sight installation

[crankycalico]

Well ive decided to finally get iron sights on a rifle, and well have had no luck finding someone that can do it. Or at least anyone willing to consider it.

Just how hard is it to take a rifle, put a front sight on and then toss on an elevator rear sight from a sharps or lever action replica?

I know sight graduations would be wonky, but those can get removed easily.

At this point ive considered the possibility of getting a barrel from a reproduction lever action with the sights I want on it and sticking it into a savage receiver just to "have it" done

[John Taylor]

Sight installation is no problem, do it quite often. Do you want dovetail or screw on sights? Round barrel or octagon? Contour? You can find sights at many places on line, Brownells or Midway would be a place to start and there are many more.

[country gent]

Iron sights are not hard to install. Its just drilling and tapping a few holes or Solder job. Like the older drilling and tapping for scopes used to be. He big and hard part of the job is in the set up, Location, and timing of them. One trick that can help a lot is "fixture in a tube" ( super glue ). I have done this several times glue the sights on in position 12:00 on barrel front is pretty much there. And rear where it seems to need to be. You can then look and handle the rifle and see what the sight picture looks like with out any modifications to the firearm. On light recoil rifles you may be able to fire a few rounds even to test. Doing this before you drop the rifle of to the smith will answer a lot of his questions on location and what you want.

Put the rifle in a good cleaning cradle or padded vise and level it with a scope block mounted. a sharp pencil line on top dead center of barrel. Clean surfaces of oil and dirt Glue front sight on. do the same with the rear carefully aligning the notch with the line. Let cure and you can now handle the rifle and see what the sight picture looks like. (Sometimes an inch or so forward or back really cleans up the sight picture for a person.)

If this is a bolt action or single shot you can bore sight the iron sights even. Once the sights are where you want them measurements can be taken to mount them in that spot. If you don't like them or solder is required acetone removes most super glues. Another trick is a narrow piece of scotch tape down each side of bases. This is normally .002-.003 thick and maintains a bond thickness when clamping. We sometimes added a little grit to glues to accomplish this also.

[Texas by God]

I agree, find the sights and glue them on to your satisfaction. Then take it to the gunsmith and say put these here. Probably $10 a hole.

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[John Taylor]

I agree, find the sights and glue them on to your satisfaction. Then take it to the gunsmith and say put these here. Probably $10 a hole.

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Closer to $30 a hole. Some holes need to be very shallow with flat bottom to get enough thread without breaking through to the bore. This type of work should not be done with a hand drill. Shop rates may very but most that are in the business are running over $100 per hour.

[country gent]

I was going to say around $25.00 per hole. Even at the $30.00- $35.00 per hole, with the set up time, and time to drill, flat bottom, tap and bottom tap. And have it right isn't that bad. We used to joke in the shop with the engineers add a zero behind the decimal point add a zero to the cost. A simple hole +- 1/32 location and size $10.00 same hole +- .001 location and size $100.00.
ere your talking precise alignment and hole size so holes line u[ and threads are right. Not to mention sight can be zeroed. On a barrel with any taper this can get tricky. Even on a straight barrel set up and timing can be a job. Ove had jobs where it was 2 hours time setting up indicating and 10 mins machining time.

[Texas by God]

You can tell I haven't paid for any Drilling and tapping work lately LOL. Thank you guys for the reality check.

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[crankycalico]

I don't have the ability or tooling to do it myself, and the only gunsmith I know of in 100 miles of my house, does nothing more then attach AR uppers to AR lowers, and install AR parts people buy into complete guns.

[Sailormilan2]

What you need to do is find someone with one of these:
https://www.forsterproducts.com/product/universal-sight-mounting-fixture/

[John Taylor]

What you need to do is find someone with one of these:
https://www.forsterproducts.com/product/universal-sight-mounting-fixture/

Those are nice but they don't work on every gun.

[M-Tecs]

What you need to do is find someone with one of these:
https://www.forsterproducts.com/product/universal-sight-mounting-fixture/

The market on used Bridgeport Series 1 vertical milling machines is soft. You can find well used ones for double the cost of that fixture. For 5 or 6 times the cost you can get very nice machines. I just purchased two. They work on anything and if I wanted that fixture I could easily build it on the Bridgeport .