Out-of-guarantee binocular repair and servicing Europe and UK (1 Viewer)

This is really a bit of a hand waving request for insights, advice or whatever about the current state of play and perhaps recommendations for independent repairers. The first three pages of a UK Google search on binocular repairs gives what looks like maybe half a dozen independents. Most of the rest of the links are to manufacturers web sites and retailers. No doubt a certain number of those manufacturers have their own service departments and a select number of those may take in brands other than their own. I assume the retailers are generally offering the service of researching the appropriate place to send products and will do packing and posting and follow ups on your behalf.

Some of the prompting for starting this thread comes from the passing last year of Dougie Biggart from Glasgow Binocular Repairs. Sounds like he was quite a guy and I can only imagine the huge impact his loss must have on his relatives and friends.

I hope it's not too early or disrespectful to wonder what his loss has meant in the field of his profession. Are there very few highly skilled folks in the field of binocular repairs? Enough to go round? And are the skills being passed onto new generations?

Norm,
I think not.
Zeiss and Opticron are well respected in the U.K.
But some Zeiss are sent back to Germany.
Swarovski I suppose go back to Austria and are returned promptly.
Leica probably does well? maybe sent to Germany?

Canon Herts? did a good job on 2 8x25 IS.

Nikon probably good.

There may be military guys and one or two astro experts able to do top quality work.

Dougie did a wonderful job on the 6x24 Amplivid.

East coast and Wiltshire firms may be O.K. I don't know.

I have had many disappointments.

I usually just write off problems.

There are of course very capable amateurs, but few around the world.

The Russians are very capable if they want to be.
Also Czechs.
And I suppose Japanese.

Although optics generally is thriving, it is with design and commercial firms.
Technical optics people, skilled craftsmen, are very difficult to find.

One of the best technicians is in Australia polishing a perfect sphere.

P.S.
We could not find any independent repairer in the U.K. to repair a Zeiss 'Donkey Ears' I think it is called. Even university optics departments did not seem likely.
I suppose Zeiss could do it for a price.

When Cory and I were in the Navy, we realized we had stumbled onto a good thing. Optics repair put a good bit of food on my table, bought three homes (one at a time), put three kids through school, and it wasn’t really the stroke that ended that. It was the economy. It’s hard to charge a fair and realistic price for repair work when potential customers haven’t a clue about the craft or what the value of doing their particular job really is.

When I left Captain’s, I was charging $120 an hour with a one-hour minimum (I rush on to say I did freebies anytime I could). One mariner passed through the optics shop on his way downstairs to “Navigation” and left a bino with my staff along with a note:

“Go ahead and fix these ... you are cleared to $25.”

While most of the mariners used Fujinons or the beefier Swift binos, his was a no-name from China that MIGHT have cost twice that much. That is the mentality that was the final nail in the craftsman’s coffin. And, it has been duplicated all over. Cory is taking in work from all over the world and whining, wanting me to come down to help him and I’m left to write about it. I do an article, the publisher sends a check, and I need not have the lighting, collimator, tools, or headaches of dealing with people who want something for nothing.

Your country is better off than mine in this regard. It cost both once; the same (in crafts other than optics) will cost them again.

VIGNETTE # 33

The Roof Prism Gang and the American War-Time Cottage Industries

In 1918, George Richey of Mt. Wilson worked with “students and assistants” in producing lenses and prisms in a less than corporate environment for U.S. Army gun sights. And, even before the first bomb fell on Poland in 1939 certain Americans had begun to gear up for making professional optics with non-professional equipment and often experimental techniques. At that time many understood a war would require more optics than American industry was prepared to produce, especially since Germany, previously a major supplier to the American optics market, could no longer be counted on.

The linchpin of this effort was Albert Ingalls, the editor of Scientific American who, as early as the 1920s, had developed a keen interest in amateur telescope making and the knowledge and craftsmanship that accompanied it. Using his “bully pulpit” as one responsibly for publishing America’s first articles for the amateur telescope maker, Ingalls was able to create his “Roof Prism Gang,” which produced 28,360 roof prisms needed for the services, almost half of which were made by Fred Ferson and Paul Linde, two particularly talented artisans.

Young and old, the Roof Prism Gang was a network of like-minded future opticians who, in their spare time, worked in back rooms, basements, garages, and telescope making workshops all across the country to make optics for the war effort. Paramount of these was the hard to make roof prisms desperately needed for so many types of gun sights, periscopes, range finders, and other instruments. At that time, very little had been written on the craft because master opticians usually guarded their secrets well and only passed them on verbally to trusted apprentices. Thus, in many ways the devotees were flying blind and designing fixtures and developing techniques as they went ...

