I had a minor hiccup last Sat. at the range. If this helps someone I will have made some lemonade. I switched out my Leatherwood, read (Hi-Lux Optics), 50mm Red Dot. for a Millett R.D. on my wildcat rifle, when I put it back in it's old, but now de-oiled, stock. The 50mm was just too tall. Since I've had the Millett on my Lipsey's Ruger 44 Special, at 4&5/8th" bbl. revolver, I figured it would be O.K. to switch them. On the third shot of a 44 Spec. handloaded 250 gr. lead bullet, my front lens cracked all to pieces.
I talked to Hi-Lux this morning, and they will either replace it with another 50mm or maybe send me the smaller 30mm. When I finally got through to the head honcho, he opined that there's just too much glass for the muzzle blast to build up on. He claims that the smaller 30mm Hi-Lux, doesn't have this problem. But I'm not the first to get burned over this. The only other point is that I was shooting Alliant 2400, which leaves the cylinder and barrel cooler, compared to say, Unique. Anyway, three's the charm here. They wanted $15 for shppg/handling, and so I cut them a check and put it in the box with their scope. I'll mail it to them this afternoon. Somehow, this endemic problem with large glass lens, and short barrelled revolvers didn't get much reviewed in the last few years. On my Boer 8 wildcat, it has held up fine, for a year and a half, with me working up higher and higher loads for my stash of Speer 200 gr. hot cores. I got the Millett sighted in yesterday, by backing out the front screw of my cnc brand mil. sight adapter, one full turn, and then tightening up the rear screw until the pivoting base was really snug. This deflection let me adjust the Millett up high enough to zero it, 2&1/2" high, at 100yds.. Again, some more lemonade; when you reduce the intensity of the Millett red dot, it seems to my eyes to put the bullets about three more inches higher at 100 yds.. So decreasing the size of the Red Dot, means a longer point blank range. For me, shooting a gong at 500m with the Hi-Lux before I changed it over, was about max. And even at that, I had the use of a spotter, my brother. Anyways, I hope this helps delineate what the big 50mm Red Dot's will and won't (for very long) do.