Optical accessories for classic match airguns

Optical accessories for classic match airguns 

With thanks to Mike D.

Nifty gadgets from the Hickory show

The show featured a wonderful cache of parts and accessories from Beeman's warehouse in the old days. in addition to a bunch of rare spare parts, I picked up these interesting sight goodies:

Mint, un-used Weihrauch diopter for 11mm rails, complete with an equally perfect Gehmann iris with 1.5x focusing lens. The aperture opening adjusts from 3.0mm down to a (ridiculously tiny!) 0.5mm:

Another gorgeous old Gehmann iris - no lens, but built-in colored filters and polarizer. The small yellow square is the witness mark; you can see the aperture is at 2.1mm, the polarizer at about 50%, and a green filter is up. I really like this one, the wide adjuster rings are easy to use:

Here's a cool one for you pistoleros. It replaces the front sight housing on FWB springer pistols, and lets you adjust the post width between 3.0mm and 5.0mm with a twist of the dial:

The rest of these goodies are for rifle front tunnel sights. As a quick reminder, such gadgets typically replace the OEM threaded sleeve that secures the metal inserts; a neat idea that allows different brands of sights to share accessories, even though their OEM metal inserts (which fit into an internal "shoulder" independent of the threaded section) are different. Older sights from the 60's (Walther, HW, Diana) typically have a 17mm thread. Later springers (Anschutz, FWB, later Walther and Diana match rifles) have an 18mm thread. HW and Diana use the old 17mm thread in their sporter sights to this day. Match accessories are no longer made for 17mm, but 18mm is still ubiquitous.

+ First up, a set of 17mm adjustable front elements, seen here in an HW tunnel. One is a post that can go from 2.0mm to 3.5mm wide. The other two are a matched set of adjustable ring elements; one goes from a 2.5mm up to 4.2mm opening; the other's range is 4.0mm to 5.3mm.

 This is a nifty clear insert, made for 18mm threaded sights, with an ring element that adjusts from 3.0mm up to about 4.5mm. The flat inserts in the box are various polarizing elements for an Anschutz tunnel:

This other 18mm-thread gadget may be the piece de resistance of the group. The opening adjusts from 4.0mm to 6.0mm, and has crossbars. The vertical bar can be dialed away if desired:

I do have to add a postscript though...the exterior cosmetics are obviously excellent, but several of these vintage gizmos did suffer from 30+ years in storage! Several adjustments are quite firmly stuck due to perished lubricants, etc., and will take a whle to resolve.