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I picked up a new A5 in need a rebuild.
The biggest issue I see is the rear eyepiece, the glass in cracked in the eyepiece. Does anyone makes replacements?
You’ve heard of being up a certain creek without a paddle?
I can think of only one faint hope: MVA is making what they call a “Winchester B5” repro, which it most certainly is NOT (it’s really closer to being a Lyman 5B repro, if there had ever been such a thing), but there’s a possibility their ocular lens (assuming they’d sell you one) might be compatible with the other original lenses. Maybe, even, they’d undertake to rebuild your scope with all new coated lenses, though I hate to think what the cost of that would be!
https://montanavintagearms.com/product/winchester-scopes/winchester-b-series-scope-with-no-2-mount/
As Clarence mentioned, up the creek…..
The A5 lenses were made by Bausch and Lomb for Winchester and there were certain proprietary inaccuracies built into the objective lenses which were offset by a compensating inaccuracy in the ocular lens, in effect a purposely built-in safeguard to keep them from being copied.
Your best hope is to find another A5 scope of the same power for donor parts.
Best Regards,
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
Crap. That is what I sort of figured. Were the original B5 and A5 the same lens? If they were, I will just keep a look out for both for donor scopes.
It’s on a Marine Mann Niedner with a named leather case, so I mostly bought it to collect. Unless I found a real rifle someday, which probably won’t happen, it will mostly likely sit in my curio cabinet anyways. So I guess it’s not a huge deal. But I would fix it if given the chance.
But thanks for the help gents!
steven norton said
Crap. That is what I sort of figured. Were the original B5 and A5 the same lens? If they were, I will just keep a look out for both for donor scopes.It’s on a Marine Mann Niedner with a named leather case, so I mostly bought it to collect. Unless I found a real rifle someday, which probably won’t happen, it will mostly likely sit in my curio cabinet anyways. So I guess it’s not a huge deal. But I would fix it if given the chance.
But thanks for the help gents!
Good question about the B5 and A5 lens interchangeability. I don’t know the answer but suspect they are “interchangeable” (meaning they will swap) but are not compatible due to the different focal lengths.
I regularly watch for Winchester scopes and will keep my eyes open for a beater A5 for donor parts. A Marine Mann Niedner deserves to have a functional scope.
Best Regards,
P.S.; Are you cplnorton on the CMP forum? If so, thanks again for your help over there.
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
Steve, JWA had the right idea about looking for A5 parts. As you know, such scope parts might run two or three hundred, but you could turn around and sell the unused pieces as they seem to most always be in demand too.
James
P.S.; Are you cplnorton on the CMP forum? If so, thanks again for your help over there.
James
Yeah that’s me. Always glad to help if I can. 🙂
steven norton said
Were the original B5 and A5 the same lens?
No, the B series were the long eye-relief models, but that’s NOT what MVA is making despite the name–Heaven knows how they came up with it! I’ve never had one of MVA’s scopes, but many target shooters rave about them, so if they would sell you the ocular lens alone, I think it’s a gamble worth taking, and the cost would probably be a lot less than that of a junk A5, assuming you lived long enough to find one.
JWA said
The A5 lenses were made by Bausch and Lomb for Winchester and there were certain proprietary inaccuracies built into the objective lenses which were offset by a compensating inaccuracy in the ocular lens, in effect a purposely built-in safeguard to keep them from being copied.
Best Regards,
This, I know, is the famous “Prof. Hastings” legend, but run it by a professional optical engineer (as I have done), and I believe you’ll be told it’s nonsense, optically speaking; just like the claim that the tubes were being drilled out of solid rods, rather than using seamless tubing as every other maker used.
clarence said
This, I know, is the famous “Prof. Hastings” legend, but run it by a professional optical engineer (as I have done), and I believe you’ll be told it’s nonsense, optically speaking; just like the claim that the tubes were being drilled out of solid rods, rather than using seamless tubing as every other maker used.
Yep, you got it, Prof. Hastings of Yale. Never heard the solid rod part of the story though.
