Thread: Lens polishing

Gidday all.
I have a heirloom telescope and pair of binoculars that have cloudy lenses probably from cleaning with a piece of shirt!
Can anyone recommend someone who can dissemble and polish the lenses?
Neither will be used for hunting anymore but may go in the car, either way, I'd like them to be useful

Cheers

An optician may offer some guidance.

There are a couple of guys in Australia doing optical repairs.
By that I'm meaning they pull them down, clean service moving parts, clean internals and regas.

I'm not sure about polishing lenses. I asked optometrist my glasses once but no one polishes them.

Possibly find that the lenses are 'doublet' as dual spehrical grinding of lenses (both sides curved) is a fairly modern thing. The old way is a pair of flat pieces of optical glass, ground on one side and then the flat sides glued together with something called canada balsam - I dunno what it actually is but it's a naturally derived glue that's reasonably optically clear when new. It does break down over time (several decades) and when it does it goes opaque and milky.

What's required then is a full strip down of the device, lenses out, separated and then reglued using modern UV-setting type glue like the dentistry stuff. It's painfully exact work, and not a lot of people do it now (if I was being a wag I'd say that those that are left that can do it are in need of a stripdown, full service and reassembly/reglue with new modern parts as well). I got a couple of scopes redone by an older gentleman in Auckland about 15 years ago - unobtanium to get spares and I talked to him about making a spare set. He laughed. Grumpy old coot... I doubt he's still working now to be honest.