Make your own riflescope?

4

4V50 Gary

Staff
Anybody got instructions? Back in the '40s, it was not unusual for kids to make as a science project their own scope. I'm not looking at competing with Zeiss, Swarvoski, Leupold or any of the other big boys. Rather, I'm thinking 19th Century technology. Any manuals anywhere?
 
I've looked into building a scope, as I have a hobby machine shop at home, but after burning a fair bit of cash on trial-and-error, AND the cost of decent quality bare optics, I decided to scrap the project.

The trickiest part is obtaining a good quality reticle and being able to reliably adjust it for elevation and wind.

I designed my reticle in CAD and had a friend laser-etch the pattern on a sapphire window (a laser lab optic). The reticle didn't come out as sharp as I was hoping and as it turns out, sapphire isn't the best material for this application because it reflects too much light.

Then I made the elev/wind adjustment mechanism... very tricky. It would adjust in one direction fine, but when you tried to back it up the first couple clicks would merely take up "slack" in the system.

I was using a Schmidt & Bender as my R&D subject, and boy oh boy that's one precise elev/wind adjustment.

I don't know your prototyping capabilities, but for the elev/wind knobs you should try to use micrometer heads. They are not expensive but they are very precise.
 
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