Pedersoli sight adjustments.

[ian45662]

Friend and potential skirmish recruit picked up a pedersoli 1853 enfield. While it does shoot good it is high and right. Are these front sights soldered on? Can I heat it up and tap it to the left so he can just take a 6 o'clock hold?

[Eggman]

I think ya'all should think more radical. The front sight needs to be moved laterally (with heat of course) and a new higher blade installed -- possibly using a cut up nickel, or old key. You need to use silver solder. Use plumbers paste flux. Liquid flux just runs off. Buy a sight protector so you don't have to keep building new ones.

[Maillemaker]

I also have a Pedersoli P53. It also shoots high at 50 yards with stock sights. I am not changing mine as I hope to possibly use it in the Traditional matches should they ever catch on down here.

I've been reading Henry Heth's Target Practice book and those fellows started out at 100 yards and moved out as their range space permitted. Of course their target sizes were like 2 feet x 6 feet at 100 yards, and got wider the further you went. So that probably explains why the Pedersoli shoots high at 50 yards.

Here is a picture of the Pedersoli P53 front sight, posted by Medic here a while back:

http://i.imgur.com/bxl7l.jpg

I assume this is soldered to the barrel, but it is not dovetailed, so if you heat it up until the solder melts it is going to want to shift or even fall off unless you are very good and gently pushing it from it's original position to the new desired position.

What I did with my Pedersoli P58 was leave the base portion of the site and file off the thing blade portion. Then I cut a groove and soldered in a new, taller blade, and I filed it in height and on one side or the other as needed to adjust the point of aim. I used silver solder with flux, but was very judicial with the flux and the solder as I did not want to harm the bluing of the barrel.

Steve

[John Holland]

Just a refresher on moving the front sight....it has to be moved in the OPPOSITE direction you want the bullet to go. If you want to move the point of impact to the left, move the front sight to the right!

[ian45662]

I don't know why I said that I meant to say bring the poi to the left. If it falls off I don't care as I can re solder it to a position RIGHT of where it is now of course. As for shooting high it's not terribly high. 2 or 3" which he really likes.

[Curt]

Hallo!

I am not a welder, o I apologize if my terminology is wrong...

Yes, the front sights one piece and brazed on.

IMHO.

Leave the front sight base alone. I have several "pop off' in the cold at the most "inconvenient" of times. ;) :)

File off the blade, cut a notch, and solder on a higher new blade.. and file it down as you sight it in raising the new POI.

"Windage" of left or right, I prefer to change by make the change in or on the rear sight (it moves in the direction you want the group/POI to go).

There are a number fo ways to accomplish that. One, is to carefully file down the side of the rear sight ladder and shimming it back in place. The other is go with a peep hole aperture in the slide. Another is to replace the slide with one that has its "V" notch off centered.

Curt

[Eggman]

Screwing around with the rear sight gives me the heebie jeebies.

[BlackJack]

Hey Egg, How do you install a sight protector and still use your front sight. The brass loop with a screw completely blocks the top edge of my sight when installed to protect the sight.


I think ya'all should think more radical. The front sight needs to be moved laterally (with heat of course) and a new higher blade installed -- possibly using a cut up nickel, or old key. You need to use silver solder. Use plumbers paste flux. Liquid flux just runs off. Buy a sight protector so you don't have to keep building new ones.

[Eggman]

Hey Egg, How do you install a sight protector and still use your front sight. The brass loop with a screw completely blocks the top edge of my sight when installed to protect the sight.

No you misunderstand -- the sight protector is for when you're NOT shooting the gun. The sight protector is like those rubber things you put on your ice skates when you're not actually skating. You can skate with those rubber things on, but your figure eights will look more like hashtags.
Most front sights get knocked off two ways: the shooter accidentally buys old style beer bottles and (late in the evening, well after the range is closed!) when sitting down for a cold one and finding out he doesn't have a church key, uses the musket gun muzzle to pop off the non screw-top top.
Most of the remaining front sights are knocked off back in the home -- by cats, that while prowling the gun rack in hopes of acquiring some relief from fleas, scabbies, ear mites, butt mites, and other torments by scratching their behinds against the Enfield front sight post during passage through the musket section.

[Curt]

Hallo!

:)

You forgot to mention chopping wood with the new high 50 yard front sight.

