Sunday, July 11, 2010
Adjustable Objective tapes.
On my last blog I had a picture of the sidewheel on my Hawke Sidewinder32 8-32x scope. It had a tape with my numbers applied to the sidewheel. I had some questions asking how I generated that tape. It is a pretty manual process, I don't have a program that generates it automatically.
I use this process for both my sidewheel and front objective scopes. I tape a strip of paper onto the sidewheel and then mark all my ranges by focusing the objective on a target at every range from 10-20 in 1 yard increments and 20-55 in five yard increments. I put tape on just the ends of the strips so it is easy to remove.
After marking the ranges, I remove the temporary range tape and tape it to a piece of printer paper. Then I put the paper and a ruler onto my scanner and scan the range tape into my computer. The ruler is important as it allows me to make sure that I can size the image to the actual size. At this point I import the image into a drawing package, I use Microsoft Visio but there are others.
Once in Visio, I resized the image to actual size using a 1" box and the ruler in the image. I resize the image until the 1" division on the ruler matches the size of the 1" box I drew in Visio. Now I draw lines on the image that correspond with the marks on the range tape image. For the ranges from 10-20 I draw the lines on top of the marks drawn on the tape. For the ranges from 20-55 I draw lines on the marks drawn on the tape. I then draw in lines between the major yard marks and space so they are equal distance between the major yard marks. After adding in the text for the yardages the draft of the tape is complete.
I print out the tape on regular printer paper, cut it out and temporarily tape it to the sidewheel using the 10 or 11 yard mark as a reference. I then check all the marks between 10 and 55 yards at 5 yard intervals. If they aren't exact I make a few marks on the temporary tape and change the line positions in the drawing and repeat the process again until the marks are spot on.
Once the tape is done I use rubber cement to glue it to the sidewheel or objective and then cover the whole thing with clear packing tape to seal the tape from the weather. The process is labor intensive but once it is done, the tape can be reused for the same scope or other scopes.
I use this process for both my sidewheel and front objective scopes. I tape a strip of paper onto the sidewheel and then mark all my ranges by focusing the objective on a target at every range from 10-20 in 1 yard increments and 20-55 in five yard increments. I put tape on just the ends of the strips so it is easy to remove.
After marking the ranges, I remove the temporary range tape and tape it to a piece of printer paper. Then I put the paper and a ruler onto my scanner and scan the range tape into my computer. The ruler is important as it allows me to make sure that I can size the image to the actual size. At this point I import the image into a drawing package, I use Microsoft Visio but there are others.
Once in Visio, I resized the image to actual size using a 1" box and the ruler in the image. I resize the image until the 1" division on the ruler matches the size of the 1" box I drew in Visio. Now I draw lines on the image that correspond with the marks on the range tape image. For the ranges from 10-20 I draw the lines on top of the marks drawn on the tape. For the ranges from 20-55 I draw lines on the marks drawn on the tape. I then draw in lines between the major yard marks and space so they are equal distance between the major yard marks. After adding in the text for the yardages the draft of the tape is complete.
I print out the tape on regular printer paper, cut it out and temporarily tape it to the sidewheel using the 10 or 11 yard mark as a reference. I then check all the marks between 10 and 55 yards at 5 yard intervals. If they aren't exact I make a few marks on the temporary tape and change the line positions in the drawing and repeat the process again until the marks are spot on.
Once the tape is done I use rubber cement to glue it to the sidewheel or objective and then cover the whole thing with clear packing tape to seal the tape from the weather. The process is labor intensive but once it is done, the tape can be reused for the same scope or other scopes.
