Lyman 17a front sight on Marlin 336

[higgins]

I'm considering mounting a Lyman 17a front sight on my older 336 for plinking and target shooting. I believe i can drift out the factory front bead and the Lyman 17a should fit nicely if there's enough clearance between the front of the dovetail and the magazine barrel band. I only have about .060 between the front edge of the dovetail and the barrel band on my rifle. If someone has a 17a handy, would you post the measurement from the front edge of the top of the dovetail to the front edge of the sight? If you have done this, what height 17a did you use and how did it work out? I would use it in conjunction with the Lyman 66 aperture sight already on the rifle. Thanks for your help.

P.S. In case this is going to work, please let me know if you have a 17a with inserts you would consider selling or trading. I would need to know the height from bottom of the dovetail to the center of the aperture of your sight. Thanks again.

[BruceB]

I have mounted 17A sights on all three of my lever guns.... a .32 Marlin 36 (NOT 336), a 336 in .35 Remington with the half-length magazine tube, and a Winchester 64 in .32 Special.

The Lyman sights mounted easily on all three rifles.

The barrel band on the 36 is in front of the sight dovetail, and there was JUST sufficient clearance ahead of the dovetail to allow mounting the sight. If the clearance had not been enough, it's easy to grind or file a bit off the sight base to gain the needed room.

Remember when buying a 17A sight that the catalog height measurement is the distance from bottom of dovetail to CENTER OF THE APERTURE. The 17 sights give a vast improvement to the sight picture, and I really like mine a great deal.

On looking at all three sights, I don't see a height figure visible anywhere. I suppose the numbers are stamped under the dovetail. Fortunately, most receiver sights have plenty of adjustment travel, so if one's eyeball estimate is a bit off, the rear sight can compensate.

[beagle]

The aperature fronts work well on a lever for targets but I've found that they're too slow for any type of hunting involving snap shots.

I was wanting one for a M94 Big Bore .375 Win and had a jeweler shooting friend make one. We took a standard bead front and he made a slot across the blade and silver soldered a small washer in place and magic markered it black. I retained the original bead.

It worked well for targets and sillouhettes especially with a M66 receiver sight. Vastly improved the sight picture consistency./beagle

[Frank46]

I have one on a 20" bbld octagon winchester 94. Made target shooting fun. I call it my match lever actioned target rifle. Have to get another as I recently bought a nib 26" long bbld one. These things are fun to shoot. Frank

[higgins]

I ended up installing the 17AHB, .404 height, sight. I saw that my original bead had been struck on the right side to install it, so I drifted it out from left to right. The 17a needed some filing on the dovetail to get it to fit. Use a file and go slow; if you take off with a power tool it would be very easy to take off too much metal and end up with a loose fit in the dovetail. I did have to file the front bottom edge of the sight quite a bit to allow it to clear the barrel band. That was slow going, but again I decided against using a Dremel tool. I just eyeballed centering the sight over the barrel and got good alignment since I had to make just a couple of inches windage adjustment.

With the narrow post installed in the aperture- not the insert that looks like a bead sight- compared to the original front sight, I shot about 12 inches high at 120 yds. with a 311291 bullet at about 1200 fps. I knew it would shoot higher because the height of the top of the post above the bottom of the dovetail was lower than the height of the original bead sight. One of the aperture inserts would probably hit closer to the same point of impact as the original bead because they're centered in the globe, where the top of the post insert is below the center of the globe. It started raining so I couldn't switch to an aperture insert and verify that. I use the hold where I center the top of the front sight in the rear aperture and set the target on top of the post; the top of the front post is centered, not the target. I'm very happy with this sight arrangement. I think the apertures will allow better accuracy for shooting bullseye targets when testing loads, and the flat top post is more familiar to me for general field shooting than the bead was. It's pretty good for targets too; once I got the rifle sighted in, I fired 5 shots into about 3.5" at 120 yds.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Higgins: IF you make targets that are 2 and 3" squares of black paper and staple them to your back ground it gives you sharp edges to index to, both in windage and elevation.

2" works for 50 yds and the 3" works for 100yds. You will note that you just sit the square on top of the front post and center it sideways and go bang.

When the boolits are centered up on the square in both directions, your groups are 1.5" high 100yds.

This works great!

Randy