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Before you go buying or making a new front sight to the original dimensions you need to shoot the rifle first with a temporary sight to see if the original dimensions will work with your ammunition. Even if your ammo is identical to the original at the time the rifle was made there is no guarantee that the sights will put the bullet anywhere near the POI that they should. Many old rifles, particularly bolt actions have a very different POI to what their sights say. I see this at the BGRC shoots all the time when discussing with the other shooters what position on the target they have to aim at to achieve a bullseye and they can be very different.

A little while ago I purchased a MS1903 with a basically unfired barrel which is Shot and Sighted (And retailed) by Beesley which makes it quite unique as Beeley was not famous for rifles. While I am very proud of this unique rifle I can see why they were not famous for rifles. I loaded Norma brass with Hornady 160 Grain RNSN ammunition to the correct overall length and velocity is 2240 fps which is correct for the original ballistics for a 22" barrel. The gun grouped nicely but at 50 yards was high by nearly six inches. No amount of varying powder amount or type would bring the POI down to where I wanted it. I could have filed the back sight but any lower and I would have had to press my head to hard into the stock, the back sight is the right height for comfortable shooting so I wasn't going to touch it.

So I bought a new front sight from NECG which was very nicely made and was 2mm higher than the original. this was the the shortest taller front sight I could get and unfortunately the dovetail was wider so I had to make a Jig to hold the sight and machine the dovetail to suit the rifle. I did this and fitted it and fired some ammo at the range and and it shot about 10 inches low which was obviously hopeless. I didn't want to load the ammo any hotter so I had to make a new front sight. Now obviously there is a shit load of work in making a new front sight and I would potentially have to make a number of them until I got the right height. So I decided to 3D print some as I have two 3D printers at work. This was extremely successful and after having printed a number of sights in different heights, I settled on one height that placed the bullets where I want. I then adjusted for windage and shot it it in the Classic Light Nitro event, and promptly won with a ripper score. I was rather happy especially as it was the first time the rifle was used in a comp.

So you can either get some 3D printed or file off the sight bead and post from your sight base and drill and tap it for a very fine thread and fit the smallest cheese head screw or socket head cap screw to the base. You can then alter the height and see where your rifle actually shoots as far as height goes once you have achieved a good group.

Then you can make a new sight to the correct height. But making a new front sight in Metal is whole different story. I am in the process of making one fore my rifle now so I will report back how I went about it.

Matt.

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