Does anyone know the thickness of fine cross hairs for a Lyman scope and possibly a source? Thanks for the help, Dave.

The diameters of the cross hair wire is like .001-.002.
Have the dia of human hair.

Do yourself a favor and get hold of Gil Parsons thru his web page (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)


He does great work and at a good price.  Ever think of having a dot put in, they are very nice.

I also had only heard of a dot.

Then I got to try one.
It seems to be easier to aquire the dot over the intersection of the cross hairs.
Back when my eyes were newer it didn't seem to matter, but with age it becomes very noticable.
I had a dot put in my Mitchell when I had it made, and when I needed cross hairs in a Lyman STS 20x I had the dot put in that too.

For target shooting it is great, never used one for hunting, but I would have to suspect it does that same there.

I had a 1/8 minute dot done.

I also have a dot in my Weaver T 36.

And thinking of sending my 30X STS in for the dot.

Good for you, Dave_C.  Sometimes the experience is more valuable than the actual object you wind up with.

My own adventures in scope crosshair replacement began with the acquisition of "Guide to Riflescope Repair" by Dr. J. W. Seyfried (University Optics, Inc., 1985; Library of Congress 85-051115; ISBN 0-934639-00-0)  Don't know if the book is still in print, but you may be able to track one down through Amazon.

Dr. Seyfried's book mostly covered internal adjusting hunting scopes, but the principles are the same, and even simpler, in the old-fashioned outside adjustment scopes I was interested in fixing.  He sold crosshair wire of 0.001" (ultra-fine, for target scopes) and 0.0015 (medium thickness for all-around applications).  Price was $5.95 for 18" of either thickness.  The address for this was University Optics, P. O. Box 1205, Ann Arbor, MI 48106  All this was about 17 years ago, but you could check and see if somebody's still offering it.

You get the crosshair ring out of the scope, scrape off the 4 glue spots or melt off the 4 solder spots at right angles around the circumference, and put two pieces of the wire crosswise on the ring, with weights clipped to the ends to keep them stretched taut.  Then a dab of epoxy or a drop of solder and some heat at the 4 quadrants of the ring and a trim of the wires and the ring goes into the scope and you're back in business.

The trick is getting enough tension on the wires (but not too much; only a thousandth of an inch thick, remember) and getting the anchor points equidistant around the ring and exactly at 90 degrees.  Amazing how a "perfect" job of this, even under magnification at your work bench, winds up being just enough off, or just crinkled enough, to be annoyingly apparent when you have the ring back in the telescope sight.  Don't ask me how I know this .

But doing you own work is a reward in itself.  Skill and knowledge can't be obtained just by handing somebody else some wampum and having them do it.  You appreciate others' good work even more, once you've tried it.

Spider silk has long been a traditional material for crosshairs...it's reputed to be stronger than steel (by whatever measure the reputer was using!) Anyway, it too can be split into its component fibers for finer diameter.  While I have not done this myself, a gunsmith I used to work with has done so with good results.  YMMV, of course!

Froggie