Caring For Your Optics

Keeping your lenses clean. If this were a how-to question, it would be a trick one. The best way to keep your lenses clean is to not clean them at all. Simply protect them from food, drink, dust, dirt and fingerprints and you’re good to go. Really and truly, we know they’re going to get dirty despite good intentions to keep them clean.

Using a highly advanced coating on the eyepiece and objective lenses, our Fully Multicoated Lenses are incredibly scratch-resistance and prevent various oils, dust and dirt from adhering to the surface of the glass. They’re also made to keep light from reflecting off the polished glass surface. While these coatings are only a few molecules thick, they are absolutely crucial to the quality of the image you’re seeing through your binoculars, and they can’t be replaced. That said, the coating is perhaps the most important part of your binoculars.

We’ve provided you with a complimentary lens cleaning cloth so you won’t feel the need to use your shirt, a handkerchief, a napkin, a paper towel, or worst of all, your finger. Most paper products are laced with wood fibers and household cleaners, like Windex, contain ammonia. Both wood fibers and ammonia are the enemies of your lenses’ coating. Only use lens cleaners that are isopropyl alcohol based. A can of compressed air is a useful tool to blow the dust and dirt out of creases.

Remember, silica (or tiny rocks) is the primary ingredient of dust and is harder than glass. If you rub dust across the glass you’re essentially gouging microscopic scrapes and scratches into the glass and its coating. These scratches will scatter light and over time the image you see through the optics will appear cloudy.  

Our optics are guaranteed to last a lifetime, but the following are some tips we believe will help keep them looking good and in impeccable shape. Remember, if after you’ve inspected the glass

DUSTING WITH CANNED AIR

We know you’re not going to carry a can of compressed air into the field. We wouldn’t either. But upon returning home, having a can handy is a great way to remove dust from the lenses, which is the first step. Look at the optics from different angles in the light to be able to see dust and stains. Spray the air lightly until the top layer, or easy to reach, dust is removed.

MICROFIBER CLEANING CLOTH

Provided with every binocular is a microfiber cleaning cloth and is best applied when all the obvious dust has been removed. These advanced microfiber fabric lifts dirt, oil and even water from lens surfaces without lens-cleaning fluid. Tightly woven poly/nylon microfibers make these extremely durable cleaning cloths. The microfibers effectively cut through dirt and lift oil and moisture from the lens surface. It differs from most cloths which move the dirt and oils around instead of removing them. Orange, anti-static micro-fiber cloth has stripes of effective conductive fibers knit every 1/8″ that dissipate or drain off static charges. Hundreds of thousands of small pockets in the cloth aggressively capture the dust and dirt. The thick, soft cloths are completely non-abrasive.

USE A LENS CLEANING PEN

Be sure to use the brush end of the lens cleaning pen. It’s very soft and won’t damage the lens or the coating. It will help reach the places where dust has stuck to the outer edge of the lens or the rubber body. A useful tip while using the pen is to hold the binocular upside down so that any dust removed falls away.

Anything you take care of is going to have a longer life, including cars, guns or optics. These simple steps and the tools provided will keep your TRACT optics in great shape for a very long time. When the moment of truth arrives, don’t let a little dust hinder success.