After 14 years I thought it was time to clean away the junk that had accumulated on the inside face of the objective in my AP 152EDF Starfire. I have tended to store the scope in the upright position for the last few years so any dust or crap that has managed to get in the tube in that time had settled on the inside face of the lens cell. While not bad it wa just time to get rid of it.
I had been nervous about this for a while and didn't have the correct allen wrench to remove the lens cell screws but today I went to the hardware store and grabed the 7/64 wrench I needed (had to buy a whole set though).
Taking out a piece of high precission glass worth several thousand dollars is pretty nerve racking I must say and I had a few beads of sweat running down my cheek.
I first blew off any loose dust and then brushed the glass surface gently with a soft Wooster brush. I used an isoproyl alcohol mix, originally formulated by Dr Clay Sherrod in the US and sold by OPT in California. I used pure cotton swabs to gently clean the glass with the solution.
The Dr Clay solution is a mix of Distilled water, pure isoproyl alcohol, Photo-Flo and Windex.
The process went well and the objective looks like new - clean both inside and out now.
Such a rare event required some photos of course
http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/6_inch_baby
Mike