Curt
Fixing a bayonet knocked my last one off... the sight not a cat. :)

[BlackJack]

No you misunderstand -- the sight protector is for when you're NOT shooting the gun. The sight protector is like those rubber things you put on your ice skates when you're not actually skating. You can skate with those rubber things on, but your figure eights will look more like hashtags.
Most front sights get knocked off two ways: the shooter accidentally buys old style beer bottles and (late in the evening, well after the range is closed!) when sitting down for a cold one and finding out he doesn't have a church key, uses the musket gun muzzle to pop off the non screw-top top.
Most of the remaining front sights are knocked off back in the home -- by cats, that while prowling the gun rack in hopes of acquiring some relief from fleas, scabbies, ear mites, butt mites, and other torments by scratching their behinds against the Enfield front sight post during passage through the musket section.

Well now I feel like the dumbest guy ever to take up muzzle-loading. Fortunately I only drink Kentucky bourbon and exiled my cat to a local farm a while back, so I guess all this won't apply to me. However I do have 6 and 8 year old grandboys who absolutely ADORE getting their grubby little paws on Opa's guns, so maybe I'll need one after all. Thanks for the kind response to a dumb question.

[Eggman]

Remember Blackjack there are NO dumb questions. Just like there is no limit on how stupid we can make the answers.

[Eggman]

Let me clarify this "dumb question" thing. I've only heard one - from an Army Reserve chaplain in 1971. We were firing howitzers in Dairyland (WIS) and the chaplain asked the Regular Army advisor, Sgt. Trone, "Do these things kill people?" which is not a dumb question. Sgt. Trone answered, "Yes they do." The chaplain then asked,"How many people do they kill?" which is a dumb question. "Sgt. Trone answered, "We're not really sure." The chaplain again asked, "No really, how many people do these things kill?' Sgt. Trone answered, "Well, we generally count the arms and legs and divide by two."
Attached is a photo of me firing an 1861 Colt replica at Fairfax, MN around 1972. Many skirmishers will be surprised at how good looking I was. Clarity is a bit lacking as we were still using the wet plate photo process. I don't recall those days well, but I do recall how totally new and foreign the BP guns were to me back then. And to an old timer every question I asked probably seemed really stupid, but the guys and gals always answered them. And now, if you add on top of that the ways and means and peculiarities of the N-SSA, a whole set on new stupid questions arises.
I try to give good answers whenever I can when I chime in on thsi BB. I do have a tendency to embellishment however. Saying gun sights get knocked off by cats rubbing their butts against them is much more interesting then saying sights get knocked off by gun boxes and beer coolers stuffed next to the guns in the trunk of the car.

[Maillemaker]

Many skirmishers will be surprised at how good looking I was.

Totally. :D:D

Steve

[John Holland]

These posts need a "Like" button! You know, so Eggman knows I "Like" his style! :cool:

[R. McAuley 3014V]

I also have a Pedersoli P53. It also shoots high at 50 yards with stock sights. I am not changing mine as I hope to possibly use it in the Traditional matches should they ever catch on down here.

I've been reading Henry Heth's Target Practice book and those fellows started out at 100 yards and moved out as their range space permitted. Of course their target sizes were like 2 feet x 6 feet at 100 yards, and got wider the further you went. So that probably explains why the Pedersoli shoots high at 50 yards.

I assume this is soldered to the barrel, but it is not dovetailed, so if you heat it up until the solder melts it is going to want to shift or even fall off unless you are very good and gently pushing it from it's original position to the new desired position.

What I did with my Pedersoli P58 was leave the base portion of the site and file off the thing blade portion. Then I cut a groove and soldered in a new, taller blade, and I filed it in height and on one side or the other as needed to adjust the point of aim. I used silver solder with flux, but was very judicial with the flux and the solder as I did not want to harm the bluing of the barrel.

Steve
This matter of modifying front sights comes up again and again, and just as soon as someone offers up one solution, the discussion dies off and the thread gets archived to the backside of Saturn. If Pedersoli followed the convention like Parker-Hale and Euroarms, the front sight and rear sight (even the sword bar on the rifle) are made with a little dimple on the underside of each part that assists in aligning with a pilot hole drilled inthe barrel for locating these parts. So, heating up the sight to melt the solder and tapping itright or left will only succeed in knocking it off.