Our senior service technicians have decades of experience but we have taken action to ensure that the knowledge they have gained is passed on - after all, even if we stopped selling stuff tomorrow we still need to run a repairs operation for at least the next thirty years to honour the warranty we're selling today!

In theory, provided we could access the spare parts, any optics could be serviced by the team at Luton but in practice we just don't have the capacity to take on anything that doesn't have Opticron on it.

That could change of course, especially if there is a compelling commercial reason to expand that capacity and capability.

Although we still do work on some Optolyth products as a result of our time as a distributor for that brand (that was over 15 years ago).

Pete

PS when Cory and I were younger, we guarded our secrets. Now I'm specific with anyone I can help and Cory holds 3-axis collimation workshops. The breed is dead and dying and the consumer doesn't care. They just want something from Kunming they can brag about as though it came from Jena.

WJC said:

PS when Cory and I were younger, we guarded our secrets. Now I'm specific with anyone I can help and Cory holds 3-axis collimation workshops. The breed is dead and dying and the consumer doesn't care. They just want something from Kunming they can brag about as though it came from Jena.

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Hi Bill,

That sounds interesting.
How much time would such a workshop take for let's say 5 people?

Jan

jan van daalen said:

Hi Bill,

That sounds interesting.
How much time would such a workshop take for let's say 5 people?

Jan

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Hi Jan,

I think he did it in two or three days. The class was always small. But, he had people from as far away as Australia. The last time I spoke with him, he was planning on discontinuing for a while because he was under a mountain of work. There is one major player in the bino market who used to tell Cory and me that he didn't need a collimator because: "I can eyeball collimation to 100 power." With comments like that, you can make certain assumptions. First, that he has never heard of Spacial Accommodation or Panum's Fusional Area. Secondly, that it's a trick Superman wishes he could pull off. Me, I think I was in the second grade when I stopped believing in Santa. Anyway, this fellow went to one of Cory's workshops and he now has a collimator. :cat:

Bill

PS Is Harrie Rutten one of your customers?

WJC said:

Hi Jan,

I think he did it in two or three days. The class was always small. But, he had people from as far away as Australia. The last time I spoke with him, he was planning on discontinuing for a while because he was under a mountain of work. There is one major player in the bino market who used to tell Cory and me that he didn't need a collimator because: "I can eyeball collimation to 100 power." With comments like that, you can make certain assumptions. First, that he has never heard of Spacial Accommodation or Panum's Fusional Area. Secondly, that it's a trick Superman wishes he could pull off. Me, I think I was in the second grade when I stopped believing in Santa. Anyway, this fellow went to one of Cory's workshops and he now has a collimator. :cat:

Bill

PS Is Harrie Rutten one of your customers?

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Thanks Bill, please ask Cory (when you speak to him) if he has plans in that direction.
Rutte is no customer of mine. I pay taxes, so I'm a customer of him:-C

Jan

jan van daalen said:

Thanks Bill, please ask Cory (when you speak to him) if he has plans in that direction.
Rutten is no customer of mine. I pay taxes, so I'm a customer of him:-C

Jan

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I will ask Cory later today. Also, you must be thinking of another Rutten; Harrie is an optical engineer and telescope maker, not a politician. Since an almost fatal car crash he hasn't even been doing much of that. :cat:

WJC said:

I will ask Cory later today. Also, you must be thinking of another Rutten; Harrie is an optical engineer and telescope maker, not a politician. Since an almost fatal car crash he hasn't even been doing much of that. :cat:

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Ah, that one.
No, don't know him personally but I'm not in the astronomical optics.

Jan

Thanks Binastro. I recall you mentioning the good job Dougie did on the Amplivid recently when you did a comparison with the Komz 6x24. I guess the concern is that if there is now no independent repairer in the UK to repair a Zeiss 'Donkey Ears', maybe in a few years time the same will apply to the Amplivid.

These were the independents I found on the first three pages from Googling :

Optrep Optical Repairs
www.opticalrepairs.com

Opticalia
www.binocular-repairs.com

East Coast Binocular Repairs
binocular-repair.co.uk

Intrasights
www.intrasights.co.uk

Action Optics
www.actionoptics.co.uk

Thanks Bill.

Is Cory snowed under with work? If so does he feel in a position to decline work? If not is it because he feels he can't afford to or because there is no one else to forward the work to.

The collimation workshops are an encouraging move.

Cheers Pete.

I can see that if one of the perks of buying an Opticron is the back up from the servicing department it might not make sense to offer that to buyers of other brands.

normjackson said:

Thanks Bill.

