Aadlands are $60 for plastic. Am I so old I think $60 is actually worth something ?
The 3d printers I have experience with are nowhere near solid enough as a good AL one. Waste the money on breaking 1 and you paid for a quality product.
Hi Guys,
With respect, if you haven’t used one of our levers there’s no way to have an informed opinion about them. Ours are absolutely nothing like the cheap 3D printed or universal plastic levers you may have seen, so any conclusions drawn from them do not apply to our levers at all.
We have a long list of customers who, after trying one of our levers, proceed to replace all the aluminum levers they have on all their scopes for which we make levers. They don’t do this because they feel like “downgrading” for some reason. Quite the opposite—they do it because they feel ours are better and that’s what they want to use.
Durability is not an issue with our levers. Nobody has ever broken one in the field or had any other sort of failure so that’s a complete non-issue. And that’s pretty impressive since our sales of these are nearly 100% Military, LE and Match Shooters—the guys that shoot the most and are the hardest on their gear. Since we don’t even advertise these, safe queen owners have never heard of them and hunters (even those who love our caps) generally don’t want a big throw lever on a hunting rifle so our levers have pretty much all gone to rifles that are used hard in the field year round.
As far as being solid, locking up solidly on the power ring, etc, it just doesn’t get any more solid than our levers. We are able to do this without the extremely high clamping forces of aluminum levers because of the
Exact Fit design of our levers. Here’s how that works, using our new Vortex AMG lever as an example to show the fit that simply cannot be matched by
simplistic 2D cookie cutter designs:
When we say Exact Fit, we mean
EXACT! Not “roughly resembling” or “the right diameter” or “roughly incorporating one feature.” The interior of the throw lever ring
perfectly replicates the power ring in minute detail.
Here you can see the contour of the lever matching the contour of the power ring perfectly, solidly locking it fore and aft.
Here you can see the ridges built into the lever matching the grooves on the power lever perfectly, locking the lever radially.
This
Exact Fit makes the lever solidly lock to the power ring with no play or slippage allowed, even with zero preload on the screw and zero stress in the material or on the power ring.
It doesn’t rely on clamping force and the resulting friction to hold it into place as is the case with other designs. Once installed the lever and the power ring feel like they are one solid piece with zero play or movement between them.
All that allows one to enjoy the best thing about our EFTLs—the ergonomics. They’re round and smooth yet “grabby” when needed. Their specifically contoured 3D “knob” shape allows for them to “hook” a finger, thumb, open palm or any other portion of the hand from the right, left front or back to be pushed or pulled in the desired direction effortlessly—without being sharp on the hand. Their large size allows them to be located quickly and easily and be manipulated from odd positions very easily when the conditions are the least conducive and pressure is the highest on the user. This is the reason usually given by those replacing their aluminum levers—much better usability in high stress environments.
As for aesthetics, I'll have to admit I've always been a "function first" sort of guy--if you win the race nobody will care about your rattle-can paint job. That said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and looks often grow on people. Sometimes gaining an understanding of why something looks the way it does, understanding the function behind the features will make an item more attractive to an individual.
Personally, I think they're gorgeous.
