Talk to me about Iron Sights and aging Eyes

[JohnH]

Let's start here, I'm 48, been a welder all my life, eye's been burned more times than I can count. About 12 years ago I was hit with the end of a starter rope in my right eye (don't you know that's my dominant and I'm right handed to boot) and there is loose stuff floatin' around in there that nothing can be done about.

Over the last 6 years or so, I've shot nothing but scoped rifles over rests with cast boolits, and am feeling the need to expand my horizons again. Have shot a friends Security Six some and am shootin' a semi auto 9mm carbine. The revolver has adjustable sights, the carbine a peep sight (such as it is, a small hole punched thru sheet steel).

Several years ago I bought a Mosin Nagant M44. I hadn't shot it much because I couldn't mount a scope on it readily (Not willing to spend as much as the rifle cost on a scope mount, forget that) I drug it out today, and carried it on my walk, sighting at various bushes, tree limb crotches, smallbirds and such, and found to my surprise that I can see better through the sights than I thought I would be able to under field conditions.

On the way back in, I grabbed a can of white spray paint from the shed, walked down to my back stop, sprayed my swinging steel pig (NRA Hunter Pistol Silhoutte) and low and behold, could see it quite well. My shooting lane is heavily shaded, and at 75 yards the rusted swinger is practically invisible against the backgound of brown soil. At that range I can barely make out a floresent yellow target spot 2" square with my naked eye.

Gonna make up some 7.62x54R blammo tonight and give it a try tomorrow, see what happens.

Been feeling of late kinda stuck in a bland routine with my shootzen. It's fun and relaxing, but not real challengingat this point, I think I need some variety. I've not shot any iron sights in these recent years, I was wanting a higher level of accuracy than I felt they could give, and I also thought my eyes were past their prime for good iron sight shooten, but the need for variety and challenge is creating it's own demand.

So how did/do you older fella's deal with eye's that don't work like they used to, what makes a good iron sight good, are peeps more versatile than they appear on the surface, is there any specific thing you did to improve your use of irons?

[mainiac]

Boy, dont this sound familiar!! I went from the most accurate guns man can make, to cast bullet handguns,and levers. Now im shooting muzzle loaders exclusively. I also am a welder/fitter, and thought my eyes was going bad. Only 39, but thought that i should start shooting open sights now, while i still could. I cant explain it, but i seem to see the sights alot better now than i did a few years ago? Always use to have a shade 10 in my hood, to see the puddle. Now i use a 12,because the 10 hurts my eyes once im home in the evening. Sounds crazy i know.... Anyway, I seem to have a heck of a time shooting the open sights,in this point of my life. Having more fun now than any time previous. Aint in competition anymore, so my shooting is more relaxing. Only one i need to beat is myself. My most accurate shooting guns have bead front sights, i have some guns with blade front sight, and i dont shoot these as well.

[chevyiron420]

JohnH our eye historys are about the same and i have some nice rifles with scopes, but never shoot them. i always take a old milsurp to the range and am stuck with iron sights. the important thing to me is to have fun. i cant shoot with others with better eyes, or better skills, but i have fun so i dont care. i found that i cant see a 8 1\2x11 piece of white paper with a 2 inch orange dot at 75 yards. i see a white fuzzy area down there and just use the force from there. i found its better if the light is a little overcast and diferent color targets help too. a few weeks ago my son and i went to the range. he was concerned about no hitting the paper with his new mauser, so he propped up a box with a orange dot on it. i shot a 1 1\4 group with my 8x57 m95m steyr at 75 or so yards. i was so happy i didnt think to realize that i could see it. now i want to know what color that box was, and its gone back to n.c. in the back of his truck.-phil

[drinks]

The pinole attachments from Lyman and others help,I made one from a case, cut off the rim, soldered a piece of #12 copper wire on it and bent it so it would hang off my glasses frame and align with the view over the sights, just look through the flash hole.

[wills]

A discussion of peep sights:
http://www.lymanproducts.com/lymanpr...structions.pdf

also



also

http://www.meritcorporation.com/

[Dale53]

I am age 72 and have serious vision problems. However, with a Red Dot sight I can shoot pistol about as well as I ever could.