Some months ago I uploaded a chart for sight corrections based on sight radius (i.e. the distance between front and rear sights), and how much height needed to be added or subtracted to/from the front sight blade move the bullet’s impact up or down at 100 yards.

http://www.n-ssa.org/vbforum/showthread.php/7835-How-to-correct-sights-on-1860-Army?highlight=chart
(http://www.n-ssa.org/vbforum/showthread.php/7835-How-to-correct-sights-on-1860-Army?highlight=chart)
Just for the sake of discussion if the rifle shoots 6-inches high at 50 yards, how much of a mechanical correction is needed to compensate for this error in aim? For the P/53 Enfield, it has a sight radius of about 31.6-inches. Looking at the chart at the link above (Post #9), for 31-inches, we have a value of 0.0085-inches for a 1” change at 100 yards, and 0.0518-inches for a 6” change at 100 yards. A proportional change at 50 yards would represent just half these values.

The value for a 32-inch sight radius is 0.0534, such that the incremental value for 6-tenths of an inch would be approximately 0.00096-inches, which added to the value for a 31-inch sight radius means the front sight blade needs to be raised 0.05276-inches or just a tad over 3/64ths of an inch for a "100-yard" correction. Of course, if you prefer to make these calculations for 50 yards, by taking half the first value of 0.0518 which would be 0.0259, and figure the differential for half the second value of 0.0534 or 0.0267, that being a difference of 0.0008-inches divided by 10 and multiplied by six to determine the value of 6-tenths (or what would be 0.00048-inches), add that value to the 0.0259 gives you a value of 0.02638-inches, being the height needed to raise the front sight at 50 yards. That’s only about just 1/32nd of an inch. If you want to test it, glue a sliver of paper to your front sight at this height, then try a few shots to verify that height corrects the problem. Later, you can raise the front sight blade to that height and make the change permanent if you like.

But the same correction could also be applied to the barrel channel, or any combination of corrections that all equate to achieving that correction. How you compensate could even be obtained (or partly obtained) in your sight picture, by simply changing your point of aim or taking a deeper sight picture (burying the top of the front sight deeper in the rear sight vee) or even deeping the vee on your rear sight ladder. However, I have a simple solution for raising the front right blade that is completely reversible, and made this alteration to my original P/60 Enfield rifle so as to avoid destroying the historical front sight. Using some thin stainless steel sheet metal, I fashioned a tiny wedged shaped “tent” to fit over the front sight blade, then filed down one side of the base portion to make the wedge more triangular (to follow the same slope of the front sight blade), which I next beveled the rear portion to closely match the contours of the rear of the sight blade, such that the sheet metal simply encases and raises the overall profile of the sight blade by the desired correction value. Using superglue, I next tested the new sight blade at the range before soldering it into place. Using this method, it is completely reversible and preserves the original front sight beneath.

So before you start filing off your front sight blade to install a higher blade, say another 1/2-inch or higher or making some similar sight modification, you might first try to determine just how much front sight blade needs to rise to bring it on target. Of course, if you have already jumped ahead and chopped or ground off the front sight blade down to the base, well, you have some work cut off for yourself. No pun intended.

[Maillemaker]

I use this calculator here:

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/lid=13093/GunTechdetail/Sight_Correction_Calculator

Steve

[Jim Barber]

My cat knocked the sight out of my Smith carbine a couple years ago! Laid the gun down on the table after a skirmish, then 30 seconds later the cat jumped up to inspect the arm and didn't quite make the leap. Took the Smith down with him. Took me 2 seasons to get the sights straight, and I still don't think they're quite right. D#mn cats*!

Jim B.
Grove City OH

*of course, I haven't had a mouse problem in the 14 years I've had em, so really I shouldn't complain...

[R. McAuley 3014V]

Illustrated below is a simple solution for raising the front right blade that is completely reversible, and is an alteration made to my original P/60 Enfield rifle so as to avoid destroying the historical front sight. Using some thin stainless steel sheet metal, a tiny wedge-shaped “tent” was fashioned to fit over the front sight blade, then filed down one side of the base portion to make the fold of the wedge follow the same slope of the front sight blade as shown. Next, the rear portion of the wedge was beveled to closely match the contours of the rear of the sight blade, such that the sheet metal simply encases and raises the overall profile of the sight blade by the desired correction value. Using Superglue to secure the wedge to the sight base, I next tested the new sight blade at the range before soldering it into place. Using this method, it is completely reversible and preserves the original front sight beneath.

http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii305/rmac1023/sight_zpsf3ede513.jpg

[R. McAuley 3014V]

