Mounts for Red Dots on Older Pistols!

[ssgross]

Something similar to this one.

I was just shopping for new tritium front sights a few weeks ago for some 1911's and saw the style in your picture picture. Don't know what pistol you're thinking of, but he installation isn't really any different than fitting any other dovetail sight. Measure the dovetail very carefully carefully though. They aren't all the same. Here, for example, are some front front sight info for 1911's https://media.midwayusa.com/productd...dimensions.pdf

The key thing I found out is that the measurements you'll find everwhere are all nominal, and don't take into account cutter wear, slop when cutting, etc. For example, one of the pistols I was fitting up a front sight for was from Fusion firearms. They advertise "Novak Standard" dovetails. However, my front sight dovetail measures 0.312 at the base, and the Novak front sights are .330 nominal but have an actual measure of up to 0.340--0.345. I even called Fusion and talked to Tyler who was in charge of the production for the day to make sure I wasn't supposed to order the Wilson combat (0.300 and 60deg) ones.

The point being that these front or rear dovetail sights are not supposed to be "drop in". As such, make sure you have the correct angled file on hand! Brownell's sells a 65deg. file with safe edges. Do not touch the dovetail on the slide, other than to maybe break the edge at the opening so you can drift without peeling off the corner. I practiced with a triangle needle file and stone on a cheap solid sight I bought along with the expensive tritium one for just this purpose thinking it shouldn't be that hard. But with almost 30 thous. to remove...needless to say I bought the correct file before touching the tritium sight. It was almost laughably easy with the correct tool (and the usual dose of patience).

To double check the correct angle, measure your dovetail...arctan(2*depth/(bottom - top))...times 180/pi depending on what kind of calculator you have. Get the bottom width more accurately by measuring the base of the old sight.

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