Spat Resin Bino Conversion

[septic]

Lift N' shift from the old forum.
Last year, I was lucky enough to pick up one of Spat's Apone binocular kits, and was very keen to mod mine in the same way retrogarde had [as detailed in this excellent thread on the old AL forum ]

I didn't think to take any pre-mod pics, but the kit starts life like this, a hollow but thick-walled resin model of three pieces

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Not long after getting it, I started hunting for some cheap opera glasses, or similar, to be my donor lenses. Failing to find anything not vintage [which I'd not want to destroy], or just too much $$. Then I had an epiphany around a pair of little mono scopes from AliExpress, that I'd bought a year or so back for some other project (they didn't work out for that job, but proved to be prefect for the bino lenses.

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I drilled /sanded out the resin rear lenses completely, and then tried a few different ideas for a plate to sit on the inside face of the resin lens housing, to which the replacement lenses from the mono scopes were glued.

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Also mounted an old vinyl strap I had laying around, after carefully drilling thin slots through the bino body (same way retrogarde did).

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And finally, I drilled out the front lenses [a little nerve-racking!], and hand sanded till I could friction-fit the mono scope front lenses in.

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