Post by tinkerpearce on Jan 27, 2020 1:56:50 GMT -5
I'm putting this here because the gun that brought this up is double action, and it has to go somewhere... Bear with me, this will require a bit of background.
We know that a longer sight radius is good when precision shooting with iron sights. In addition to extra velocity the main advantage of a longer barrel is the increased sight radius. When I shortened the barrel on my .38 safety hammerless I was certain that dramatically shortening the sight radius would result in a proportionate decrease in accuracy. That's the trade-off for having a short barrel- more concealable, less overall accuracy, and we all accept and live with that. Of course the gun isn't less accurate; but the short sight radius exaggerates aiming errors, making it more difficult to shoot accurately.
This is the gun in question- most of you have seen it before.
In addition to the short barrel this gun's rear sight is seriously tiny and very narrow- not anyone's idea of a good rear sight.
When I started shooting this gun after the modifications I was pleased with the accuracy at seven yards, but not very surprised; I've always had an affinity for snubbies. It was certainly more accurate than I had expected, but I just egotistically assumed it was a manifestation of my awesomeness. Then I discovered that other people could shoot better than expected with it and decided, OK, it's just one of those 'sweet' guns. Then one day at the range I whimsically backed the target off to twenty five yards with this result:
That's a 3-1/4" group, standing unsupported, double action. I'd have been pretty happy with this group from my 6" .357, or 7-1/2" .44 magnum... but from a 1-5/8" barrel on a gun with a 2-1/4" sight radius and a terrible rear sight? Even my inherent awesomeness couldn't explain this. It wasn't a fluke, either; repeated groups at this distance were closer to 4-1/2" on average, but tighter groups like this still happened. Something outside the bounds of the conventional wisdom was happening here.
With iron sights one focuses on the front sight, meaning that the target and rear sight are blurry, which degrades precision.
A few decades back Uncle Sam explained to me that the principle advantage of a scope, aside from magnification, was that it placed the sight (cross-hairs) on the same visual plane as the target; you could maintain a sharp focus on both the sight and the target, allowing greater precision. This certainly seemed to be the case in practice. Red dot scopes have the same effect of placing the sight in the same focal plane as the dot, and competition experience has shown that a trained individual will shoot faster and more accurately with a red-dot sight.
Examining the gun and being mindful when shooting it helped explain why the gun was easy to shoot accurately so easily for a gun of it's type- the front and rear sight are so close together they are effectively in the same focal plain, and the front sight fills the rear aperture precisely. With both front and rear sight sharply in-focus it's very easy to obtain and maintain a precise sight picture. Yes the target is still blurry, but two out of three is apparently pretty good. So despite the miniscule rear sight and short sight radius the average shooter has no difficulty achieving decent precision with this little gun, usually comparable to what they can get from their full-size gun with good sights. this begs the question... have we been doing it wrong? If we put a good rear sight blade 2" from a contrasting front sight is it possible that this will work as well as a conventional-length sight radius, but be faster to align?
I welcome your thoughts.
We know that a longer sight radius is good when precision shooting with iron sights. In addition to extra velocity the main advantage of a longer barrel is the increased sight radius. When I shortened the barrel on my .38 safety hammerless I was certain that dramatically shortening the sight radius would result in a proportionate decrease in accuracy. That's the trade-off for having a short barrel- more concealable, less overall accuracy, and we all accept and live with that. Of course the gun isn't less accurate; but the short sight radius exaggerates aiming errors, making it more difficult to shoot accurately.
This is the gun in question- most of you have seen it before.
In addition to the short barrel this gun's rear sight is seriously tiny and very narrow- not anyone's idea of a good rear sight.
When I started shooting this gun after the modifications I was pleased with the accuracy at seven yards, but not very surprised; I've always had an affinity for snubbies. It was certainly more accurate than I had expected, but I just egotistically assumed it was a manifestation of my awesomeness. Then I discovered that other people could shoot better than expected with it and decided, OK, it's just one of those 'sweet' guns. Then one day at the range I whimsically backed the target off to twenty five yards with this result:
That's a 3-1/4" group, standing unsupported, double action. I'd have been pretty happy with this group from my 6" .357, or 7-1/2" .44 magnum... but from a 1-5/8" barrel on a gun with a 2-1/4" sight radius and a terrible rear sight? Even my inherent awesomeness couldn't explain this. It wasn't a fluke, either; repeated groups at this distance were closer to 4-1/2" on average, but tighter groups like this still happened. Something outside the bounds of the conventional wisdom was happening here.
With iron sights one focuses on the front sight, meaning that the target and rear sight are blurry, which degrades precision.
A few decades back Uncle Sam explained to me that the principle advantage of a scope, aside from magnification, was that it placed the sight (cross-hairs) on the same visual plane as the target; you could maintain a sharp focus on both the sight and the target, allowing greater precision. This certainly seemed to be the case in practice. Red dot scopes have the same effect of placing the sight in the same focal plane as the dot, and competition experience has shown that a trained individual will shoot faster and more accurately with a red-dot sight.
Examining the gun and being mindful when shooting it helped explain why the gun was easy to shoot accurately so easily for a gun of it's type- the front and rear sight are so close together they are effectively in the same focal plain, and the front sight fills the rear aperture precisely. With both front and rear sight sharply in-focus it's very easy to obtain and maintain a precise sight picture. Yes the target is still blurry, but two out of three is apparently pretty good. So despite the miniscule rear sight and short sight radius the average shooter has no difficulty achieving decent precision with this little gun, usually comparable to what they can get from their full-size gun with good sights. this begs the question... have we been doing it wrong? If we put a good rear sight blade 2" from a contrasting front sight is it possible that this will work as well as a conventional-length sight radius, but be faster to align?
I welcome your thoughts.