Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Vintage scope mount?

My latest find has a vintage scope mount on it and no identification whats-so-ever. Do any of you know who the mount maker is?
Has a very nice Bausch & Lomb 8A on it also.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Sav

It looks like one of these http://www.loudfrog.com/itemdetail.aspx?detailID=11657

There was another Co also, Kuharsky Bros. Here is a pic. http://www.auctionarms.com/search/displayitem.cfm?itemnum=8576673

Interesting mount. The bridge doesn't look that sturdy in the pics.

Another B&L scope mount here, and it's looking similar.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Bausch-Lomb-Vin...510QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I think he is missing a few parts. IIRC, there is a bar and rings to hold the scope. Those bases are made for scopes with no internal W&E adjustments. The bases adjusts both W&E.

It's a later style Bausch & Lomb mount, with a flat bar and 3 or 4 sided nut. I'm in California, not home in NY, so I don't have access to my parts/guns. The scope is a B&L Balvar 2.5-8, and I bet it has tapered crosshairs. The concept with this type of scope/mount, is that since there are no elevation or windage adjustments in the scope (they are on the base), you can remove the scope and use it on different rifles (providing you have several bases) and not lose your zero. I own many of the scopes and many of the bases (BTW, the bases came in both 1 piece, and 2 piece versions. I prefer the earlier versions of the rings that had a plunger (kind of like a shock absorber) on the bottom, as opposed to the flat bar and threaded "star nut".

I think they were made until the late 60's, but I could be wrong about that. FYI, there was a Company out of Eerie PA, named Kurharsky Brothers that also made mounts for these scopes. What you have is a Balvar, but B&L also made a Balfor (fixed objective?) and 4x only versions that only had a "bell" on one side of the scope, but not the other, it was a straight tube.

Bushnell used to clean and reseal them for a flat fee of $20 (if memory serves), but they stopped doing that some time ago (10 years?)

If in good condition, the optics were pretty good, but they're a bit large/heavy on a 99. Like most here, I like the small Leupy's with low mounts on a 99.

I hope this helps. Good Luck! -Tom

P.S. here's the link to one on Ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Bausch-Lomb-B-L...714QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Correct, that is a late vintage B&L Balver 2-piece bases set that uses the "spring" style rings. The flat springs came in 2 lengths and can be used with both the early style bases and the later style of bases that are shown. The earlier B&L Balvar rings used a spring loaded "plunger" to keep the scope attached. The major selling point was that you could buy 1 good quality scope and swap it between rifles without needing to re-zero, because the windage and elevation adjustments were in the bases. I got bite by the Balvar bug in the early 1990s and filled a couple of large plastic tote boxes full of almost every available base, ring, and scope configuration. The optical quality was good, but I don't like the tappered CH reticles, so I only have them on a few "period" rifles that are more for looking at than for shooting.

The whole "Bal" series of externally adjusted scopes were the 2.5x Baltur/Baltur A, the 4x Balfor/Balfor A, the 6x Balsix, the 8x Baleight (which is the least common), the 2.5x or 4x Balvar, the 2.5-5x Balvar5/Balvar5, and the 2.5-8x Balvar8/Balvar8A. In the late 1960s, B&L introduced a series of internally adjusted "Bal" scopes and differentiated them with a "B" suffix. So an externally adjusted 2.5-8x was a Balvar8A and the internally adjusted 2.5-8x was the Balvar8B. I have a Balvar8B mounted on a Husqvarna 9000 and it is optically very crisp considering that it is probably close to 40 years old.

Jeff

Stith also made a mount similar to that, for scopes that didn't have internal adjustments. I've got a Stith mount like that for a Win Mod 70, or an 03 Springfield. Been years since I've looked at it, so not sure which gun it was for.

Sav
It's a Bausch & Lomb Mount.
Steve

The Stith Master Mount used a similar format to the B&L for adjusting windage and elevation, but only attached the scope via a single ring to the front base. The nicest thing about the SMM is that it has an integrated auxillary peep sight that is head and shoulders about the B&L auxillary peep sights. King Pike also made a detachable plunger-style mount, but they were only a QD mount, so a scope with internal adjustments was required.

Jeff

All
Thank you very much for the info. A friend had suggested it was a B & L or a Kurharsky Brothers, but without a label I wasn't sure which. Because my rifle is just shy of condition to be a collector I will probably swap it out for a more traditional rig.
So I was wondering what the value might be?
Or if any of you have any interest in it please PM me and I will try to offer you a good deal on a sale or swap.
Thanks again
Sav