If you want to try getting them cleaned by someone who would clean but not overhaul them, you might try someone who repairs antique clocks. “But then again, why would they want them restored if they do not plan to use them?” And when using them is the goal, buying new ones is the least expensive way to go. “It would make little sense for someone to pay to have that kind of work done unless the owner felt it is very important to family history,” he said. But he cautioned that the costs could escalate. “It would be tedious and costly professional work” to separate the lenses and then cement them back together.Ĭohen’s company (30 can do work like this. “It is rarely cost-effective to overhaul these given the lack of replacement doublet lenses,” he wrote in an e-mail. After looking at the pictures you sent, he said it appears that the objective lenses - the ones farthest from the eyes - each consist of two lenses that were cemented together but are delaminating. “Binoculars can develop insidious problems just while sitting on a shelf,” Cohen said. Plus, the basic cleaning you want could easily turn into a costly repair. New opera glasses cost as little as $20, and there’s no way you could even begin to get a professional cleaning for that price.Ī reader’s antique opera glasses. What would you recommend?Īnswer: You might be better off keeping your great-great-grandmother’s opera glasses as is and buying new ones to enjoy performances, suggests Martin Cohen, owner of Company Seven, a firm in Laurel, Md., that does optical repairs for everyone from amateur astronomers to NASA. If it is too expensive and I end up cleaning them myself, I don’t know whether plain water would get them clean enough and whether a vinegar or ammonia solution might damage the finish if a little dripped on the area around the glass.
I am afraid to unscrew them and wonder where I can get them cleaned. The glasses need to be taken apart so the lenses can be cleaned. They were given to her by her husband around 1875-1885. Question: I have a pair of my great-great-grandmother’s opera glasses.
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