Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Sidle Scope & Mount

My Tulsa find, a Sidle Philadelphia scope & mount, pre-1909, Sidle moved to California sometime in 1908. I am not that familiar with his scopes and some searching on the internet found very little. I did order a reprint of the 1899 catalog but it looks like most of that in duplicated in the 'Old Rifle Scopes' book by Nick Stroebel, I showed the Scope to Nick at Tulsa but he had nothing to add that wasn't in his book.

The rear mounting ring is nickle plated brass. The optics are good for a 110+ year old scope, but the eye relief is uncontrollably short.




The spring in the front ring pushes down and the scope sets on two raised spots on the bottom of the ring, the opposite of most other early scopes which have the spring underneath and push the scope up.


I had a rifle made in 1906 that had a Winchester full buckhorn rear sight, the sight probably had been on it for most of it's years so I had been thinking I should just leave it but getting this scope made change my mind. The gun also has a Lyman tang sight that looks like it was on it forever too, so I thought it possible the original rear was a Lyman No 6 folding sight. I don't like that full buckhorn with a peep sight and many would remove any rear sight that was in the view through the peep. A Lyman No 6 would let the wear pattern from the WInchester sight show but an earl Savage sight would look OK if I ever decide to take the scope off.


The tang sight screws showed some slot damage but the sight had been removed to shim one side, I left all that on the tang and the sight so it can be put back on as it was.


Here it is mounted, the other gun is from 1919 and has a post WWI Malcolm on it.

Exquisite.

Gives a whole new meaning to "period correct scope", huh?!

I just got off the phone with Ralph getting the skinny on Tulsa and he mentioned your find.

Thanks for posting in the usual Gene style of full 'show & tell'!

Yep, you couldn't slap a Stith on one of those and call it anywhere near close.

Very, very nice!

Gene, looks even better mounted! It was very cool to see it.

When Gene says the eye relief is short on that scope, he is NOT kidding. When I looked through it, my glasses were practically touching the back of the scope. I'd hesitate to actually shoot it with it on.

Gene, I have a early stevens scope catalog,and i'll have to check again ,but i remember it saying that stevens bought sidle out,and they became stevens scopes. Don

Gene, I went and found my Stevens catalog and was wrong about sidle,i remember reading about Sidle in Ned Roberts single shot rifles book. The company Stevens bought out was the Cataract tool and optical co. of Buffalo N.Y.

Man, that certainly was an unfortunate choice in picking a company name.

man that sexy!
if that setup doesn't transport you back about a century you don't have an imagination !

Sunovabitch! That's awesome Gene!

That looks awesome Gene!! Good snag.

Joe

I gotta wonder how many thousands of people walked by that and never thought to ask...??

Just awesome Gene!

Nice score Gene.

I walked by it Friday... and earlier Saturday, I went back to look at some scope mounts he had and what I thought was a Malcolm scope, tuned out to be a tube sight without magnification. I had seen the Sidle but didn't pay much attention until I lost interest in the items I was originally there to look at and picked it up. He had a price on it and that was it, he would not budge. The scope cost me 61.8% of what the rifle did. I am really out of my area when it comes to 1899's (and Sidle scopes) so all I am going to reveal is percentages. I don't collect the 1899's but have always wanted a couple examples, but wanted them to be a little different, this one I think does that.

I am sure the optics on this was good for the day, the equivalent of the Malcolm's, but when better optics became available I am sure the majority of these vintage scopes on hunting rifles got changed which is why you don't see to many original set-ups together today. The short eye relief and limited field of view was probably OK for target rifles but not on a lighter gun with much recoil. Steven's scopes were better in that respect, they had more eye relief and had mounts that allowed the scope to slide forward, just in case. I probably will not shoot it, but I would be more than happy to let someone else, as long as they signed a waver, and brought some cold packs and an eye patch.

What I am wondering now, and it's giving me nightmares, is how many other things I just walked by........ there were only about 4000 tables but half of them could pretty much be eliminated if you were looking for older non-Winchester collectables.

Some vintage Malcolm's -


Better pictures of the rifle -


ADDED because of question asked in next post -
-- the caliber on the Sidle scoped gun is 303 Savage, the Malcolm scoped guns from top down - 303, 30-30, 32-40 (not mine) and 22 HP.

Gene,

I'll volunteer to shoot that rifle. Consider my waiver signed. That is a beautiful rig! If I was going to own a scope sighted classic, it would look like that. You've probably said, but what caliber?

Doug

Well found and mounted Gene, perfect
I don't think you could have picked a better project if you tried
I would give my eye teeth to find a rig like that down here (but still wouldn't get it as they were pulled out years ago)
I have only ever seen 1 Malcolm scope here

Gene, what is your opinion of the Sidle vs Malcolm mounts.

That 1906, A5, PG, fancy walnut, rifle is a nice one!

Nice find, And thanks for the informative post! You have some very nice rifles!