Nomercy448

I'm revamping (nearly rebuilding) a .38spcl snubby revolver for my mother-in-law. Well on my way, nearly complete, all I have left for it is painting the sights and strapping on laser grips.

Looking for opinions on color combinations for the sight color combination.

I'm not in love with my current plan, but for now I'm considering:

1) Black out the rear sight groove and the 'trough' of the rear sight mill to eliminate glare. Black out front sight.

2) Blaze Orange or Fire Engine Red tip on the front sight (only the portion visible in the sight picture).

3) White the back face of the rear sight. The portion of the mill inlet that shows up as the sight picture.

So the sight picture would be a white rear sight with an orange square block for the front sight.

The sights right now are HORRID. The entirety of both sights are a dull grey, matte stainless color, but somehow it seems to catch glare and/or wash out against any background, and especially against eachother (front and rear sights). Any contrasting colours will be an improvement, but I'm worried that the white rear sight will wash out also.

Any better ideas than Orange/White?

Big Uncle

My eyes pick up red on the front sight better with a white outline rear. For my eyes the orange front (unless fiber optic) is a problem in bright sunlight.

Sheridan

On my XD 9MM I use small green rear sights and a large white front sight.

All are tritium night sights.

Can't remember brand name now, but I remember they were expensive (for me anyway)

Nomercy448

I would love to go tritium all the way around on this one, but alas, it's a bigger project than I'm capable of right now. The rear sight is fixed, no dovetail, no nothing, just a milled slot, and the front sight is integral to the full length sight base/barrel shroud.

So without spending the $150ish bucks on a proper set of Novak/trijicon dovetailed sights, and spending $150 to get it milled to accept them, I'm stuck with just going with a paint job. Considering it's a Taurus 85 dating to the 60's or 70's best I can confirm and she only spent $150 for it, probably not going in for the tritiums! It's bad enough spending $200 on a Crimson Trace laser grip, doubled the price of the stinkin revolver!

I'll post up a walkthrough of the action work I did once I get to the finished product. Probably look at painting the sights this weekend, and should have the laser grips first thing next week.

JagMagMan

I'd go with option #3. The white rear sight should highlight & bring a faster focus on the front sight, where the focus naturally should be. Good luck!

Nomercy448

JMM, believe I'm going to get the tape out and get cracking on it this evening for the first coat. I'm actually doing all 3 (not so much "3 options" but "3 steps"), blacking out the sights, orange flaming the tip of the front, and white facing the rear sight notch.

Hopefully it turns out, otherwise it's back to the drawing board with new colors!

JagMagMan

Good luck! I really think it will work out good. Blacking out the sight should eliminate any glare issues. The white rear side of the notch should really bring out the bright front sight! Let us know how things work out!

homers brother

What's she planning on using this handgun for? Defense? Target practice?

I don't know that I'd get any more fired up about the sights on a snubbie than I would about the colors of the rib and beads on a shotgun. Some firearms don't "aim" so much as they "point." At ten feet with the perp who just broke down the front door heading toward her, it's a fine time to be lining him up over "sights" on a snubbie. The CT grip will probably be her preference anyway.

Anyway, just one opinion.

Nomercy448

There are lots of theories about defensive shooting, but I'm still a proponent of acquiring sights even under short range, save your life shooting.

A CT grip is in the plan also, pending results from today's live fire test. She just made me aware that the revolver would mis-fire on DA mode occasionally. The timing was also slow by the slightest, and the firing pin protrusion wasn't all it could be. So I reverted an improperly cut mainspring, rebuilt the indexing hand/pawl, polished all bearing surfaces, polished the SA sear engagement, polished the DA "sear", re-sprung the trigger return spring, and honed the hammer to improve pin protrusion. I get to go out and do the test fire and ensure the heavier mainspring did the job this weekend, if all goes well, it'll earn a set of laser grips.

But given the possibility that the electronics would fail, I want her sights to be spot on.

It's also her only handgun, so it's her "range gun" as well. So when she's shooting SA, I want her to be able to practice handgun fundamentals properly without fighting these terrible sights.

This is definitely one of the worse sight sets for washout that I've ever handled.