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Greetings all,

I am fortunate enough to have a BSA Lee Speed sporting rifle with a custom-made bolt peep sight attached to the back of the cocking piece. This bolt peep sight was originally mounted on a BSA No. 2 Pattern Army & Navy Lee Speed sporter. There are no markings on the unique base but it is extremely well made & machined.
It is presently mounted on a No. 1 Pattern BSA sporter that I had rebored to 35/303 or 303/35, for the boys down under.

The peep sight is a Lyman 1a & I’ve disassembled it to show how it attaches to the striker. Pardon the non-professional pics but I think they are good enough to get the general idea.

For starters, I disassembled the Lyman sight using the excellent instructions found in the Lyman tang sight disassembly instructions found here:

Lyman sight disassembly instructions

I used the excellent bolt disassembly instructions found in:

Bolt disassembly

The idea of how to make a striker removal tool from a deep socket came from:

Enfield firing pin removal tool

Upon disassembling the Lyman sight, I made several interesting observations.
The first was that the base was screwed on to the cocking piece by the striker keeper screw.

In order to keep the top of the base from moving side to side, the rear of the striker past the threads was milled to a nub that protruded out from the cocking piece and fit into a corresponding round hole cut into the top of the base. As such, the base is securely attached to the cocking piece & striker and does not move.

I compared the striker that came with the peep sight to another Lee Speed sporter striker I had on hand & you can see there are very distinct differences.

The peep sight striker of course has the rear nub milled at the back of the striker.

In addition, forward of the slots for the disassembly tool, there is no channel cut into the striker for the disassembly tool like there is on the non-sight striker.

The slots themselves are much smaller than the slots in the non-sight striker. I notice that the peep sight striker is shorter than the non-sight striker which perhaps would take into account the nub portion made out of the threaded portion?

To duplicate this sight arrangement would possibly require a custom made striker as I do not know if there is enough thread left on the rear of the striker to mill to a nub. The base is a custom built base but by whom I do not know. It is very well made and quite clever in its simplicity.

Following is the peep sight bolt next to a standard bolt.

My handy dandy striker disassembly tool is none other than a 1/4 drive 6mm deep socket made by Kobalt sold my Lowe’s. I ground the slots primarily with my Dremel tool & finished with some patient filing. It worked great. I did have the advantage of having another striker to take with me to Lowe’s to find a deep socket that would work.

If you have any questions or comments, I’d be happy to answer and hear them. My email is included below.

Cheers & happy hunting,

Joe
in Houston
miatajoe@yahoo.com
Always looking for BSA Lee Speed sporters

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"A man and a gun and a star and a beast are still ponderables in a world of imponderables." Ruark

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