I've gone through all of the stages except that I started out with poor vision (near sighted). After I reached bi-focal stage in my forties, I found, with pistol, that the Merit disc on my glasses (adjustable iris) worked extremely well for slow fire (in fact, the whole NRA Bullseye discipline). However, trying the same thing with open sights (OPEN sights, not peep sights) on rifles, it didn't work well. My fat little cheeks would push my glasses up when I "cheeked" the rifle moving the merit disc from the optimum position. You might experiment with a perforated piece of paper glued to various places on your glasses to see if that works for you.

Better is a Merit Iris (use the match type) replacing the regular disc in a peep sight. That will work for you for years. A good man with good peep sights (I'm thinking match grade, here) is very nearly as good as a telescope sight. When I shot smallbore competition, my iron sight scores (peeps) were very nearly as good as my scope scores (Master Class). The advantage of the Merit Disc is it is adjusted for the light available. this makes a BIG difference. You will find as you get older you lose contrast in the target. I got so I couldn't see steel silhouette targets good enough. However, with a scope, I am still competitive. This was maintained until I had cataract and retinal surgery on my right eye in May 2003.

Now, with scopes and red dots I am nearly as good as before. However, my iron sight scores are not all that good.

Tomorrow, I go under the knife again for a lens replacement (cataract) and retinal surgery in the left eye. Wish me luck.

Dale53

[monadnock#5]

Our prayer's go out to you Dale.

http://www.bjonessights.com/index.html

I don't think that the stuff bjones sells will help for hunting applications, but he has extended my use of the M1A for a number of years with his products.

[trk]

Dale our prayers are with ya.

50 years ago you'd just have to had to live with it.

Keep us posted!

[piwo]

JohnH,
You casting for that M44? I have five different variant of Mosin Nagants (but not a complete M44, just barreled action) and different groove/land diameters in almost all of them.

At 49, I don't shoot iron sights too well, yet just like mainiac, I shoot muzzleloaders exclusively right now. What is the arsenal/year of your M44? Ruskie, Polskie, Romanian???

[klw]

I've been interested in guns and reloading equipment all my life but, oddly enough, never really interested in shooting. When I retired I promised myself that I'd finally get around to teaching myself to shoot. 128,000+ rounds later I'm getting there. Go five days a week about ten months out of the year with between six and ten guns a trip. Been doing this since 2000.

I use Dixie's blackpowder 100 yard targets. There are cheap and I need a lot of them. Each scoring ring is exactly one inch wide. Use these for everything. All the targets are scored and then computerized. So I can compare performance over very long periods of time, years literally. Or I can compare performance between days, months, guns, etc. Having very accurate records lets you see what is important and what isn't. There are some surprises in that.

I've been studying how practice improves marksmanship. But part of that is also how aging affects eyesight and hence marksmanship. I have very very tiny catracts but they are right dead center in both eyes. But it doesn't seem to matter. Sure the sights are getting slowly fuzzier but accuracy hasn't suffered, at least not yet.

Also I'm keeping track of what type of sights are on which gun to see if one type stands out above the rest. Not yet.

I asked the eye doctor if scopes would help. He said no. They just don't help people with catracts.

But so far though things look a bit fuzzier I can still line the fuzzy sights up as well as I ever could. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. But so far it just doesn't seem to matter

[carpetman]

JohnH---I have posted this several times but here goes again. If you need glasses to read,find some print you cant read without your glasses. Now make a small pin hole in a piece of paper or easier yet curl your index finger up where it makes a small hole place either the paper or your finger to your eye and look through it. You can probably now read that print. Thats how glasses work,they make your eye focus when it was unable to do it on it's own. Peep sights also do this. I have peep on an air rifle and until a couple years ago,the smallest aperture I could get worked great. Now I have had to go to a bigger aperture. I am right eyed and left eye dominant and have always shot right handed with right eye. If I had to switch,I'd have to give up shooting. I also shoot scoped guns and so far no problem with them.

