In article ,
Gunner wrote:

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 22:41:25 -0400, "Adam Smith"
wrote:

http://www.surplusshed.com/ consistently have used reticles at good prices.
I haven't bought reticles, but I've bought other optical goods, they were
very painless pleasant transactions. Next day shipping, perfect packing,
prompt communications yada. I bought a reasonable condition coated 50 mm
objective (in cell) in the last purchase, and I think it was $7 or some such
figure.

I recall that "Procedures in Experimental Physics" (the John Stong book that
somebody mentioned earlier in the day: Lindsay) has a section on using
spider silk to make a reticle. I believe that most folks now stretch single
polypropylene fibers.

(ping James Lerch, Bob May, other of the lurking ATMs?) anybody done this?

I once redid a reticle using spider silk. It was actually quite easy
to do, using black widow silk..of which we have a rather large surplus
of here in the desert..

I used a tiny drop of airplane model superglue to hold each end of
both strands across the reticle ring, but it was a stone bitch getting
them perfectly oriented at 12/3/6/9 oclock and had to redo it about 10
times..and never did get it perfect, but shot the scope for about 10
yrs on a 243

Not having any inert gas (at the time)..it did fog on me once under
sever conditions. Normally they are nitrogen filled..I wonder if
Argon would work?

Yes. Nitrogen is used because it's cheap, but any inert gas will work,
if it's bone dry. Dry is the key.


Joe Gwinn