Hi, I've just bought a vintage Wichester mod. 70 XTR manufactured in 1980, topped with a nice Redfield scope, still in good conditions:







Watching through, I can see a sort of small range finder, from 200 to 600 (yds?) in the lower-right part of the tube, as well as 2 thin parallel, horizontal lines in the upper part of the reticle, that is roughly a heavy duplex. Would you give me some info about it and the range finder system? Thanks.

P.S. I think that some sort of cover for the vertical turret was provided...

I believe that the parallel lines at the top of the view are called stadia lines. If you adjust your scope so that a deer sized animal's torso is covered between those parallel lines you are given a corresponding number on your yardage markers. This is a crude range finding device. The dial that is shown on your scope is then adjusted to the corresponding yard marker to adjust for elevation. I had one of those minus the adjustment dial. Probably sold it for too little.

Do you remember about any cover for the upper turret?

check post on dec 14 i think and it has info about ranging dial it is under redfield illuminator it tells of the dial and its settings

I have one on my 7mm and it does not come with a cover for the upper turret

I will reinstall the scope on the rifle and see if it hopefully still works and keeps zero. Thanks for your feedback.

I have a few of these older, American made Redfields, and have found their quality to be excellent. I have a 6-18X mounted on a Remington 700 Varmint Model in .25-06 and that scope equals or exceeds the clarity and brightness of any of my Leupolds. I really liked their rings with the screw heads that were cleared on the lower part of the ring, and tapped in the upper part. They were a little more troublesome to get mounted and tight, but once you did it made for a really nice, clean looking ring set up. Bill T.

quote:

I have a few of these older, American made Redfields, and have found their quality to be excellent. I have a 6-18X mounted on a Remington 700 Varmint Model in .25-06 and that scope equals or exceeds the clarity and brightness of any of my Leupolds.

Then why do you buy Leupolds? There are plenty of the old Denver Redfields available on ebay and from other sources.

Yes, in their day the Redfields were the top-of-the-line hunting (and for one model, target) scopes. Model for model, they commanded a price about $10 higher than a similar scope from the upstart Leupold Surveying Instrument company. They were somewhat heavier and longer than the Leupolds that supplanted them, and their optics, though good for the day, were never as good as the contemporary Leupold. If the Redfield "equals or exceeds the clarity and brightness of any of my Leupolds" then you need to clean the film of WD40 off of your Leupolds.

I have a 6-18 Redfield on a .22-250 HB. It is a good and serviceable scope, but is about half the scope (in both function and price) that a comparable Leupold VX-II 6-18 I have on another HB rifle is.

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Originally posted by Stonecreek:
Then why do you buy Leupolds? There are plenty of the old Denver Redfields available on ebay and from other sources.

If the Redfield "equals or exceeds the clarity and brightness of any of my Leupolds" then you need to clean the film of WD40 off of your Leupolds.

Redfields are no longer avaliable. I'm not intrested in garage sale shopping when I'm scoping out a new rifle. As I said Leupold makes a fine scope. They should for what they charge. With that said they aren't manufactured by Jesus Christ in heaven. Bushnell, Nikon, and a few other brands are very much on a par, or even exceed Leupolds clarity and brightness. Look at benchrest. Many shooters in that dicipline are choosing the 36X Weaver over anything Leupold makes. They're doing so for a reason, and it isn't to save a buck. Optics are a very competitive market. Leupold has been selling pretty much the same product with a lot of name changing for the last several years. Others like Bushnell with the 4200 series, and now the 6500 series, and Nikon with the Monarch 10 series have been improving steadily. I'm seeing the results more and more at the range. More of the other brands on expensive rifles, and somewhat fewer Leupolds. And this is from shooters who can afford pretty much anything they wish in the line of optics. Bill T.

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Leupold has been selling pretty much the same product with a lot of name changing for the last several years.

Make that the last several decades and I'll agree with you.

Insofar as competitive benchrest shooters, around 15% of them experiment with one then another brand of scope (Lyman was once a hot ticket, as was a scope that Remington marketed), but around 85% of them stay with Leupold. That's not because Leupold regularly makes some big "improvement" to their product, but because (despite the hype) they never really change it.

As I said, the old Denver Redfields were top notch scopes in their day -- and still work fine -- but they were heavier, longer, and provided less optical resolution than the comparable Leupold. That's why, despite being a the top of the heap, they went under while Leupold prospered.

