Project Appleseed

Ok I had a Trijicon front sight post that was as wide as a truck and wanted something that was slimmer for an Aim small miss small thing. I installed one that is .034 which is as small as they get onto a rifle length rail but the part that is the thinnest on the post is too blurry to see. I really want to be able to use this post and have a KD shoot in a week. Would a drop of bright paint be the way to go? I do have a .070 pin I could install which I could probably see better and just deal with the width. What would you do?

Thanks

Ironhead

Quote from: ironhead on March 17, 2013, 07:34:03 PM
Ok I had a Trijicon front sight post that was as wide as a truck and wanted something that was slimmer for an Aim small miss small thing. I installed one that is .034 which is as small as they get onto a rifle length rail but the part that is the thinnest on the post is too blurry to see. I really want to be able to use this post and have a KD shoot in a week. Would a drop of bright paint be the way to go? I do have a .070 pin I could install which I could probably see better and just deal with the width. What would you do?

Thanks

Ironhead

In MY experience, color make things worse. It has to do with how your eyes process the colors. Green can appear to glow and get fuzzy, red can smear. Other may think differently.

I am guessing this is on an AR with the rifle length gas system. I find the .050 NM sight to be just about perfect for my old eyes. I don't think I could ever have been able to see a .034 sight even in my younger days. I would run the .070 sight were I you and look for a .050 sight for later.

While a tiny sight certainly gives a smaller aim point, you want enough sight width to identify the width itself for range estimation. In my experience watching what others use successfully, a .050 to .070 works fine for getting hits on 4 MOA.

You can train your eyes to see the .034 sight, but not in a week. It takes several weeks of diligent practice and a continued exercise to maintain.

YHJ

Thanks YHJ. I'm fixing to put the .70 back in after I clean it from shooting this morning. Was hopeful for the .034 because it's about equal to 4 MOA for range estimation on this rifle. I'll just make due and train more.

Thanks

There's a reason why many of the best Service Rifle Shooters use a wide front sight. It works. It's easier to see in low light.  For me on a rifle .072 is 12 moa and it is easy to focus on. Center the target up on it and apply steady even pressure to the rear.

Here is a link to a video from Ken Roxburgh (USMC, ret) and Captain of the Remington-Bushmaster High Power team holding a workshop last year at the Creedmoor Cup in Butner, NC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp69CCY71d4

No one will ever accuse Roxburgh of being wishy washy.

I switched the posts out after painting the .070 flat black to help eith glare. Now off to the range to sight it in before the KD at Red Brush this weekend. Built a new AR with a White Oak Armament NM barrel. Hoping it's a nail driver.

Thanks for the advice.

Live Free

Another lover of the standard front post here.  I switched out the NM sight on my rifle after shooting my Finn M39 and realizing that I could focus on that wide front sight post a whole lot better.  Just like our eye naturally centers the front post in the rear peep, your eye will do a great job of centering the target on that front post. 

Quote from: ironhead on March 18, 2013, 09:00:13 PM
I switched the posts out after painting the .070 flat black to help eith glare. Now off to the range to sight it in before the KD at Red Brush this weekend. Built a new AR with a White Oak Armament NM barrel. Hoping it's a nail driver.

Thanks for the advice.

Live Free

Let us know how it goes. I turn my front sight on rifle length AR's to .40"-.50", puts them right at 4moa. To "see" them, get a set of very low power reading glasses, just enough to focus on the front sight. I hate fat front sights but in low light, you'd need them, just a little lower and you can't see them no matter how fat they are.....O.L.

Part of the problem is that NM (National Match) means nothing when applied to AR sights. Some NM sights are very narrow. Others are wide. White Oak will provide a .052, .062, or .072  front sight with their Service Rifle uppers. Other vendors call their .036 sights NM. To confuse things further, actual match rifles generally use a front aperature rather than a post.

At 600 yards, I found that over the course of a 20 shot match my eyes would tire and I would have trouble particularly on the last 5 shots. The wider sight helps with that. As I noted before it works out to be 12 MOA on my rifle and the bull is 6 MOA. With the narrower sight I would sometimes lose the front sight in the bull even when it had been smoked first. I don't have that problem with the wider sight.

Squint.

To make our front sight and the target both sharper, squint. Find the best squint for you where both the front sight and target are sharpest. NO, this is NOT a departure from the six steps. You FOCUS on the front sight.

However, if you squint, the aperture, your eye opening, is smaller and that pesky bottom row gets a whole lot sharper.

I have made several riflemen with this technique. I mention to the older shooters. We need all the tricks we can muster.