Any recommendations or warnings as to the safest/most effective method, wipes, or cleaning solution for cleaning the lenses of Leupold scope lenses?

Thanks for your help!

Use a camels hair brush while blowing lightly to remove worst of the dust, dirt and other large particles. Next use a good photo lens cleaner and tissues for cleaning optics. These can be bought in better camera stores. Kodak makes both but you may not find them just anywhere. Scopes, spotting scopes, laser range finders and binoculars are all precision optics coated with various coatings to aide and improve light transmission and reduce glare. They are easily scratched or removed if the wrong solutions and tissues are used. Above all don't use you hanky to clean optics. More than likely you'll scratch them if you do because they may not be clean or soft enought.

Leupold markets what is called a LensPen, or at least they used to. It has a camel's hair brush on one end and something to wipe any remaining crud off with the other.

Works great and I carry one in the field in my pack.

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MikeG

Hailstone is spot on- good advice to follow.
BTW, you sometimes see lens cleaning stuff in the grocery store. That stuff is made for eyeglasses, which are generally uncoated- do NOT use the grocery store stuff on coated optics.
A good camera store has just what you need- lens cleaning tissue and lens cleaning fluid.
I have one of the lens pens that MikeG mentioned, and it works. I do worry about the lens pen picking up a piece of grit, which would scratch your lens, but it hasn't happened so far.

Thanks guys, for your excellent, prompt answers.

I have been reading this site for some time now...amazed at the level of knowledge and comeraderie here. Finally decided to join and glad I did!

Anyhow, back to the topic - Prior to posting my question yesterday, I was getting ready to clean a smudge from my scope (Leupold Vari-X III 2.5 - 8 with a mil-dot reticle that I had custom installed by Premier reticles out of Winchester, VA) with my Leupold Lenspen but figured before I did, I would ask the masters if you guys knew of anything better as I had the same same concerns Jack did about scratching, etc.

I picked up some pre-moistened (in isopropyl alcohol) lens cleaning wipes made by Zeiss that come in convenient little sealed individual packets a while back at wal-mart that I have used for removing stains, hard water spots, etc. from my binocs that work well also (have used them on my binocs alot and have no obvious damage) but value my scope more and didn't know how/if they would damage the Leupold "Multicoat" lens coating on the scope. I would be interested to know if anyone else has tried these on Leupold optics coatings, I bet they would be fine.

BTW, Leupold's site states that they use pharmaceutical grade ammonia to clean the lenses in the factory. Not sure I would like to have a jug of that stuff around though.

Anyhow, I have decided to just go with the Lenspen (being sure to carefully inspect the pad for grit first of course).


Again, thanks guys. Looking forward to hopefully being able to offer some useful advice to you all in the future.