What kind of damages do spring airguns cause to scopes?

[MushroomPsyche]

With the obvious loose lenses and rattling inside, what other sort of damages, that are less noticeable, can spring airguns do to scopes?

I ask because when I first bought my SWFA 3-15x42 5 years ago, I put it on my first airgun which is a .22 caliber Air Arms TX200 springer. That scope stayed with that gun for almost a year and shot 600 rounds. I transferred it when I bought my first PCP , Taipan Veteran .22. Eventually, I noticed that focus changes depending on the zoom. For example, if I adjust the parallax to get a sharp focus at 6x, when I zoom in to 15x, I would need to adjust the parallax again as the image is quite blurry. I don't remember when I started noticing this and when it started bothering me but I might have also thought that it's just a quirk of my particular scope.

I warrantied that scope and SWFA just replaced it with a new Gen 2 model. Upon inspecting it, I realized just how bad the old scope was. With the new scope, I can set the parallax for a certain distance and not have to change it regardless of how much I change the zoom.

It got me thinking if maybe the parallax issues I had with my old SWFA was actually caused by being used on a spring airgun.

 

[JEFFPPC]

Gen 2 for a reason. Improvements. Since most scopes today have etched lens as opposed to the old crosshairs that is a huge improvement. Biggest problem with springers is the vibration of the spring . This can be mitigated with Burris Signature Rings with the plastic inserts. Thee poliferation of scope companies, Chinese or not, meaning competition, has helped us immensely.

 

[Iowa Airgunner]

First scope failure was the reticle started to rotate inside the scope. First I tried to adjust it but then the turrets were crooked. And it kept moving till it was an X
Next one was the lenses came loose and it made the inside look like you were looking crooked into the scope with a big fuzzy area at the top.
After that I stopped putting junk scopes air guns and like my Diana 48. I swapped out the original spring . Mostly to save the scope and to get it under 20 ft lb.

 

[A.G.R]

It’s nothing to do with the rings and plastic washers. It’s the dual recoil induced by the action destroying the crosshairs and the reticle springs centering the turret

 

[Mike_Lenardon]

It’s nothing to do with the rings and plastic washers. It’s the dual recoil induced by the action destroying the crosshairs and the reticle springs centering the turret

Exactly

 

[Hateful McNasty]

True story .

I was told recently it more then likely shooter error then a scope got rattled .. lol.

Let's face it scoping a springer is aways a dice roll . Fingers crossed and no snake eyes . Even the best recomend could fail out of the blue and that's when having the brand with the no question asked life time warranty that's in your home country to easy send and get back comes in handy and pays off .. like athlon

 

[MongooseV8]

Just about every scope on the market is only reinforced to take recoil in a single direction. A spring/piston air rifle recoils forward then a bit rearward. The forward recoil can be pretty sharp depending on the model.

The scope reticle is usually the thing that fails first, as many of them are not secured very well to resist the recoil in the "wrong" direction. This usually shows up worst in the cheapest scopes, but can also break apart some expensive ones. The other things affected are the errector assembly and paralax assembly. The recoil can break the threads, or jostle the internal lenses loose, etc.