doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Good Vintage scopes

I have a soft spot for the Weaver 330. the first decent scope that a shooter did not have to mortgage his home to afford. It may not be as good as the contemporary Zeiss Zeilklein but it is a heck of a lot better than a peepsight.

I personally have a weakness for old external adjustment scopes like the Win A5, Stevens, Lyman, etc. The earlier the better. I know they don't always compare optically with the later internal adj. scopes, but sometimes the optics are amazingly good for the period!

Sometimes I wonder if the quality of the optics aren't overrated anyway. At least on a target rifle or a legal dusk+30 rifle. A bright sharp target image is nice and all, but for shooting center, my guess is that is of immeasurable small importance.

Is that a Winchester A5 of a Lyman 5A (or whichever way the As and 5s go)? I do not know how to tell them apart without reading the lables

I have a Weaver V4.5 A which I just had rebuilt by
Riuez. Nice scope. I also have a Tasco 4X32 I bought around 1965 probably one of the earliest imported here. The dealer I gave the $10 to said he would replace it free as long as i had it. Its been living on my Rem600 350 Mag. its as good as the day i bought it. My most modern scope is a Burris 4 X 12 compact. I also have a bunch of stuff in between. I have one of the unertal looking Remingtons on my 40X its 24power from the 70s. I have a Balvar 8 that is as clear as anything modern.
Tom

I'm afraid I'm with GSP7 on this one: the Kollmorgan on my pre-64 model 70 is as sharp and crisp as any scope in the house, and there are some decent ones here! I don't know if when they made it matters, mine has a 26mm tube and needs an external adjustment mount like the Buehler it is in.

I have a Balvar 2.5-8X with quick-release mounts that can be switched from one rifle to another as the adjustments are in the mounts. I use the scope on three different Remington 760 rifles. The scope is clear as a bell. I have a spare new-in-the box in case this one is damaged or lost. Bausch & Lomb knew how to make optics.

One of the best-kept secrets is the Weaver Micro-track scope. They have great optics and are quite rugged with reliable adjustments. My favorite is the 2.5X fixed-power version.

Could you give us contact information for Riuez? I can always use a good scope rebuilder.

I agree that a lower-powered scope can be quite accurate on most targets including game, especially when target identification is not an issue. Plinking and even actual competition can be lots of fun with almost no real diminution of performance. Here's an example.

In 1965 at college in Trinidad, I witnessed Pete Grisel win a 400-yd gong shoot against a gaggle of gunsmithing students firing many finely-tuned long-range rifles. His closest competition came from Rick Shay firing a Win 220 Swift with a 10x Weaver and Canjar SST; both of them hit the gong so many times that the watchers all got kinda bored and then Rick missed, or more likely his bullet passed through an existing hole. Pete smacked the gong solidly again with his usual panache and carried home the prize.

Pete was using a 3x Weaver on his elderly and shot-out 243 Rem 722. Point proven. At 400 yards.

However here in MS we've had a Big Bucks Program going for several years now that mandates harvesting only the larger bucks. The requirement is for either 6-point or better, or in some areas 8-point or better, for any legal buck (Eastern count). I quickly found that 5x was simply not enough power to always positively count the number of antler tines in the dark local swampy woods, even with lenses larger and scopes brighter than the older ones. If the deer was out in a fire lane or food plot, fine, but at oh-dark-thirty in the thick stuff I occasionally needed more power and brighter lenses. Prior to this time I had never thought much about the European preference for large scopes but now it was easy to see how something like an 8x56 would be a big help when trying to see into the darker areas of the deep woods. Just a thought.
Regards, Joe

Joe get a good set of binos and use the older scope.

Got binos from 6x24 to 12x50, they don't work quick enough for some situations. I normally use a set of Leica Geovids but sold them recently in favor of a lighter-weight glass. B&L 7x50s live in my pickup console. Binos are wonderful, almost can't get along without 'em in some situations, but they just aren't quite fast enough for other situations. IMO.

Different strokes, remember. Some folks don't shoot targets much, others don't shoot game much, others don't shoot much of either. I happen to shoot both, often with the same rifle, so my needs tend to be different. If I tried shooting a fox or bobcat at night with a light (legal and popular varmints in MS) I'd soon be cursing my A-5, while a supermagnum-ultrapower-megascope makes a fairly revolting sight when placed on a graceful vintage rifle. I guess in my case it comes down to a compromise between tradition and utility, and we each tend to solve that conundrum individually.
Regards, Joe