Remington Pattern 14 canted front sight
Hello everyone, I just purchased a numbers matching Remington P14 rifle. It has its original stock with front and rear volley sights and a 1916 dated matching barrel. Everything on the rifle is fine except the front sight (whole front sight assembly) is noticeably canted to the right- I know it’s not the barrel as I checked the witness marks on the bottom of the barrel and receiver and they are lined up. The front sight is drifted pretty far to the left to compensate and has been staked in place, which leads me to believe this is how the rifle case from Remington. My question is was this common? Was the quality control fairly bad- since these were being manufactured for the British? If it shoots ok it won’t matter, but I would like to know. Thanks for any help!
Shoot first, alignment check after
Two (hopefully helpful) comments:
First, as has been pointed out right from the start: don't get agitated until you have given it a fair trial on the range. Short distance (50 or 100), off a sand sack - you want to test the rifle, not yourself.
If the grouping is central on the horizontal axis, stop worrying.
Second. The more I look at photos 3 and especially 4 in your post #15, the more I suspect that you have "bent ears". When and how is, a century later, hard to tell. But I think that this forms a large part of the optically unfavorable impression.
So how does one check this? The method described is not exactly precision engineering, but adequate for the purpose.
Remove the barrelled action from the stock. Forget witness marks - about the only unalterable baseline that has existed since the rifle was made is the flat on the bottom of the receiver, just behind the recoil plate. Take this as your reference. Further back, the flat around the magazine well may have been slightly twisted by barrel removal etc.
Using a very flat table, preferably with a metal top, set up the barrelled action so that it is resting on a parallel sided block. The table does not have to be perfectly level, but if it has a twist in the surface, this will invalidate the check*. Now look at the muzzle end. For the moment, ignore the ears. Is the foresight blade centred above the barrel centre line? Since you cannot get at the barrel centre line directly, one has to try it indirectly. The following assumes that the bore is well enough centred in the barrel for our purposes.
Place a set square on the table* so that the upright arm is touching one side of the barrel, right up close to the sight block. Use vernier calipers to measure the distance between the set-square arm and the side face of the foresight blade. This requires holding the calipers so that the jaw axis is parallel to the barrel axis, otherwise there will be an angular error.
Repeat on the other side. The two measurements ought to be the same, at least as far as the measurement technique will allow. If they are within say 0.010", then I suggest that there is nothing wrong with the foresight/barrel/receiver alignment.
Now measure the distance between the face of the ears and the outside of the barrel. I think that you will find that there is a noticeable difference between the two sides.
If this all turns out as I reckon, then the ears are bent, but the sight alignment is OK. In which case, it will shoot just fine.
Which brings us back to the start: give it a test-shoot first!
*If the table does have a twist, then the set quare at the muzzle end must be placed on a block that has itself been set parallel to the top surface of the block supporting the receiver.
