Leupold’s Gold Ring Full Lifetime Guarantee covers the life of the product, regardless of who the owner is at the time. Photo courtesy of Leupold & Stevens, Inc.
A rarely stated truism is that a riflescope’s most important job is staying zeroed. The optical resolution of an astronomical telescope is nice and the brightness of a surgical operating theater is wonderful, but all is lost if the reticle points two MOA left for one shot, three down for the next.
Historically, scopes stayed on target because they were zeroed via external adjustments. The mount bases themselves turned right/left, up/down. The advent of the spring-loaded, turret-dialed erector tube weakened all that. Internal adjustments simplify zeroing and permit dialing corrections for long-range trajectory curves, but at the risk of the whole system going down.
Out of sight and usually out of mind, erector springs can weaken through an insidious decline some shooters fight and puzzle over for years as their scopes inconsistently wander. Galling and sticking at the turret pressure points can complicate adjustments. Square reticle shifts in a round hole introduce inexplicable inconsistencies at the edges. A broken spring, of course, crashes the hard drive, so to speak.
Scope makers combat these challenges with ever-improving erector systems, more durable materials, more precise construction and tighter tolerances, but little or none of this can be seen and assessed by purchasers. How do you know if your scope, if any scope, has the guts to go the distance?
Manufacturers go to some trouble to advertise the durability of their products, usually by subjecting test samples to hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of impacts designed to duplicate the recoil pounding of something big and scary like a .375 H&H Magnum. This isn’t a bad upper limit option since most of the larger cartridges are fired through open-sighted rifles. Scope builders assume that, if their product can withstand 100,000 shots atop a .375 H&H, their customers should have no trouble with any smaller caliber.
Bad assumption.
According to David Archerd in the engineering department at Leupold & Stevens, Inc., recoil stresses are a lot more complicated than energy alone. “The force is also affected by time,” he told me during an inside peek at his testing facilities in Beaverton, Oregon. “The duration of the energy exerted into or onto an object is a major factor in our shock testing.”
That prompted me to say: “I’m sure you don’t sit here with a rifle and actually fire 10,000 rounds with every scope you test. So do you clamp one on a steel block and drop it like I’ve seen at some test facilities?”
“No, we use purpose-designed machinery and some specially developed materials that induce the correct sine wave of real rifle signatures.”
“Purpose-designed?” I lifted an eyebrow. “You’re starting to sound like a politician here, Senator Archerd.”
“That’s because I’m keeping secrets like a politician,” he replied. “There’s proprietary equipment in the next room we’re not allowed to expose to rabble like you.” He didn’t really say that rabble part. He was much too polite and professional for that. The simple fact is that Leupold operates under restrictions because of its working relationship with some U.S. government clients, which I assume are military. There are certain procedures and equipment they can’t expose to the press. I’m sure there are ordinary consumer optics secrets they hold close to the vest, too.
“So a special machine more or less duplicates actual rifle recoil.”
“Yes. That makes it easy to duplicate just about any firearm weight and caliber combination you can imagine. It’s one thing to say a scope can take so many rides on a .375 H&H, it’s another to say ‘on a seven-pound .375 H&H versus an 11-pound one.’ Big difference.”
“So then how big of a rifle, how much recoil force have you tested on your scopes? I can’t imagine anyone scoping a .500 Nitro double rifle, but do you test them? Have you tested one on, say, a .700 Nitro Express?”
“The worst real rifle that I’ve taken energy traces from was not those huge calibers, but a very light, 20-inch barrel .458 Lott. I can’t give the numbers out, but I will say that was not a fun day because I need a minimum of ten traces for an average. That rifle had stock-destroying energy — literally. The scope held up just fine, but one of the very best, high-dollar synthetic stocks didn’t.”
“You broke the stock?”
“The stock broke.”
I didn’t ask, but I’m guessing Archerd was shooting that rifle while it was mounted in a fixed rest like a Lead Sled. Those are known to break stocks of high-recoil rifles because, unlike the human shoulder, there is no “give” in a steel cradle anchored with 25 to 50 pounds of lead ballast. What I did remember to ask, because it’s commonly accepted in the optics world, was this: “I assume that was one of your top end scopes? Is it true that lower priced scopes, say under $250, sacrifice durability? Mount it on a .223 or .243, maybe a .270 Winchester or .30-06, but stay away from the magnums, right?”
“Well, maybe with some brands, but not Leupold. You can mount any model of our scopes to any rifle out there and it will be just fine. Our Gold Ring Lifetime Guarantee assures shooters of this.”
“Really? Your VX-1 and Rifleman scopes are as durable as your VX-3s and 6s?”
“Guaranteed. Listen, it takes our engineers sometimes a couple of years to get just the right (pause) the perfect marriage of materials and design to handle recoil energy until there’s almost no threat to any of the scope’s components. Our erector springs won’t break even if completely compressed. And as for weakening, they are made from a material that has one of the very best known return memories of any spring material in the world. That’s why we can offer our lifetime guarantee.”
Hearing that Leupold’s “starter” scopes are as rugged as their top-line scopes really surprised me, so, while I had Archerd cornered, I asked him to confirm or deny another pearl of conventional scope wisdom: bigger scopes are more prone to breakage than lighter ones because of inertia. Jolt a big slab of glass and it’s going to put increased stresses on mounting hardware, springs, whatever. Basic physics.
“Yeah, that’s basic physics …”
“So is there a rule of thumb for properly matching scope size to rifle and cartridge or “recoil size?” I asked.
“I can only speak for Leupold scopes. You will not see a lens from any of our scopes break from recoil. They’re engineered to dissipate destructive energy before it gets to the lenses or other sensitive components. Again, lifetime warranty.”
Well, yes, a lifetime warranty is great, but rather useless when you’re five days into a Yukon sheep hunt and the scope goes “sproing.” How does one guard against that? One of my theories has long been that any company that will guarantee its scope for a lifetime — the scope’s, not the original owner’s — must have considerable faith, if not knowledge, that they won’t often have to honor that guarantee. Aside from that, how else can a shooter test any scope for durability?
“How often do your scope’s come back because something broke inside? Recoil-type damage?” I asked.
“I don’t know the exact return rate,” Archerd admitted, “but the percentage of returns for breakage has to be way less than half of one percent. We just rarely see them. Most “broken scope” issues end up being loose rings or base screws, then bedding screws coming loose.”
I could relate to that. The two times I had “reticle wandering” issues with Leupold scopes, one was loose rings and the other, big surprise, loose bases. The VX-3 2.5-8X 36mm atop my 4 3/4-pound Rifles, Inc. Strata Stainless .280 Ackley Improved is another story. It was mounted in Talley ultra-light, aluminum one-piece rings, the ones in which the base and ring are integral. While hiking off a glacier with that rig in my hand and a 50-pound pack on my back, I slipped on a boulder and broke my fall by applying the rifle, rear ring and scope to another rock. I emerged with scraped knuckles, the Talley ring with a gouge and the scope with a star dent. Back at camp the rifle was shooting about 8 inches from where it was supposed to, but otherwise looked undamaged. I re-zeroed and shot a moose two days later. That was some 20 years ago. The rig has been functioning perfectly ever since.
I shared this anecdote with Archerd, which, predictably, prompted one of his own: “Several years ago I tested one of our 2.5-10×45 LPS scopes on our machine with energies greatly exceeding a .375 H&H rifle. The scope lasted for months. As in 658,000 hits.”
What could I add to that except “I’ll bet you were glad you weren’t firing an actual rifle that time.”
Click here to view Ron Spomer’s website.
Subscribe to the free daily newsletter to have Sporting Classics stories sent directly to your inbox!