I was just quoting the Winchester “1938 Sales Manual”, sales being the key word there. It doesn’t make much sense to me either. It was written by Winchester well after they had sold the A5 to Lyman so it also doesn’t make sense they would make that statement in an attempt to discourage others from copying the A5 since they no longer produced it or owned the rights to it.
Anyway, the bottom line is that the optics are ground with the variables of the focal length, magnifying power and location of the erector lenses in addition to the physical diameter so the odds of using a lens from a different model scope and have the optics match are very, very small.
Best Regards,
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
JWA said
Yep, you got it, Prof. Hastings of Yale. Never heard the solid rod part of the story though.
I was just quoting the Winchester “1938 Sales Manual”, sales being the key word there. It doesn’t make much sense to me either. It was written by Winchester well after they had sold the A5 to Lyman so it also doesn’t make sense they would make that statement in an attempt to discourage others from copying the A5 since they no longer produced it or owned the rights to it.
First public disclosure of the story, as far as I’ve been able to trace it, was by Phil Sharpe also in ’38; during the time the scope was actually in production, nobody, not Whelen, who was a very early A5 advocate, not Crossman, another early scope advocate who was even more of an industry-insider than Whelen, not Ness, who most often discussed & reviewed scopes for the Rifleman, mentioned this alleged optical design so far as I know, and my readings in the works of all three is extensive. That fact alone raises a red flag for me.
“The tube is not drawn but bored and turned from a solid piece of steel” appeared in ads & catalogs until the end of production. It’s not utterly inconceivable that the first prototypes were manufactured this way, but continuing it into full scale production defies logic and belief, and especially, economics. A5 tubes are the same thickness of those of Stevens, etc., and a greater thickness would have interfered with impressing the groove needed for the front mount plunger.
clarence said
First public disclosure of the story, as far as I’ve been able to trace it, was by Phil Sharpe also in ’38; during the time the scope was actually in production, nobody, not Whelen, who was a very early A5 advocate, not Crossman, another early scope advocate who was even more of an industry-insider than Whelen, not Ness, who most often discussed & reviewed scopes for the Rifleman, mentioned this alleged optical design so far as I know, and my readings in the works of all three is extensive. That fact alone raises a red flag for me.
“The tube is not drawn but bored and turned from a solid piece of steel” appeared in ads & catalogs until the end of production. It’s not utterly inconceivable that the first prototypes were manufactured this way, but continuing it into full scale production defies logic and belief, and especially, economics. A5 tubes are the same thickness of those of Stevens, etc., and a greater thickness would have interfered with impressing the groove needed for the front mount plunger.
Winchester sold the A5 to Lyman in 1928, it was not in production in 1938 so why did they come up with this horse hockey 10 years later? Is it possible the “tube” they are describing is the internal erector tube or cross-hair tube? The cross-hair tubes in even the cheaper scopes were very thick wall brass.
Here is the page from the Winchester 1938 Sales Manual, it is also interesting they mention an experimental lens grinding shop on the premises, I wonder if that was true.
Regards,
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
Clarence,
I have been doing some additional reading on the subject and found there may be a grain of truth in the Winchester advertising. At the beginning of the 1916 Bausch and Lomb catalog they give credit to Professor Charles S. Hastings of Yale University who invented the Hastings Aplanatic Triplet magnifier (which is still produced by B&L today). The Hastings system (as it is called by Optical Engineers) uses three or more elements to achieve better correction for chromatic aberrations and distortion. I suspect that is what the Winchester marketing department may have been referring to in the catalog.
Also, I perused Sharpe’s book and found where he mentions the lens inaccuracies in the A5 in the telescope chapter but then refers the reader to Chapter 13 but there is no information on the A5 in Chapter 13 that I can find and no mention of Hastings anywhere in his book in either the first or second edition.
It has been an interesting research afternoon, thanks for the discussion.
Regards,
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
The June 1910 Winchester catalog addresses the subject of the tube being bored and turned from a solid piece of steel.
