to be honest with you i have used a meade 9mm illuminated rectical and this is better by a long shot, unless your spending in exesess of 100-150 bucks, the hand made one far out preforms the dodgy one! why because i can tell you now you can get hot glue really really fine, just keep pulling it and it will stretch and deform till its as thick as a hair if not thinner! it works for me and thats happy.