Swede M38 Range Report

[Patrick Chadwick]

I can get a thin piece of paper under the barrel now whereas I got nothing before. I could open it up a bit more but if it's floating I figure it's floating.

Sounds OK, and you are right - there's no need to sand off more than that.

You wrote "I have had eye surgery to correct myopia 15 or so years ago" - so how about checking out the eyeballs? Surgery typically results in a certain stiffness of the affected areas.

A university friend (now deceased) who was an eye surgeon, always had "bottle glass" lens in his spectacles. At a college reunion I asked him why he, of all people, did not get his sight fixed. His answer was illuminating: "Patrick, at our age it makes no sense. The increasing lack of accomodation (presbyopia) will still mean that you end up needing reading specs, even if you may, for some years, be able to do without for driving. So in a few year you will still need the glasses, just a different prescription".

It's quite simply increasing age. You can dodge a bit, but you can't beat it.

I made a 500 km round trip to the optician who set ups shooting glasses for the German national team. He has an enormously long cellar set up as a dummy range so that you can try out the prescription there and then. He provides a Swede M96 for open sight testing and an Anschutz for diopter testing. His equipment is far more sophisticated than that of the ordinary downtown optician, and he was able to show me the flaw in the right eye that causes the double vision (think of schoolyard marbles). And he made the lenses on the spot (different ones for open and closed sights). In terms of shooting, the whole experience was an "eye-opener".

If you can find someone like that in Oz, go to him, even if it means an overnight stop.

Patrick