Sights

Update 12/11/11:
Ordered a Lee Shaver Gunsmithing Super Grade Soule sight and a globe front sight.  I wanted a mid priced sight and Lee’s seem to be of high grade for about 150 bucks less than the MVA sights.  The Lee Shaver sight also comes with a Hadley eyepiece which is a bonus and 70 bucks you wont have to spend if you bought from one of the other manufacturers.  Lee also does a trigger modification for $35.  Send in your trigger and get it back providing you with a 2lb or less pull.  I’m going to do that this winter at some point too.  Lastly for now, I ordered my sights on a Saturday night directly from Lee and got the email confirmation right back.  I then replied to the confirmation with a question to which I was answered in about 5 minutes.  We had a short email exchange where I asked about the trigger.  Great service so far.

12/18/11

I received the Lee Shaver sights and I’m installing the front globe sight first.  I measured the dovetail ways in my Miroku Badger barrel and it seemed to be pretty close to .375 as I could measure using my digital calipers.  The Lee Shaver dovetail came in at about .390 so it was too large although a note included with the sight said that it might actually be too small for the Miroku manufactured Winchester and that it was recommended to glue it in with some red Locktite.  Luckily that was not the case for my barrel.
So the first thing that needed to be done was the dovetail had to be made smaller so that it would go into the dovetail ways on the barrel about a quarter way with finger pressure only.  You should always install dovetails from right to left when looking from the shooters vantage point or left to right when looking at the end of the muzzle.

To reduce the size I got out a flat file and put it between a couple of dogs on on my bench and began pulling the bottom of the dovetail over the file.  Do not exert a lot of pressure here but just enough so that you can feel the file biting.  Because I know my sight was big I pulled the dovetail across its length 10 times, then reversed it and pulled it again another 10 times. You want to pull it over the file the same number of times in each direction so that you get even machining.  I had to do probably 6 repetitions of 10 pulls each way before I could feel it getting close.  Once I got close I reduced it to 5 each way between fit checks.


Here you can see the bottom of the dovetail which is being pulled across the file.  As we remove material from the bottom of the dovetail the width of the dovetail gets narrower which is what we are after.  We want to remove just enough material so that you can press the sight into the dovetail about a quarter of it’s length.  Once we can do that, remove the sight and use some cold bluing to preserve the metal.  I used my Birchwood Casey touch up pen.


Once we have the dovetail at the proper size it’s time to install it.  One thing I didn’t mention earlier is that you should remove any levels that may be installed on the sight so that you don’t break them or separate the bubble while you’re working.

You should always install dovetails from right to left when looking from the shooters vantage point or left to right when looking at the end of the muzzle.

Here you can see me using a wooden dowel to tap the sight into the ways.


The Soule rear sight went on effortlessly and of great relief to me my eyes are able to get sharp focus.

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