Below is a photo of the muzzle end of a unused Parker-Hale barrel showing the pilot hole for aligning the front sight. A similar pilot hole is located on the side of a rifle or carbine barrel for mounting the sword bar, and a pilot hole is located on the barrel beneath the rear sight for a similar purpose. This is not to say that you cannot remove and replace the part, but to shift the part to the right or left, you will need to remove the projection (which extends into the pilot hole) from beneath the part, before you proceed with re-aligning the sight. You may have to prep the two surfaces to receive new solder to achieve a strong bond, upon account if you skimp on the solder, it may break off. Brownells sell 40/40 silver solder in sheets, which is best to be used when installing rear sights like for the Enfield, and allows you to prep (down to bare metal) and coat both surfaces before you bring the two soldered faces together for the final join. This type solder does not use a flux. A flux is used only to prevent the surface from oxidizing and scaling when heating metals such as copper piping or welding iron by hammer and anvil. The surface has to be cleaned before it is joined.

http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii305/rmac1023/PHBarrelpics004_zps91448d18.jpg

[hwaugh]

Richard is right on target in solving this problem. When ever we can save an original firearm from an unnecessary alteration we should. I have done the same process on a number of my British pieces, only I have used brass instead of Stainless Steel and after "playing" with them I have been able to restore them to their original configuration.

Thanks Richard for sharing this tip.

Harry Waugh - 3731 - Terry's Texas Rangers

[jonk]

As to using math to make sight adjustments... no. Well, maybe to get in the ballpark.

Why?

Because while on paper it's a solution that will work, in the real world, it isn't that simple. Problems with that approach:

1. You're talking about moving the rear sight hole/notch a few thousandths of an inch to maybe a few hundredths of an inch if you are really off.
2. Consequently, your adjustment is only as good as your data.
3. If you are gaining your data by using a Stanley tape measure gradated in 64ths of an inch to determine sight radius, with some flex in the middle, that could throw your calculations off quite significantly. For this method to work you need to know sight radius down to the thousandth of an inch.
4. Distance to target is... what? 50 yards? You sure it is really 150.0000 feet? Not 151.234 feet? Because again, when you're talking about moving a notch a thousandth of an inch or two, or even a hundredth of an inch, a foot or two difference in your range makes a lot of difference.
5. The formula doesn't take much into consideration regarding ballistic coefficient, bullet drop, etc. For short range, this may not matter, and to a certain extent the correction is built in by seeing how far a given bullet is off target; but I have to figure that those figures as well as twist rate and initial MV, as well as humidity, wind, etc. all also play a role.

The math IS good if you have a gun shooting drastically off. Like, a foot or more off. In that case I replace the front sight and adjust to allow it to be high, i.e. the gun will shoot low. From there I can file to my content.

I wouldn't trust the math to make the final adjustment and just go out and try it. If you did and it worked, well, you had good luck, that's all.

Now IF you have some sort of precision laser distance measuring tool, that can give these figures to a high degree of certainty, that's another story.

All I'm saying is, I wouldn't say in absolutes, 'use this formula' and be done with it. Better put, 'use this formula to get in the ballpark but leave yourself some wiggle room, or you might have to start from scratch."

[Maillemaker]

All I'm saying is, I wouldn't say in absolutes, 'use this formula' and be done with it. Better put, 'use this formula to get in the ballpark but leave yourself some wiggle room, or you might have to start from scratch."

That's what I do. If the formula says change the sight .02" then I will start with .01" and see what happens. I always adjust sights to actual firing, not just what the formula says. You an always take more metal off - it's harder to put it back on.

That said, errors in sight radius and distance to target don't matter that much. You can change your sight radius by a full inch and it only results in a bout .002" in change. If your range is off by 5 feet at 50 yards it only results in a change of about .001". Measurement of the error on target is the most critical measurement.

Steve

[R. McAuley 3014V]

The "maths" as you call it is simply a ratio between two triangles: one being the ratio of the distance to the target to the POI, the other being the ratio between the sight radius to the unknown value of how much higher(or lower) the rear sight must be moved to close the difference. To calculate this long hand, 32-inches is a ratio to 3600-inches as the unknown value"x" is to 6-inches ==> 32/3600 =x/6 or x= 6 (32)/3600 = 0.0534-inches. Ballistics is negated provided that the 6-inches you determine was the amount you needed to move the POI is reliable. If the 6-inches is not reliable, then no manner of mathematical equation can help you.

[bobanderson]

I use the formula for sight correction often and haven't had a problem with it. The first step though is to make sure you have a load that groups well. Find the center of the group and calculate your sight corrections from there. Remember also that a rifle shoots higher off a rest than it will offhand.