Ruger Hunter 41- front sight shaping, Alaska Arms rings

[potatojudge]

I thought I'd share how I shape front sight blanks. I can't keep things square by hand, not even remotely, so I throw on a clamp to use as a guide. Start with a file then finish on wet/dry paper until the facet is cut and smoothed. Other sights I've done differently, but the long and short of it is to rig up a system that removes as much manual error as possible. You can pad the side of the clamp with brass shims to make it mar-proof, but this one still needs trim to height then off for a vertical white line, serrations, and refinishing so I didn't worry about that. You can do similar to determine sight height in the field before ordering custom sights to your specs.  

I needed to trim this Bowen blank to clear the Leupold 2.5-8x scope that's now mounted in Alaska Arms QD rings. For anyone looking to do this, the higher rings are necessary to clear the bell of the scope over the rear sight and left sided levers avoid hitting the turret caps. The 4x scope is more forgiving, but I wanted to use the 2.5-8 here because the longer eye relief works best for me on barrel mounted optics like the Hunter. 

The grips are LSCG walnut, and feel great. There's more figure in person than pics pick up. 

For sights I want to blacken at home, I've included a pic of one of the ultra black paints (think Vantablack) that works nicely. 

[contender]

Looks like that works pretty good there.