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Older Redfield 4x riflescopes

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I have a similar scope to that one in which the objective and eyepiece are somewhat flattened for a wide field of view. I believe that it was offered in 4 or 6 power. My dad got it in the early 90's and didn't use it, so I put it on a .50cal muzzle loader and it worked great. I recently put it on one of my AR's for kicks and it worked great on it also. With the scope being of such weird design, it did not look good on an AR.
 
My bro bought an older Remington 700 ADL model and it comes with this scope( like one in the link below). I understand it s a fixed power. Were these common in the 60s to 70s period? Are they made tougher esp the internals (one older guy told me a long time ago, dont know if he was just partial to his time) compared to newer ones?
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You get more for less money in today’s optics.

Many old folks have fuzzy memories and tend to wish for the good old days. There were some wonderful things in the good old days, but decent optics for a cheap price was not one of them.

The Redfield Wideview (which I think is that scope) was a decent scope. I do not believe it was made of uber materials, I don’t believe the internals were stronger. With today’s Computer aided design, designers are able to model recoil and loads to a detail and iterate the design and weed out weak points, to a level that the old slide rule engineers could only believe it was science fiction if they saw it.

Today’s cheap optics are better than the cheap optics back then. Mid range optics are better. The 4X Redfields were mid range.

In today’s CAD/CAM manufacturing world, manufacturing becomes unprofitable to let the process control get out of wack and produce the garbage glass and lenses that were fitted in the cheap optics of the 60/70’s. So the cheap lenses and coatings are decent, the mid range are better than ever, and the high dollar stuff is the best we have ever had.

Incidentally, there are very few lense grinding or glass manufacturers.

Just look through the old Redfield. Is the image clear to the edges? Is the image green?. Is the image distorted? If not, the scope is a good one.

I have a Weaver 4X on one rifle. It is a 70’s scope. The image is not outstandingly bright, but it is good enough.

I got to look through a 1940’s Zeiss. It was very decent for a period scope. About as good as my Weaver.

Unertl scopes are good regardless of age.
 
I have an old Redfield 4x on my Winchester 06 that has worked flawlessly for many years and many hunts. While it is really all the scope I need and it does fit the rifle vintage wise if I were in the mood to re-scope the rifle I would get a better scope with a bit more power, something like a Leupold VX II 3x9x40.

WinchesterM7030-06.gif
 
I have the same thing! I bought an old Remington 700 ADL in .308 with i believe that same Redfield fixed 4X scope, although i don't know much about the optic itself, sorry. It has served it's purpose well so far. However I think I read somewhere that some snipers in Vietnam would use those old Redfields, but that reminds me of the quote believe none of what you hear and half of what you see...
 
However I think I read somewhere that some snipers in Vietnam would use those old Redfields, but that reminds me of the quote believe none of what you hear and half of what you see...
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If they did, it was because they did not have many alternate choices.

They used Weavers in WWII. Roy Dunlop stated he must have poured gallons of water out of those Weaver scopes. But it is all that they had.
 
I am still using a Redfield 4x that I bought in 1965. In those days, Redfields were considered the best US made scope. First quality scopes today are better, but there is nothing wrong with the old Redfields.

gary
 
In the 70's I bought nothing but Redfields. I must have had 6 at least and every single one failed. They would not hold zero and wandered all over the place. Redfield stood behind them and fixed em all for free and they all failed again. I missed several really nice bucks and a lot of hogs with those darn scopes. I was getting ready to ship another back to them and got so mad I threw it against the wall. As I recall their address was 11 Jewel Ave., Denver, Co. I forgot their zip code. I have bsa el chepo scopes for years and they still hold zero.
 
I have a 4X Redfield I bought new in the 90's for my XP-100 - great scope as is my USA made older Weaver 3-9.

Us "older" folks didn't have problems with them then, and they still work great today
 
Redfield scopes were well respected optics back in the day. (60's and 70's) The Widefield version was a very popular model. I never owned a Redfield, but I had friends who did and I used them occasionally.



NCsmitty
 
I use a couple of fixed old Weaver scopes right now, and they are both excellent, and I would say the one on my 22 is at least 50 years old.
 
I used a Redfield Widefield on a M77 Ruger both of which I bought in 1972.

I really liked it and for it's time I think it was a good product. It was acclaimed by Redfield as being a good low light scope, which it was.

It was brighter than Dad's Unertls but his were oolldd.

I liked it and if memory serves me right, rifle and scope out the door was under $200.

Sheesh, that won't even get you good glass anymore.
 
In the broken scope box in my attic are Bushnell (2), El Paso Weaver (2), Tasco (3), Simmons' (3) Nikon (1) Cabela's (2) and Rhino (1). There are no Redfields. Every Redfied scope I ever bought (5) is still working well.
 
However I think I read somewhere that some snipers in Vietnam would use those old Redfields, but that reminds me of the quote believe none of what you hear and half of what you see...
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Carlos Hathcock's biography mentions that some of the guys were using Winchester Model 70s and Redfield scopes. I don't recall if Hathcock himself used one, but I do remember reading that they were is usage with his group.

KR
 
I still cannot believe that I'm the only member that had such bad luck with redfields. I had a good friend (passed away recentely) that told me of the snipers in Viet Nam. As the story goes they carried extra redfields due to the problems that they had with wandering zeroes.

If they were such good scopes how come they went out of business?
 
Redfield went bellyup a long time ago. The only simialirty is the name. FYI the owner of the gunshop where I bought all my scopes still has their old address memorized too.

I've had better luck with walmart bsa's holding their zero (although their optics suck). As a matter of fact I've yet to have a bsa fail me.

I've got some 2.5 fixed widefield's, 1.5x5 widefields and others if anyone is interested.
 
I heard rumor that they tried to cash in on their name in the 80s and on with sub-par build quality. But that was from the guy trying to sell me one on the rifle I was buying, insisting that the one on the rifle was an older and thus 'better' scope. Truth be told, no wandering zero, and it is bright. It's an Illuminator model and seems none the worse for the wear.
 
351 winchester you are not alone, I had 3 redfields that went south and I sent them back twice before redfield went under and once after, finally sold them after the last fix, won't buy any again.
 
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