there be several parts left over after it is put together again.
In plain English, this is how the scope is taken apart, cleaned and re-assembled. First unscrew the milled front end of the scope as far as it will go—which will take about as long as to wind a Waterbury watch. Then pull straight forward. This operation gets rid of one lens. Clean this on the rear side by rubbing it with a piece of chamois skin or soft tissue paper.
Next begin at the rear end of the scope and unscrew the binding collar that holds the eyepiece fast. Screw this toward the front of the scope, a turn or two being plenty.
Then screw the eyepiece out. This is also an all-day job and may start very hard if the threads are rusted. Keep the binding nut at the one place, because if it is screwed up or down the threads, when the scope is put together again, the cross hairs will be out of focus and will have to be refocused by screwing the eyepiece in or out until the focus suits the operator. Then clean the lens of the eyepiece.
So far it is easy sailing, but now we get at the internal economy of the brute with a feeling of awe and some very considerable foreboding.
The next operation is to turn in the small screw on the left-hand side of the scope tube, near the rear of the scope. Then tap on the butt of the barrel of the scope with a block of soft wood (while the scope tube is held vertical) until the Cross hairs and their holder together drop out, and,—have something softer than the floor for them to drop onto.
Then screw in the other small screw on the left side of the scope, near its center, until it clears the inside of the scope barrel. Then reach into the scope barrel from the rear and trip the catch, using a hooked rod, and pull the lens and lens casing out to the rear. '
The Winchester catalogue says that one can use his fingers for this operation, but two of us found that our fingers were just about one-third long enough and that they were too thick to go into the tube. We have not as yet found anyone long-fingered enough to swipe this lens. Evidently they must have some very long-fingered persons at the Winchester plant. But at any rate, out come the lens and holder.
At last we are at the bottom of the trouble. This lens is so dirty one can scarcely see through it. This lens is firmly held in its casing by a circular threaded casing that screws into a larger casing or barrel. Cut a small plate of brass or copper, insert it in the two lips or channels cut in this ring, and unscrew the ring to the rear.
The lens can now be dropped out onto the hand, and be sure that you know which face of it should be toward the front when you place it back in its casing. This lens should now be cleaned, replaced in its casing, and the binding casing screwed in before the lens gets lost.
Now clean the dirt out of the inside of the telescope tube or barrel, and there will be considerable of it there to get rid of.
We are now ready to replace the lenses and remembering that in our boyhood days we always had five or six pieces left over after we had re-assembled the clocks that we had taken apart on the sly, we go at the matter very, very carefully.
Take the lens and casing for this last lens (the middle or inverter lens) and drop them into the scope tube from the rear, with the small screw opposite its slot. Unscrew the screw until it is flush with the outside of the telescope barrel, and this part of the work is done.
Next comes the replacement of the cross hairs. Replace the cross hairs and ring to which they are soldered, with the side the wires are fastened to the rear, in the slot provided for them in the holder, and fit the lip into its slot. If the reticule (cross hairs and holder) rattles in its slot, pinch the case in a vise, which will make it hold securely. Then push the holder and case and all in with the bar that we used to pull out the middle lens with, and hold the casing opposite the place in the telescope barrel where the slot is cut for the screw; then unscrew the screw until the cross hairs and holder are held securely. There is a small amount of space in this slot to allow for tilting of the cross hairs to get the vertical hair vertical when the rifle is aimed in the proper manner.
Next replace the eye lens and bind it with the binding ring in the correct focus.
Next place the lip or groove on the lower part of the casing of the front or objective lens in the slot in the bottom of the telescope tube, at the front end; push it to the rear as far as possible and then screw the lens in until the back of the revolving case is opposite the 50-foot to 200-yard scale, etched on the outside of the scope barrel.
To test the scope, open the window (this being necessary, as no scope appears to be worth a fig when looking through a window) and take a look through the scope. Just about 100 per cent clearer and brighter view, is there not? Focus the glass on that bird sitting 50 yards away on that tree; look closely and observe it move its eyeball. Some glass now, isn't it? And yet all that it needed was a good cleaning—a sort of internal bath, that we hear so much about.
The one thing to watch out for is not to punch the hooked bar, used to pull out the middle lens, through the cross hairs when putting them back into place. Nothing so very hard about that, was there? And one is not deprived of the use of the scope for a month or more in sending it back to the factory.