Pistol Sights and sunshine

[JimT]

In the thread on shooting from a rest (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=84070) there was quite a bit of talk about how sunlight affects sighting/shot placement and how overcast days it was much easier to shoot groups.

Has no one ever tried smoking the sights? Do everything you can do to reduce glare on the edges? A candle ... a match ...

[Sixgun]

Jim,
Usually only people who shoot a lot of ammo out of open sighted guns or competitive shooters will notice that. Like most guys can't read heat waves off the ground from scopes.....your really not shooting where you think you are.....

I have a can of spray on sight blackener and as that always seems to clog up on the brightest day of the most important match I keep a Birchwood Casey paint pen.....yea, the old timers would use a match, charcoal or something to dull the sights. You can even use flat black spray paint in a pinch ...spray the whole front of the barrel and the sight and wipe it off with carb cleaner after the match.

I don't know why, but the best of the best at any sport are the biggest cheaters....Tom Brady with the under inflated football for an example. I shot the Pa. State Champs for levergun silhouette for many years until one time, after witnessing a few things I up and quit, never to return....at this one club in Bradford Pa. there was a clique of the best shooters in the state who were from the area. Several of these guys hold National records in levergun Silhouette at Raton. Among many things I saw I noticed that this group (these guys were also match directors, etc, so they could do this) would set the relays to where they shot from a certain area in the morning, noon, and afternoon.....it took me a few years to notice but they always managed to shoot in the shade as the sun progressed .....mmmmm.....yes, on a bright day your shots can be off several inches at 50 meters.....easily. In the morning when the wind is usually calm they always managed to be able to start on the turkeys, the hardest ones to hit. I asked in advance to start on the turkeys but they were already taken.

Blacken those front sights..
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[samsi]

It is nice when you can shoot with the sun at your back, but it sure doesn't work out that way a lot of the time. The last can of the Birchwood-Casey spray on sight black I had ran out some years ago, and since then I've gotten lazy and just use Flat Black Krylon. It takes a lot longer to wear off too.

[Scott Tschirhart]

I had a front sight that I put on a Ruger Redhawk that was fiber optic. I was shooting from a box blind and with the muzzle outside, the sun hit it just right to make the sight unusable. The only time I have ever had a sight that I saw too well.

[Mark in MO]

[quote}the old timers would use a match, charcoal or something to dull the sights.[/quote]

Back when I shot competitively we would often use a nifty little lighter apparatus that you'd place a couple of chunks of carbide and a little water in. Worked great but the device was messy to clean up afterwards. We still blacked our sights whenever we shoot a Garand or a high power match. Nowadays though we usually just use a candle.

[elmo123]

I shot on the pistol team and we had small carbide sight smokers that we used, it made a lot of difference. I still have a small can of carbide from 30 years ago. I tried some of the spray on sight black but it was more gray than black. A word of caution you can smoke a red insert it melts.

I used the smoker at an indoor range that had very bright lights behind me so I could see that sights.

[marlinman93]

In the thread on shooting from a rest (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=84070) there was quite a bit of talk about how sunlight affects sighting/shot placement and how overcast days it was much easier to shoot groups.

Has no one ever tried smoking the sights? Do everything you can do to reduce glare on the edges? A candle ... a match ...

Yes, I've smoked front sights, but I just use the plain old spray can of sight black. A friend of mine came up with a slick way to keep the spray off the barrel that's so simple I had a "duh" moment when I saw it. He took a piece of old target paper and used scissors to cut a slot in the small square. Just slid it over the sight with open end towards the muzzle, and spray the sight. Pull it off and toss it in the shooting box for next time. Huge improvement on the sights for bright days.

[jmiller]

Two things will greatly improve your shooting from a bench or other type of rest (such as shooting Creedmoor style in silhouette). First is putting sight black on your front sight, and second is using something like a Merit aperture worn on your eyeglasses. Sunlight causes way more trouble than most realize. In conditions where the sun keeps going behind clouds and then reappearing, you’ll see all the misses going high with the clouds blocking the sun, and low when the sun comes back out. This is minimized quite a bit with the use of the aperture. At the 1991 Region 1 IHMSA championships (rimfire handguns) they were using NRA rifle chickens as shoot-off targets at 100 yards. These chicken targets were approx. 1moa in size. Pretty small. Using a carbide lamp/sight darkened and a Merit aperture, and understanding how to shoot in different light conditions, I shot a 9x10 in the shoot-offs using an open sighted Browning Buckmark that was completely stock. It had a ten inch barrel. It’s not “cheating” if you learn your craft and apply it if legal. FWIW, I hate fiber optic handgun sights. Blacken up your front blade or get a red dot.

[AJMD429]

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Here is one solution; this sight setup seems immune to side-light...

https://www.levergunscommunity.org/view ... =1&t=43463