Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors My new 'scope'

I recently picked this up, it's not what I normally look for, my interest in vintage scopes has been the real long ones, so this is quite different for me. A few months ago a friend bought a rifle with one of these mounted on it and asked if I had ever seen one or knew anything about it, which I didn't think I had.... but, several weeks later I realized one was part of a group of Mossberg & Lyman sight parts on eBay that had been showing up in search's off & on for several months as it got relisted. It has nothing to do with Mossberg. My friends was mounted using slightly modified Lyman hardware.


It's simple construction with just front & rear lenses, very low power, about 1½ to 2X.

Note the lack of cross hairs.

Focusing is done by screwing the front in or out and keeping the setting with a locking ring.


I find I can focus it so I get a clear picture of the target, but since it doesn't have crosshairs you need to use the front sight of the gun, and that still is a little blurry, but my eye seem to try and keep it centered.

Here it is compared to some other scopes, as you can see it's quite a bit different from what I normally buy -


Here's my friends, the Lyman stem is drilled out and threaded through to allow putting it in from the front. It looks as if it has been on his rifle a longtime.


I had a damaged Lyman stem that was bent so the threads were unusable and it had already been drilled out a little over size, I was able to straighten it enough to drill & tap it through.



I can't find any information on it, there are no markings on it at all. If my friend hadn't gotten one on a gun I wouldn't have noticed the one on eBay, and if I did, I wouldn't have a clue to how it might mount. I still am not sure if having it in a tang sight is it's intended use. If anyone has any information, please share.

Quite an ingenious creation! I would guess it is difficult to adjust to using though. Seems like it would be better for target shooting than game. But I suppose that largely depends on who is using it.

Another Home Run Gene! thanks

very interesting!

That's just plain cool. Love it.

Never seen anything like that !!!small enough so you wouldn't give it a second look at a gunshow, nice find.

I wonder if it was intended to be a sight focuser, for users with poor vision to see their barrel sights. Sort of an improvement over the flip up tang-mounted apertures found on European rifles long ago, intended as barrel sight focusers, and which are often erroneously thought to be sights by uninformed folks today. Dunno. Could be an early primitive form of diopter sight too?

This was my first thought too.

I imagine a search engine somewhere is getting scorched with Gene behind the wheel.

Gene, do you have any other scopes that are made to use the front sight? Recently I was on line looking for car stuff. One post lead to another and I wound up on “OddBall” sight. It went something like, “when I was a kid a Real old guy, brought a Real old rifle to camp, with this oddball sight.” His description sounded like your new “scope”. Since he was trying to identify it, there were no pics.

That is very interesting and very cool. Thanks for sharing. I agree with others that it seems a “focusing” sight. It seems, however, that it could bring the front sight into better focus, but might make it harder to focus on the target?

Always a compromise when our eyes start aging out! After cataract surgery I found myself back in the iron sight game. Before then I found low power cheap reading glasses focused my sights without blurring the target so I couldn't see it.

Joe, can you find that information again?

I have some ‘tubeless’ or ‘Galilean’ scopes that use a single lens attachment on a peep sight and another lens at the front sight, but most do not use the front sight, they have dots or circles in the center of the front lens. The CICO tubeless scope used the front sight with a lens holder that mounted behind it. Here’s a video of the testing of the 4 types of Galilean scopes used by the British in WWI - youtube.com/watch The Lattey sight looks very similar to the Brayton Tubeless Scope that Savage made and tried to market in 1905. James Brayton had two slightly different designs and also patented one of them in Britain and France sod some of these probably used his patents, with, or without his permission.

Here’s iformation on the CICO and some other tubeless scopes - https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/11534318

I’ve had this about a month and have worn the search engines out, they are apparently not hitting on all cylinders at the moment… . I also looked through sight & scope patents that I have copies of, again nothing. I have over 340 saved patent pages for sights but there are multiple pages for some of the patents. I’ve contacted sight dealers I know and again nothing.

I finally realized even though Lyman stems cannot be turned in the post, the posts can be turned in the base and then it would not require modifying the stem. While looking at this I also realized the posts for the simpler loop spring designs will work in the lever locking type, the only difference is a groove for the spring in the bottom of the hole. The angle Lyman sights snap to has to be set, with most other sights, like Marble’s, it’s fixed so often parts can’t be mixed.





The integral aperture reduces the opening but I think it actually helps with it being smaller. So, if that helps, and since normally these are only threaded about half way through, I thought I'd have enough threads to try this!


This piece was in a group of 4 pieces on eBay that the seller said were in a box with a Lyman tang sight for a Winchester that he sold. I tried to find that listing to see if the stem was modified but it had been so long that the listing had been deleted. This group of parts had been relisted for several months until I found out that this was not just an eyepiece, but had lenses, which were not easy to see in the posted pictures, and not in the description. The group was listed as Mossberg sight parts. Having the same threads as Lyman’s, being in with a Lyman sight, and my friends mounted in a Lyman sight have me thinking they were intended for use on a Lyman, but A. G. Parker sights also used the same threads, as did some others and it does look a little like some of the British offerings.

I though this might also be usable in a ladder type sight, but realized most of them require the aperture to be screwed in from the rear to keep them together and lock the position.

Edited - Brayton's foreign patents - GB190310168A; FR331735A

Your breadth of knowledge on this topic is amazing. Thanks again for sharing. It is fascinating to see what was being developed so many years ago with such limited technology. The power of ingenuity and determination - wonderful!

very nice information