Thanks for the welcome from everyone.
I'm not on every day, but I had a question about lens cleaners.
To get any anti-fog action, you need a liquid cleaner that is actually designed to give anti-fog action. A special chemical is put into anti-fog cleaners that leaves an invisible film on the lens surface after cleaning. This invisible film is what slows down the formation on fog on the lens surface. The anti-fog film lasts anywhere from a few days up to a week, I usually figure about 3 days from my experience.
A good liquid lens cleaner is one that doesn't dry to fast. The problem with liquids that evaporate to quick, is they work well to release oils and smudges from the lens surface just fine, but the oils and residues are in suspension in the fluid, and if the fluid dries to fast the oils and residues will dry right back onto the lens surface before it's removed. We make our fluids so they dry at a specific rate. They contain chemicals that cut through oils and smudges and release them from the glass surface, but don't dry so fast you can't get the fluid off the lens surface before it dries back onto the lens.
The recommended way to clean an optical surface like a rifle scope, is to first brush away an larger dust or dirt particles with a soft brush. Then put a few drops of fluid on a wad (a couple sheets of tissue wadded up) of lens cleaning tissue. Then clean the lens using a circular motion. Immediately follow with a dry wad of tissue to remove any fluid left on the lens surface. The first wad of tissue that has the fluid on it gets the smudges, (like finger prints or is some cases pollen) into suspension, and the second wad of tissue removes it from the lens surface. So it's really the second wad of dry tissue that does most of the real cleaning by getting everything off the glass surface.
A fluid that is normally used for microscopes will work just fine to clean a lens, but they usually don't have any anti-fog chemicals ability because they normally don't have the anti-fog chemical in them. Anti-fog cleaners are more popular with outdoorsmen who will be taking their rifle scopes, binoculars, or spotting scopes (and cameras) from one temperature range to another, causing fog to form on the lens surface.
I hope this helps, please let me know if any of you have more questions.
Gary
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