Win 94 front sight

[Kirk Miller]

At 50 yards the front sight on my 94 will cover a three ln. orange dot. when Placed below the dot, it stretches across the entire width. Not very conducive to precise aiming.
Any suggetions for a slimmer bead or ? Should have mentioned that I have a williams peep sight mounted on the receiver and have used this combination to take several deer over the years. Have'nt hunted in years but am getting interested in just plain old fun, accurate shooting.
Thanks for your help
Kirk

[NVcurmudgeon]

I like big gold beads on lever guns with aperture rear sights. I have gotten very good results on paper targets by smoking the front bead black and using an 8" bull at 50 and 100 yds. I take a 6:00 hold and find I can aim very precisely. It looks like I am aiming at the bottom of a large figure eight. It works real well with my Model 1936 Mark I eyeballs.

[Kirk Miller]

Thanks Curmudgeon
Your system is one I never would have thought of. I guess I was thinking that a smaller or narrower front bead would be an advantage. I'll have to give it a try.
Thanks
Kirk

[BruceB]

Bead sights are one of my pet dislikes. I can't change them fast enough!

A rounded bead ALWAYS picks up the light coming from one side or the other, unless the light source is either directly ahead-of or directly behind the rifle. Since only one side of the bead is "lit up" in such cases, the sight picture tends to lead the shooter to using the lit side of the bead and this throws the shot off to the brighter-lit side.

At the VERY least, when such a sight falls into my hands, I immediately file the bead FLAT, so that it no longer gets the rounded surface unevenly lit. I also try to angle the new flat surface forward, so that it tends to capture light from above. Better yet, I change the sight to a post, or, as I've done with both of my Marlins, I change to a Lyman 17A sight, which has interchangeable apertures.

The ideal post front sight for hunting was the Redfield "Sourdough" of fond memory, which was a slanted-face post with a FLAT brass insert in its face.

For hunting use, the Lyman 17A front sights can be more-fragile than the original sight, BUT...it's perfectly possible to stack up to three or four similar (post-style) inserts inside the tube at the same time, which strengthens the element a great deal by thickening the post.

I zero all my iron-sight rifles (virtually ALL with flat-topped post-type front elements) so that the bullets strike precisely at the top of the post at the chosen zero range.

My favoritism of the post sight is doubtless due to about five decades of using such sights, beginnning in the military and continuing from there. Such sights work extremely well, and I'm a great devotee of the system.

Last week I was shooting my Marlin .35 with an aperture insert in the Lyman 17a, and even with my much-abused ol' peepers, I could see individual bullet holes in the black from fifty yards when looking through the sights. Not bad!

[NickSS]

When target shooting use target sights which means a post or loop apurture front sight and a good quality reciever or tang sight. When hunting use a larger rear aperture and a front sight that you can see easily in the woods. I like ivory beads for this purpose or brass or german silver blades. You can't shoot as tight a group with hunting sights but they are good enough for game.

[Larry Gibson]

BruceB nailed it; "The ideal post front sight for hunting was the Redfield "Sourdough" of fond memory, which was a slanted-face post with a FLAT brass insert in its face."

Back when my eyes were good I prefered hunting with aperture rear sights. I even adapt most open sights to a blade (post) front sight with quare rear notch. It is always a faster and more accurate sight alignment and sight picture.

Larry Gibson

[Kirk Miller]

Thanks to everyone that replied
This is exactly the information I was looking for. That Lyman sight sounds like the very thing that I need.
Everyone have a wonderful Easter weekend.
Kirk

[Three44s]

I installed a Globe front sight on my .357 Marlin as well.

You get a number of different inserts to experiment with .......... they are a good way to go!

Three 44s

[Kirk Miller]

I went to the Midway website and they list four or five different 17a's. Which one should I get for my Win. 94
uncomprehending minds need to know.
Kirk

[mdatlanta]

The globe sight you guys mentioned looks pretty cool, but I'm wondering if there is a "replica" of the Sourdough front sight being made for the Win 94 and/or the Marlins?

My old eyes don't do very well with bead sights; although I might try one of the bright orange or yellow "neon" colored front sights that seem to gather light well.

I'm not sure how durable they are, though. A buddy said the little colored tube was knocked off when his rifle tipped over a few inches in the safe and bumped into its neighbor. That doesn't seem too durable to me, although it could have hit "just so".

[pietro]

FWIW, I've had several rifles mounted with fiber optic front sights since the sight was first introduced, years ago, and have never had one damaged - in the safe, or while hunting.
I take only the ordinary care transporting & using, that I do with all my firearms - nothing special, like a sight hood with a cut out top, hard cases, etc.

[mdatlanta]

FWIW, I've had several rifles mounted with fiber optic front sights since the sight was first introduced, years ago, and have never had one damaged - in the safe, or while hunting.
I take only the ordinary care transporting & using, that I do with all my firearms - nothing special, like a sight hood with a cut out top, hard cases, etc.

Pietro--Thanks for the info on fiber optic durability. If I can't find a Sourdough, I'll try one of the fiber optics.

Mike

[ktw]

I went to the Midway website and they list four or five different 17a's. Which one should I get for my Win. 94
uncomprehending minds need to know.
Kirk

One of them has a different size dovetail to fit the metric slot on some european barrels (e.g. Lyman's line of muzzleloaders). The rest should be all the same except for the installed height above the barrel. Measure your existing front sight for height, then pick the version of the 17A that most closely matches.

The 17a is designed to fit into a dovetail slot. Your Win94 may have a ramp instead of a dovetail - a detail that may need to be worked out somehow.

-ktw

[Kirk Miller]

KTW
Thanks for answering my question.
Being some what technicaly challenged, your detailed explanation makes an informed decision possible.

Kirk

[beagle]

I had a friend that was a custom jeweler modify a front sight blade for me. He cut it down and silver soldered a very small washer in a slot in the blade. It worked very well and definitely increased the accuracy for shooting paper. No good for hunting or plinking as it was too slow. I had to keep switching back and forth from it to a blade for field use./beagle

[JDL]

Brownells had some sourdough sights made by Marble recently. HTH -JDL

[pietro]

Tim Skinner, he of the Skinner peep sights, will make you a sourdough patridge front sight blade of any height you tell him for $10 - it just won't have a brass face inlayed at the top rear edge.

http://skinnersights.com/

[HABCAN]

Back when dirt was young an elderly 'smith showed me how to make 'gold beads' on front sights: a drop of hot silver solder on the blade, filed to shape, and touched with cold blue...........Voila! Gold! All the rage for hunting back then, and you could smoke it for target work. Smoking was done by igniting a piece of masking tape , which really made lots of sooty black smoke and was inexpensive. I still smoke sights that way for 'money shoots': one roll of tape provides all the 'smoking' you'll ever need.

[mdatlanta]

I don't mean to hijack Kirk's thread, but I have a similar problem...

I need a front sight for my post '64 Win M-94 .30-30 top-eject carbine which has a Lyman 66 receiver sight, but I don't know what height sight to get! It had a fiber optic type sight which got squished, plus I'm not sure it was the correct height to begin with. My barrel has a factory ramp on the front.

I like the Marble's Sourdough, but Brownell's only has the .312" height, and I'm sure that's too low. The Skinner sight Pietro mentioned also looks good, but I'm at a loss as what to specify.

Does anyone have this setup? A model -94 carbine with a Lyman 66 must be as common as dirt! :-P

Thanks for any help.

Mike

[crabo]

My 24" Marlin 1894 CB 357 uses a .494 front in the Lyman 17A.

[mdatlanta]

Thanks, Crabo.