The King Mirrored Ramp front sight! See page 3!!
Jan 9, 2019 16:12:35 GMT -5
Stump Buster, alukban, and 4 more like this
Post by 2 Dogs on Jan 9, 2019 16:12:35 GMT -5
A lot of what I do in my shop is to walk those long cold gunsmith trails to see for myself what can be done and why the old masters might have done such and how they did it. To find out if these things still have relevance today. To lend my own twist to the original concept and add a bit of a classic touch to my own sixguns. One such item is something I have wanted to bring to the forefront for some time. One of the things I enjoy most is visiting with my clients over the phone and bouncing my loonie ideas off them. What follows is my take on a 2019 Mirrored Ramp front sight.
My first thought was to utilize the flat on my own long range front where the screw would be to locate and place a "mirror" rather than a screw. Now, here we are not actually using a glass mirror but rather a polished stainless disc since it is stronger than the glass unit. That unit is shown here in the foreground.
The first question most asked was "will it really reflect usable light"? Well here is your answer in a picture. This is taken standing under my shop lights only. I made no attempt to exaggerate the reflective disc whatsoever. I would say my shop lights mounted on the roof were 3 feet or better away. The next question I was most routinely asked was would the reflection cause "glare" on the front sight surface. My answer is NO. Remember, my serrations are hand cut and as deep as the 50 LPI checkering file will allow. Rather than "glare" what you will see is that the "shadowing" of the serrations will be accented.
Last, when I look at the originals I see that the platform or front sight base is usually quite tall and the blade itself is some short. The reason they are like that is because if you look closely there are a number of pins in the original King base units that I believe were drilled through the original fixed sight platform to hold them in place. Pretty slick really. A true no heat installation! Nonetheless, my try at a unit with an elevated base led to this example where the mirror is some elevated with the base and I sculpted a pedestal about the mirror to see how it would look. Here you can see the Mirrored ramp with the pedestal and raised platform with the TLA sight in the back and my original design in the front. Those little hairs you see are off a q tip. Alas, I am a poor photographer.
Finally, here is original KMR sight on a sixgun. I can see I forgot to serrate the ramp on my own unit so I need to do that and reblue it. Still, I can tell you the one with the platform is most likely going to find a place on one of my own sixguns soon. But I would like to know what you guys think.
My first thought was to utilize the flat on my own long range front where the screw would be to locate and place a "mirror" rather than a screw. Now, here we are not actually using a glass mirror but rather a polished stainless disc since it is stronger than the glass unit. That unit is shown here in the foreground.
The first question most asked was "will it really reflect usable light"? Well here is your answer in a picture. This is taken standing under my shop lights only. I made no attempt to exaggerate the reflective disc whatsoever. I would say my shop lights mounted on the roof were 3 feet or better away. The next question I was most routinely asked was would the reflection cause "glare" on the front sight surface. My answer is NO. Remember, my serrations are hand cut and as deep as the 50 LPI checkering file will allow. Rather than "glare" what you will see is that the "shadowing" of the serrations will be accented.
Last, when I look at the originals I see that the platform or front sight base is usually quite tall and the blade itself is some short. The reason they are like that is because if you look closely there are a number of pins in the original King base units that I believe were drilled through the original fixed sight platform to hold them in place. Pretty slick really. A true no heat installation! Nonetheless, my try at a unit with an elevated base led to this example where the mirror is some elevated with the base and I sculpted a pedestal about the mirror to see how it would look. Here you can see the Mirrored ramp with the pedestal and raised platform with the TLA sight in the back and my original design in the front. Those little hairs you see are off a q tip. Alas, I am a poor photographer.
Finally, here is original KMR sight on a sixgun. I can see I forgot to serrate the ramp on my own unit so I need to do that and reblue it. Still, I can tell you the one with the platform is most likely going to find a place on one of my own sixguns soon. But I would like to know what you guys think.