[racepres]

Gotta go w/ carpetman! As I currently shoot the Model 1917 [peep] better than any open sights! I don't use my glasses w/ a scope. But for my Handgun work, I use good ole 1.25 readers from the drug store!!!! Which I wear abt 90% of the time anyway!! Only use my "scripts" when reading, or just too fatigued to See!! Good luck... gettin old sucks... but the alternative is worse!!!! MV

[carpetman]

Forgot to mention--I find progressive lenses to work much better than bifocals are reading glasses. If you started out with bifocals--it's about two weeks of driving you crazy to adjust to the progressives,but then all that goes away and most people like them. I'm told the adjustment is easy if you go from no glasses directly to progressive.

[Dale53]

Thanks for the "best wishes" folks (both public and private").

I'm going into this with a MOST positive attitude.

Dale53

[Drifter]

I've also had a problem with fuzzy sights while pistol shooting. I've got one pistol with a Red Dot on it but I prefer shooting iron sights. My eyes are almost 60 yrs. old and don't quite work the way they use to. The Merit Iris that Wills posted a picture of does work in clearing the sights up. I use one that's a little different but works the same way. Here's a picture of it and a link if anyone is interested:

http://www.championshooters.com/optical-iris.htm

[versifier]

John et al.,

I just sent GL Master an article I wrote entitled Peep Sights For Hunting Rifles for the GL Home page that he will likely post there. It explains in detail but in simple English how they work, why they work so well, and why you should consider using them on all of your non-scoped hunting rifles. If he chooses not to post it, PM me an email address and I will send it as a .doc attachment minus the photos.

BTW, there's a lot of other good stuff on the GL Home Page and it's so easy to overlook it in one's haste to log on here. Click on the Gunloads logo at the top of the page to check it out. Articles, printable targets, loading data, news, all kinds of good stuff. Check it out.

[buck1]

John, On pistols I have found that shorter bbls now shoot better than the longer ones. The shorter sight rad helps a lot.
PM sent.....Buck

[45nut]

Good point on the Gunloads site itself, CB is just one part of the Gunloads domain and should you have an article you are interested in posting that doesn't really tie in with the CB format it would help us all if you let Willy in to post it elsewhere.
We have over 3,400 members and I would bet a far larger number can contribute to the whole in information articles.
Gun reviews, misc. equipment, photography for our stuff, there are thousands of topics out there.

[223tenx]

GUYS,
I'm 59 and just had cataract surgery on my right eye last Wednesday. My vision went from a fuzzy double image to 20/50 and the doc says it will get better. The surgery took 13--THIRTEEN-- MINUTES. Absolutely no pain. Just wore a patch for a day and have to use drops for about 3 weeks. Man, I wish I'd have known 6 months ago how easy the surgery was. It was actually not as bad as a colonoscopy (just a different end, of course). I've got the left eye scheduled for the 8th of Aug. The best thing is I can see the front sight post in focus w/o glasses. I was always extremely near sighted before. If anybody has a cataract I would highly reccomend (recommend) (sp?) they get it fixed.

[Frank46]

John, I shoot a lot of mil surps with iron sights. My lever actions have either current production lyman or williams receiver mounted sights. On my 94 win canadian cenntennial in 30-30 I put a lyman globe front sight. Since I have cataracts and occasional floaters I have found that the circle aperture on the globe front sight is best for me. I also enlarge the rear aperture as big as it will safely go without cutting into the threads where it screws into the receiver sight. It may look wierd to have a globe front sight on a win 94 but it works for me. I do sometimes have problems focusing on the blade front sight such as on the K-31 or yugo 48. The current lyman and williams receiver sights are made of an aluminum alloy so if you decide to get either, grease the elevation and windage stems with either shooter's choice hi-tech grease or moly grease. This will prevent premature wear. One look on ebay and you will see the old lyman steel receiver sights as well as the old redfield ones. If you get lucky and get one do the same grease job as it will make the operation of the sight much easier. Hope this helps. Frank