Made myself a vintage rifle scope (1850's type)

[John Rogers]

I decided to make a scope for one of my 45 caliber muzzle loader slug guns after reading Major Roberts' book on muzzle loading rifles. A lot of the rifles in there had a long 34 to 36 inch 6 to 8 power scope so I thought why not?! I have it setup so I can switch with the Hi Lux copy of a Malcolm 6x scope that you see mounted on the barrel. Since the barrel comes off (patent breech) for cleaning, both front and read mounts are on the barrel.

There were two issues, first was making the cross hair sleeve and I think they are just a tad off center but I'll see on Monday when I test things. Second is I had to use plano or single convex lenses and the result is a fuzzy ring around the outside so I only get 50% of the picture clear. I am trying to find some double lenses but there are race in 14mm diameter and the focal length I want. Here are a couple of shots of the cross hair assembly, the Malcolm copy mounted and the octal end of the scope showing the machine screws holding things together.

[Jeff Higgins]

Cool project, John. I've always wanted to mount up one of the Malcombs on one of my rifles. Just haven't ever gotten around to it. So what did you use for the scope tube and other hardware?

[John Rogers]

Here's a copy of the article I wrote for a muzzle loader site. I was not sure if my 1998 Harbor Freight 3 in 1 combo setup would work well enough for this but it did.

I made a 36 inch long scope for one of the 45 caliber slug guns. I used 0.75 4130 DOM tube with 0.035 wall thickness for the body. I used 14 mm lenses for all 3 lenses and the final result is approximately 10 to 12 power magnification. There are a couple issues, first the plano convex lenses cause a fuzzy ring around the outside of the sight picture so I get a smaller clear image in the middle. To cure this I plan to replace the lenses with achromatic lenses of the same focal length as soon as I can find some. Second are the cross hairs and they are probably a smidgen off center but will do for testing purposes. Getting a single strand of thread from non waxed dental floss was pretty hard and I used my handy magnified and razor knives to pick the floss apart. I used brass nipples and machined them on my 3 in 1 lathe/mill/drill to hold the lenses.

I plan to test the scopes this coming week to see if they hold up to the recoil of my 90 grain powder load. With the Sharps I had, the bullet was a tad lighter and the powder was only 68 grains but since the rifle was lighter it did jump a lot more!

Here are the references for making your own scope if interested.

1. Black Powder Cartridge News, summer 2008 in the article by Rich Hicks.
2. Single Shot Rifle Journal, Jan/Feb 2009 or Vol. 62 number in an article by John Arrowood.
3. John's videos on Youtube, he has 3 total and they are 8dHk3MCLSew, 65Q-2E6Tz7M, jQO5zpybsAY.
4. ASSRA Forum, post by "Dead_Eye" for "Scope Design" and starts at number 1204825111/0 (this John's original post)
5. Anchor Optics for the lenses, focal lengths are: 42mm, 97mm and 411mm all are 14mm diamete type 1 coated lenses.

[Evans, Marv]

John. Like a bunch of other guys on here, the things you do are amazing. Lots of talent.

[vash]

holy smokes..

mine would be made out of paper towel cardboard tube. that is amazing!!!