James
BTW folks. Steve Norton is a great guy who deserves all the help he can get. Big Larry
JWA said
Clarence,I have been doing some additional reading on the subject and found there may be a grain of truth in the Winchester advertising. At the beginning of the 1916 Bausch and Lomb catalog they give credit to Professor Charles S. Hastings of Yale University who invented the Hastings Aplanatic Triplet magnifier (which is still produced by B&L today). The Hastings system (as it is called by Optical Engineers) uses three or more elements to achieve better correction for chromatic aberrations and distortion. I suspect that is what the Winchester marketing department may have been referring to in the catalog.
Regards,
Very interesting, as it never occurred to me to try tracking down a B&L catalog. (Hey–when I began to pursue this subject, the internet didn’t exist!) Of the professional reputation of Hastings, there’s no question, but that’s an entirely different issue from the so-called “compensating errors” claim…or rather, myth. However, the combination of 3 or more lenses to make a compound lens (some Leica camera lenses, which I once collected, contained 5 or 6) is a very FAR cry from the assertion of Sharpe, and the many who’ve uncritically repeated his story…like, for ex., John Campbell, whose gross misunderstandings of this subject are jaw-dropping. But it’s not too hard to understand how the optical principle behind the Aplanatic Triplet could, by persons unfamiliar with its technical meaning, be distorted into Sharpe’s fanciful story. Not that any of Winchester’s scopes actually contained one of these (expensive) triplets! Their objectives are doublets, the necessary minimum for correction of chromatic aberration, all others simple lenses.
Big Larry said
BTW folks. Steve Norton is a great guy who deserves all the help he can get. Big Larry
Why do I get the impression you are saying that as a fellow Marine? 
He has already proven to be a help to me and an honorable guy.
Semper Fi
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
jwm94 said
The June 1910 Winchester catalog addresses the subject of the tube being bored and turned from a solid piece of steel.James
Wow, dug out the 1910 catalog and you and Clarence are correct. “Bored and turned from a solid piece of steel” is pretty far-fetched. I never noticed that piece of fairy-tale advertisement before. I could maybe envision reaming a piece of boiler tubing but a “solid piece of steel” is just silly.
Thanks for the reference.
Best Regards (and Semper Fi to you also since we are on the subject)
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
clarence said
Very interesting, as it never occurred to me to try tracking down a B&L catalog. (Hey–when I began to pursue this subject, the internet didn’t exist!) Of the professional reputation of Hastings, there’s no question, but that’s an entirely different issue from the so-called “compensating errors” claim…or rather, myth. However, the combination of 3 or more lenses to make a compound lens (some Leica camera lenses, which I once collected, contained 5 or 6) is a very FAR cry from the assertion of Sharpe, and the many who’ve uncritically repeated his story…like, for ex., John Campbell, whose gross misunderstandings of this subject are jaw-dropping. But it’s not too hard to understand how the optical principle behind the Aplanatic Triplet could, by persons unfamiliar with its technical meaning, be distorted into Sharpe’s fanciful story. Not that any of Winchester’s scopes actually contained one of these (expensive) triplets! Their objectives are doublets, the necessary minimum for correction of chromatic aberration, all others simple lenses.
I agree completely, I think we are on the same page.
From what I read it looks like Winchester published the misguided/mis-worded claim and from what I have read elsewhere in Sharpe’s book he just repeated it. Most of the stuff in the Winchester Chapter 13 of Sharpe’s book appears to be a copy of what George Watrous of Winchester compiled in his book “Winchester Rifles and Shotguns” except Watrous did not address telescopic sights. The Winchester/Watrous book was not published until 1943 and Sharpe’s book was 1938. There was a working copy of the Watrous work floating around in 1938 so it is hard to say who copied whom…….
Best Regards,
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
JWA said
Wow, dug out the 1910 catalog and you and Clarence are correct. “Bored and turned from a solid piece of steel” is pretty far-fetched. I never noticed that piece of fairy-tale advertisement before. I could maybe envision reaming a piece of boiler tubing but a “solid piece of steel” is just silly.
Thanks for the reference.
Best Regards (and Semper Fi to you also since we are on the subject)
I knew you had the reference, Jeff! ?
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