zerobarrier
Contributing Member
Hello all,
I thought I would share this with anyone who was interested. I recently purchased a Leupold Ventana 20-60x 80mm spotting scope and started another thread on here about what would be a good tripod. The one it came with was pretty wobbly and I think it was due to the way the quick disconnect bottom was attached to the tripod. For some reason there is a knob that you can loosen and it allows the QD bottom to be rotated to a 90 degree angle, I have no idea why. This is where all the play comes from. You can not tighten it down tight enough to make it stop flexing. Any time I touched the focus knob at 60x the scope moved so much I had a real hard time focusing.
So what I did was spent $4 on some loctite plastic epoxy bonder. I sanded down the surfaces to make it rough for better adhesion. Then I loaded the whole area up with the mixed compound, even on the outside cracks. I did not think to take pics of it before I started but I took some of after so you can kind of see what I am taking about. The area you see in the pics where I have the epoxy on the crack is the part the moves in a 90 degree angle. I opened that up and spread the epoxy all around on both sides.
It takes 24hrs to fully cure and boy is it rock solid now. There is no more flex and the wobble at 60x has been drastically reduced. I really did not want to spend an extra $100-400 on a good tripod especially since I just spent $470 on the scope which came with a tripod. I guess I am cheap. But as of right now it works perfect for my use and when I go to use the focus knob at 60x I can actually see it focusing in and out.
As for the scope I love it. I can easily see 308 and 223 bullet holes on white paper with red bull at 500yds, have not tried using a black bull. Very clear images at 500yds, great glass.
I figured there may be other people on here that have a tripod like this one and don't want to spend a bunch more money on a new one. So you could try this. I figured if it didn't work and I ruined the tripod, well then there is my excuse to go buy a new one. I am not sure how well the epoxy will hold up to abuse but I only use it at the range and it stays in the hard case the scope came in.
I thought I would share this with anyone who was interested. I recently purchased a Leupold Ventana 20-60x 80mm spotting scope and started another thread on here about what would be a good tripod. The one it came with was pretty wobbly and I think it was due to the way the quick disconnect bottom was attached to the tripod. For some reason there is a knob that you can loosen and it allows the QD bottom to be rotated to a 90 degree angle, I have no idea why. This is where all the play comes from. You can not tighten it down tight enough to make it stop flexing. Any time I touched the focus knob at 60x the scope moved so much I had a real hard time focusing.
So what I did was spent $4 on some loctite plastic epoxy bonder. I sanded down the surfaces to make it rough for better adhesion. Then I loaded the whole area up with the mixed compound, even on the outside cracks. I did not think to take pics of it before I started but I took some of after so you can kind of see what I am taking about. The area you see in the pics where I have the epoxy on the crack is the part the moves in a 90 degree angle. I opened that up and spread the epoxy all around on both sides.
It takes 24hrs to fully cure and boy is it rock solid now. There is no more flex and the wobble at 60x has been drastically reduced. I really did not want to spend an extra $100-400 on a good tripod especially since I just spent $470 on the scope which came with a tripod. I guess I am cheap. But as of right now it works perfect for my use and when I go to use the focus knob at 60x I can actually see it focusing in and out.
As for the scope I love it. I can easily see 308 and 223 bullet holes on white paper with red bull at 500yds, have not tried using a black bull. Very clear images at 500yds, great glass.
I figured there may be other people on here that have a tripod like this one and don't want to spend a bunch more money on a new one. So you could try this. I figured if it didn't work and I ruined the tripod, well then there is my excuse to go buy a new one. I am not sure how well the epoxy will hold up to abuse but I only use it at the range and it stays in the hard case the scope came in.
