TargetTalk

I have always favored relatively wide rear sight notches for both airgun and firearm iron sights. I file them wider when widies are not commercially available. I am finding that my groups with my Steyr LP-1P are consistently showing greater E/W (windage) dispersion than N/S (elevation) dispersion. While I may be dealing with a grip issue, my first inclination is to try tightening my E/W spread by using a narrower rear sight notch. I don't want to think about thickening the front post. I have some machining skills, and could make a rear sight plate with a narrower notch, but I would prefer to simply buy what I am looking for if it is available. If anyone has one for sale, I would be interested. Did Steyr make them for this airgun? Is Pilk the place to go with this?

My present rear sight plate has a notch that is 0.625" wide.
Overall width of the plate = 1.600"
Overall height of the plate = 0.231
Thickness of the plate = 0.074 (thinner in the area immediately surrounding the notch)

The position of the rear sight plate is locked in by pressure from a retaining plate that is tightened by two small screws.

-Marty-

Owl;
This may sound stupid so please do not take it the wrong way but I have to ask.

Are you sure you do not have an adjustable rear sight blade on your pistol already ?

My older Match LP has a three piece rear sight blade.
The two small slotted head screws on the rear of the blade can be loosened to adjust lower half of blade up and down with in its slot cut outs.
The left half and right half of the blades can be adjusted toward or apart from each other for notch width by turning the larger slotted screw on the left to adjust left half of the blade and the right larger slotted screw for the right half of the blade.

Maybe you do have a fixed rear sight but had to ask :)

Clarence

This post has the potential to be really informative.

I'll say that I think a rear sight notch 5/8" wide is WAAAYY too wide. I like a wider notch, but think around 3/16" is about right (yours is nearly twice that).

I use wide front sights on my guns (sometimes) and go for the same amount of white in my sub-six hold that I see on either side of the front sight.

5/8" is more than three times 3/16"

5/8" must be a mistake surely?

"My present rear sight plate has a notch that is 0.625" wide."

But you're right, 5/8" is MORE than 3X 3/16".

I mean either 0.625" is a measuring mistake or it is the wierdest sight notch ever.

A decimal point placed in the wrong place makes a bit of difference, it happens.

.625" = 5/8"
.0625" = 1/16"

1/16" notch is just as wierd. who can measure a notch to 4 decimals anyway?

Hopefully Owl will clarify.

TenMetrePeter wrote:1/16" notch is just as wierd. who can measure a notch to 4 decimals anyway?

Hopefully Owl will clarify.

Not that hard if you have the proper instruments.
I do it all day long in the machine shop where I work.

Clarence

C. Perkins wrote:Owl;
Are you sure you do not have an adjustable rear sight blade on your pistol already ? My older Match LP has a three piece rear sight blade.

Maybe you do have a fixed rear sight but had to ask :)

Clarence

The very earliest Steyrs, like my 1990 "CO2 Match" -- later named LP1-P-rototype (verified with Steyr) indeed had a single piece rear sight blade. Can't count the number of replacement blades I made, both in blued steel and black plastic.

I don't know where my ridiculous figure of .625 for the notch width came from. Putting the dial calipers to it again just now gives me the correct figure, a non-nonsensical .188 (roughly 3/16"). And as if making that dumb ass mistake wasn't enough, I never realized that this gun has built in notch width adjustability. I have done a fair amount of fiddling with the windage & elevation screws, but until Clarence called my attention to it, above, I never took any notice of the paired notch adjustment screws.

What a jerk. I vote to kick me off TargetTalk.

-Marty-

No Marty, stay here, we are all here to help.

Clarence

I have narrowed the width on the rear sight notch on my LP1P from .188 to .113. It is too early to have anything definitive to say about the effect on the original problem (good elevation centration of points-of-impact but too much spread re windage centration), but preliminary indication from just a few targets is that the narrower notch helps decrease east/west POI spread. I just may, however, have over-narrowed the notch. I now see just a narrow band of light on either side of the front post silhouette, each light band appearing only about a quarter or a third of the width of the post width. Since my shake causes the image of the front sight to almost disappear with each left/right jog, the strain of trying for a good sight picture seems to dominate my concentration. I am not going to do anything about this just yet, in case I find that I can get used to this very narrow notch. My guess, though, is that I have overdone things and will wind up with a notch width somewhere between the original wide notch and the new very narrow one.

-Marty-

Nah, you're working on the wrong end of the spectrum. Go much wider.

Rover wrote:Nah, you're working on the wrong end of the spectrum. Go much wider.

Totally agree. Disappearing gaps will drive you crazy Marty.