Palmetto Pride asks:
Can't we make anything over here anymore?
Yes. Some optics made in the USA are better than what comes from overseas companies. They are very, very expensive and mass marketing them in to the shooting sports or photography would be futile. They wouldn't sell enough to cover materials and labor costs; forgetting growth, warranty and improvements. Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and American Optical (USA companies) used to make lenses for rifle scope companies. Lyman, Unertl and Kollmorgan rifle scopes used them in bullet proof mechanics. But 999 out of 1000 rifle shooters got the same accuracy with Tasco, Simmons, and Bushnell scopes from overseas costing 1/3 the price so they quit buying the high priced scopes.
Some folks blame unions for getting the cost of labor way out of sight. It's easy to make good optics, but much more demanding to design, make and support the mechanics to keep them in place so great images always happen. When companies making top quality rifle scopes had to cut costs to stay in business, they cut labor costs; the biggest slice of the product's money pie. It's easy to tell how good image quality is; you don't even have to shoot at all.
Most folks demand superior images from their rifle scopes. They pay big bucks for them and usually get less than perfect mechanics. But the companies don't care because the vast majority of their customers don't shoot their rifles well enough nor know how to uncover the poor mechanics and non-repeatability they have from shot to shot; you don't test them very well by shooting groups with them.
Weaver's scopes with Microtrack adjustments have average optics, but probably the best mechanics around. Some tests made years ago on four .308 Win. match rifles with every scope on the market tested for the accuracy it would produce. A few did very good to start with, others average or not so good. Then each scope had 100 rounds fired under it while it was on an M1A. Finally, all scopes went back on the rifles to test. All of them shot worse than before; their mechanics had loosened up causing the target image to not rest at the same place on the reticule causing less accuracy. That is except for two scopes; a Weaver T16 and T20. Mounting the scopes on bench collimators then beating on them to substitute recoil had the same results. The plain average optics in the two Weaver Model T's were kept well in place. John Unertl, the old scope making man himself, told me about these tests. He said the only scopes that were as mechanically sound as the Weaver Model T's were his external adjustments used on Unertl target scopes as well as the Targetspots made by Lyman.
Even the power zoom ring and its two cam tubes moving two lens groups back and forth can cause errors. Put an optical collimator in your rifle's muzzle, adust the scope's reticule to center on the collimator, then make power changes while watching the reticule make a figure eight around the collimator's center. Worst I've ever seen was on a Leupold and two Nightforce scopes.
