Purchased a tac-point in June from Bowers Tactical as a cheap way to get some time on a red-dot sight. Great service from Mike and speedy delivery, no complaints there. I bastardized a weaver rail I had lying around and forward mounted it on the barrel of my 10/22. Put about 2000 rounds of 22 lr through it and had an absolute blast. Mounted it on my S&W 686 and got about 50 rounds of full house 125gr .357 mag through it before it died. checked the batteries, changed the batteries, tightened everything up. dead as a doornail.

I feel a little like some idiot who buys a watch that's "almost as good as a rolex" for $50 and then gets ticked off when it falls apart. Sight comes with a "limited lifetime warranty" card that has a website for hakko and a japanese address and telephone number. website is down and a KDD recording says the number is out of service. Got an email address from Bowers Tactical for a mr. kenji iwahara ([email protected]). No reply from kenji yet, and I'm not holding my breath.

I actually read through the forum and did see quite a number of favorable range reports on this thing, so i may be the exception here. Looks like there are folks out there who have really put their tac-point sights through the ringer and come out fine. It may be that these are actually not that poorly built and I just got a lemon. either way, i think i'll write it off as time spent on the learning curve and stick to stuff that i know works. As my dad said a while ago, "it's not really a bargain if it doesn't work".

Here's the tac-point killer...
http://www.aimintl.net/archive/tacpoint_killer.jpg

-Jared

WIZZO's Optics Shopping List
American Made Optics
Swedish Made Optics
Cheap Chinese Optics

Well, I'd hate to lie to you, but my shopping list hasn't changed for awhile now and this just reinforces my position.

WIZZO

You do realize that mounting many types of 'rifle type' optics on handguns such as .44s and even .357s will end up in the failure or destruction of the optic, right?  Heck, even high-powered air rifles have been known to make rifle scopes give up the ghost.  It is something about how the scope is designed internally to resist the physics of different recoil forces.  Is the TacPoint advertised as suitable for handguns or ...? Believe me, I am not trying to defend the TacPoint nor cursing it, as I don't have a horse in that race.  Just wanted to point the above out.

By the way, is it just the photo or is that powder residue on the mount, topstrap, front of cylinder, etc.?

hey i own a mouse just like that!

I would buy it from you for $20 if you are just going to end up throwing it out.

I posted in the Tac(crapoint) thread a while ago.  I had one mounted on my 16" Bushy and the rheostat control knob broke off after~800 rounds, and I didn't even bumpfire ith.gif.  Same thing as you Jared, phone# not working and E-mail ignored from mr. kenji Iw?.  I ended up buying an ML2 from the EE and am extremely pleased with it.  I guess we both got lemons.  I am wondering if I should even pay the freight to send it back to Japan?