Dave Bushnell, who I am sure is now long-dead, made his name and his fortune by importing surprisingly high quality riflescopes built in Japan to his specifications -- and at a price that was competitive with Weaver in the "working man's" market. Because they bore the name Bushnell, many people didn't even realize they were Japanese. The Bushnell company (which until recently rented the "Bausch & Lomb" moniker for its scopes) has continued importing Asian-made scope from various contractors. Many of them have excellent optics in terms of resolution. Some of them hold together pretty well. Others are prone to problems. None of them are as well adapted to use as an optical gunsight as those made by Leupold. I've got no problem if you want to use a Bushnell, but remember, Bushnell is a marketer; Leupold is a manufacturer.

Actually, Redfield went south because they were bought by AMF who managed the company in the typical Bean-counter fashion and transfered manufacturing from Denver to Japan. Len Burris ran Redfield's custom/prototype shop in Denver, and left Redfield to start Burris Optics when Redfield was bought out. For a long time thereafter Burris was Leupold's main competition.

Midway just delivered 2 sets of Burris Steel Extreme Tactical Bases, and 2 sets of their Signature Zee Rings today. I'm going to scope out my 2 new Savages with them. Their Signature Rings with the Posi-Align inserts are the best thing to happen to scope rings in decades. Great holding power, no lapping, and no marring of the scope tube. With the offset inserts you can bring in most any gun and keep the adjustment centered. Or, if you wish, dial in any amount of MOA elevation you want without going to tapered bases. Burris has some nice equipment. Bill T.

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Originally posted by loud-n-boomer:
Actually, Redfield went south because they were bought by AMF who managed the company in the typical Bean-counter fashion and transfered manufacturing from Denver to Japan.

Yes, but the reason that manufacturing was moved offshore was that Redfield was attempting to compete with Bushnell on the lower end, having already lost to Leupold on the higher end. The funky TV-screen occular lens of the Widefield was Redfields "Hail Mary" effort to win back some of the higher end business. The TV-screen was a dismal marketing failure (as well it deserved) and marked the end of Denver-made scopes.

quote:

Len Burris ran Redfield's custom/prototype shop in Denver, and left Redfield to start Burris Optics when Redfield was bought out. For a long time thereafter Burris was Leupold's main competition.

I actually thought that Burris' departure (along with other key staff) was the main reason that Redfield ultimately collapsed. Whether he left due to the change in ownership or vice-versa, I'm really not sure.

And yes, I would agree that Burris became Leupold's main competition. Burris made pretty good scopes, but their engineering was purely old timey Redfied: They were long, heavy, and had rather critical eye relief.

Burris did remain Leupold's primary competitor until Burris, themselves, took the Redfield path and went offshore for much of their production.

Ironically, Leupold purchased the Redfield name in April of this year: http://www.redfield.com/
My best guess is that they will use it to brand Asian-produced scopes (much like their Wind River brand of Asian binoculars). This would allow them to compete more effectively with all of the other Asian scope marketers and still keep the Leupold name attached only to American-made (with Asian components, of course) scopes.

Coming back to the topic, one more question, please:

when I rotate the vertical turret screw I feel and hear the "clicks", but when I rotate the lateral turret one, I don't feel or hear anything...

Is it normal?

Yes. The old Redfields normally used friction adjustments (no "click"). The model you have was intended for quick and accurate field adjustment for long-range shooting, so Redfield built the "clicks" into the elevation adjustment, making it easy to count and return to a predetermined zero.

Considering how expensive new, American-made scopes are in Italy, you have a real prize in your old Redfield. I'll bet it gives you good service.

If memory serves, the distance between the rangefinding parallel stadia lines is intended to subtend 12" at the distance shown on the rangefinding scale in the bottom of the sight picture. In otherwords, it was intended to give you the range of a whitetail deer by adjusting the power until the deer's chest (presumed to be 12") exactly fit between the stadia lines, then reading the measurement on the scale. It is actually quite accurate. The problem is (1) getting an animal to hold still long enough to go through this process, and (2) finding an animal whose torso is exactly 12" from brisket to backbone. If you were hunting elk (American wapiti), I think they were supposed to measure 18", so you divided the range by 1.5x. Or maybe the figures were 18 and 24 inches for deer and elk? It's been a lot of years. Anyway, you can prove it at the bench by using targets of known size to check the stadia gap.

Laser rangefinders have long since taken the place of optical rangefinders in most outdoors applications, but the subtension theory still works.

stonecreek is right as to how the rangefinder or estimator works the distance between stadia lines is 18inches pat 100yds so as he says if animal larger than 18 inch chest you multiply and smaller divide as everyone else has said this is o k if animal is not moving cannot explain this as well as booklet and diagrams and pictures help

What really nailed the coffin in the Redfields was for years they had dumped toxic chemicals from the factory straight into the ground around the plant and when they got caught and were told to clean it up and pay hefty fines, they closed the doors.