I just bought 2 drilling’s. One has a 6-42 geco scope on it and one has a 6-52 nickel scope on it. Can you tell me anything about these scopes? Both drilling’s are sauer and sohn. 16 gauge I’ve 7-57r and 7-65r.

Thanks

Both are old German scope manufacturers. Nickel were and are top quality. And unless lenses are tarnished or scratched then perfectly usable. The adjustment will move the reticle rather than the image. That’s why there will be adjustment in the mounts, or if not the mounts will have been fitted so that scope is zeroed - think open sights as opposed to modern optics with lots of adjustment. Both will perfectly good for any game animal out to normal ranges. The Nickel with 56mm objective would have been for shooting boar under the moonlight but suspect mounted quite high. Germans tend to shoot with head up and chin on stock. Lace on leather cheek piece sorts the problem if you can’t shoot like that.

Nickel still make scopes and are independent - http://www.nickel-ag.com/en/pr...ts/scopes/15630.aspx

And so do Geco - more affordable than Zeiss, S&B, or Swarovski- on a par with Docter ie cheaper but almost as good.

saucer & soho? Would that by chance be Sauer & Sohn?

Yes it is sauer and sohn. Spellcheck got me.

As Heym SR20 said, B.Nickel (Supra) Marburg scopes were among the good ones. I understand some of the old Geco scopes were made by Schmidt & Bender. I have a good 4x Geco, but somehow the eyepiece was meant for a scope with a much-shorter eye relief, causing some light to reflect off the bezel.

Nickel was acquired by Hertel & Reuss about 1970, after which, some say, the optics declined. I've looked through early and late ones and can't say I've noticed, though. H&R Nickels did finally cave in to constantly centred reticles and all of the production from Nickel AG fits this category. If your scopes are the older type, I would bet their mechanicals are much more robust than can generally be made with the modern concept. (I pulled an old Nickel to pieces and found the reticle assembly moved up and down in an immovable, finely fitted dovetail against a formidable spring. Modern scopes have the whole erector set, weighing about 10 times as much as the reticle assy, hinged at the rear and held against the turret screws at the front end by spring(s), which are often stressed laterally when extreme adjustments are made.)

I am still trying to understand why people put 6x scopes on arms that included shot barrels, though. The obvious conclusion would be they whipped the scope off whenever use of the shotgun barrels was envisaged, so you might find some wear in the claw mounts.