Is Cory snowed under with work? If so does he feel in a position to decline work? If not is it because he feels he can't afford to or because there is no one else to forward the work to.

The collimation workshops are an encouraging move.

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Hi Jan and Norm,

I just got off the phone with ole what's-his-face. One of my questions was: When are you going to do another collimation workshop, again; two years, three years, one year, what?

His response: "Yes," followed by “I really don’t know.”

Further prodding told me that yes, he is over-burdened with work, even though his son Eric is working with him full time, these days. Hopefully, Eric will show a continued interest after the yeti is gone. And, other than Brian Osterberg at Baker Marine, there is not many others I would trust. I recall reading a newspaper article about a fantastic optical repair facility in NYC. But the article was wrapped around one of the 30 binos that company had just sent me for repair. For most companies, optical repair is just gum on their shoes. A company can’t charge enough to stay in business unless they are really good and dedicated to what they do. And, most are not really prepared to do what is necessary to get to that point. If you are, the consumer will find out and the money will take care of itself. But, few people these days are willing to chip a nail.

The largest section of my upcoming book Binoculars: Fallacy & Fact is on Collimation vs. Conditional Alignment. The following is a snippet from that section:

“It’s Not Just You

“Mistaking the importance of precise alignment of binoculars that may be used by others isn’t limited to amateurs. Some professionals at major importing companies just know how to “get the alignment in the box,” giving little thought to the whys of the procedures.

“Fellow shipmate and former Navy Opticalman, Cory Suddarth, was with me the day I took a call from a fellow who had been a repair manager at his company for many years. The essence of his call went something like this:

“I just don’t understand it; I’ll get the binocular collimated, but when I move one of the barrels, it’s off again.”

“He was right; he didn’t understand it. This fellow was a conscientious technician and merchant. But being unfamiliar with the basics of 3-axis collimation, and following today’s popular but flawed alignment techniques, he and his staff had been selling conditional alignment as collimation to his repair customers all those years. It was this experience that caused me to first suggest there’s a big difference between 20 years of experience and one year of experience 20 times.

“Most often when an observer talks about the great collimation job he got through this or that company, it’s really conditional alignment he or she is discussing because most simply don’t know how to perform the prior. Difficult? No. A dark secret? No. Something that requires a little study? Yes ... but not much.” :cat:

In the U.K., I would recommend East Coast Binocular Repairs.
The owner recently left Zeiss ( but I gather is still their authorised repair facility). He also had 19 years with Leica before joining Zeiss ( 8 years). I believe he is also an authorised UK repairer for Kowa.

He is also a member of this forum, but obviously not willing to abuse his membership to promote his business free of charge via this forum, so I will do it for him. He and the late Dougie Biggart are / were as good as they get.

Mak,

Thanks for that. Seems to be run by a Gary, ex-Zeiss. I think that rings a few bells.

David

typo said:

Mak,

Thanks for that. Seems to be run by a Gary, ex-Zeiss. I think that rings a few bells.

David

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Is that Garymh who occasionally posts here?

WJC said:

Is that Garymh who occasionally posts here?

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'Twould seem so Bill. The same picture is used in his avatar here on Birdforum as is used on the home page on his site.

normjackson said:

'Twould seem so Bill. The same picture is used in his avatar here on Birdforum as is used on the home page on his site.

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I’m glad he’s branching out. I sure hope Eric takes over from Cory. I have been severely disparaged for taking about the quality of some of the wannabe techs out there. Joe Blow gets a bino back with a clean objective, a tightened hinge, and a conditional alignment, and brags about the great skill of some tech—influencing others. People think I do so to create work for me. They seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that I have been out of the business for 9 years and will never be back in it. I’ve just tried to save people from themselves.

The guy who just needed the service mentioned above has had his needs met and he is happy. Thus, I am happy for him. Yet, how many times have these people talked a friend into trusting such a tech with a truly vintage instrument (And yes, I know what “vintage” means; it’s not another name for “OLD, as is used on the Internet 98% of the time.”) only to find the work is considerably over his head. That’s why my shop was on the top of the list at Zeiss for out-of-warranty repairs and restoration. You just learn things when repairing an 18th Century telescope that can help in repairing a 30-year old bino.

“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”—Thomas Jefferson

“... even when it causes you to take some heat.”—Bill Cook :cat:

normjackson said:

'Twould seem so Bill. The same picture is used in his avatar here on Birdforum as is used on the home page on his site.

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Norm,

How did you get such a yank name? Are you a transplant?

Bill