Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Zeiss scope has fungus on interior lens!

The Diavaris weren't totally sealed: The insides of the adjustment turrets were open to the air once you took the caps off. In fact I am pretty sure none of the Zeiss scopes were totally sealed until the introduction of the first Conquests in the late 1990s.

This was common with European scopes for many years--except for Kahles, which starting sealing everything including the turrets in the 1960s.

I know this partly due to touring all the Zeiss factories with several other American optics writers in 1993. It turned out they mostly wanted us to go back and tell American hunters they were stupid for not buying more Zeiss scopes, because they were SO much better than anything else.

But one day we had an interesting conversation--after finding out the turrets weren't sealed. This was initiated by Jim Carmichel, for decades the shooting columnist for Outdoor Life.

He asked why they didn't seal the turrets, because if the turret caps were removed they would allow not only humidity but other microscopic stuff inside the scopes.

The head German guy then asked, "But vy vould you effer remove them?"

This may seem like an odd question, but back then (and probably still to a certain extent today) the average German hunter was pretty wealthy. They had to be, because it's very expensive to hunt over there. Consequently they also tended to buy expensive rifles and scopes--and had their gunsmith do all the work, including mounting the scope and sighting-in the rifle, usually on an indoor range. So his question was due to vast cultural differences.

I explained that American hunters usually did sight-in their own rifles, and often tweaked the adjustments after traveling to other places that might be far more humid, such as coastal Alaska.

We also explained that many American hunters preferred lighter scopes, because many didn't hunt from hochsitzes (high seats, usually permanent treestands), which could be seen almost everywhere in Germany as we traveled by bus between the three Zeiss factories. Most Americans also didn't want to pay as much for their scopes.

It was hard to gauge the reaction of the Zeiss folks, but a few years later they introduced the first Conquests, which were much lighter, and aldo less expensive--partly because they were mostly made by Meopta, with only the erector-lens assembly being made by Zeiss.

Swarovski also didn't seal their scope turrets until around 2000 or so, and were also pressured into it by American writers who grew weary of doing "dunk tests" with their scopes with the caps removed, and seeing streams of bubbles coming out through the turrets. (Dunking was one of the standard things done back then when testing scopes for magazine articles, partly because a lot of cheaper Asian scopes had started showing up.) I know one of the writers deliberately left a scope underwater for longer than needed for the test--and there was water inside the scope when it was returned to Swarovski.

From a pure science/curiosity perspective - what's the fungus living on in there?

Pure speculation but at a guess the glue in a multi-element lens. I have no expertise but long ago and far away I saw a lot of cheaper used around boats binoculars with mold issues. One of the guys who had done the job in the service offered cleaning and light polishing where the glass, usually prisms in binoculars, was etched. Glues would darken with time and visible light is ionizing radiation - think desert glass.

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(918) 445 - 2001

Pure speculation but at a guess the glue in a multi-element lens. I have no expertise but long ago and far away I saw a lot of cheaper used around boats binoculars with mold issues. One of the guys who had done the job in the service offered cleaning and light polishing where the glass, usually prisms in binoculars, was etched. Glues would darken with time and visible light is ionizing radiation - think desert glass.

“Not considered a defect in materials/worksmanship”??

How the hell else do MOLD (fungus) SPORES get inside a scope??

Unless they have reason to think you fished it out of deep water, this is pretty ridiculous. Any of you guys aware of this being a problem with 60 year-old Redfield/Weaver/Leupold scopes???

Weavers, yes...

Too many German scopes of all flavors were expensive Petri Dishes.

Well, Zeiss won't touch the scope. So, they are sending it back to me.

They did however give me the option to trade it in on a Conquest V4 3-12x44 if I want to in the future....Quite honestly, I don't. I’m just not a fan of bigger, 30mm tube scopes. The little Diavari is just a great little scope that is hard to find anymore, especially in the "New, Old Stock" unmounted condition mine is.

Having said that, Erik Baldwin from Mountain Optics in Oceanside, CA emailed me today. He says they definately can fix the problem. I have no experience with this company but it sounds like they have a good reputation for quality restoration work of vintage optics including Euro glass from Zeiss, Swarovski, and Leica.

I will be contacting him shortly to discuss this more...

So, it sounds like I have some options.

Thank you all for the input.


Leftybolt