1911 Milling, BUIS & Compact Red Dot Choices

[Sensei]

Just curious, why no consideration of the Chambers/Charyn plates?

The potential problem with a direct mill makes sense. One of the vaunted advantages of direct milling is the optic being tightly hemmed in front and back by slide material. If it’s that tight, I’m not surprised to hear that optics of the same footprint may not fit.

I’ve considered them. There are a couple of limitations to the chambers system:
1) There is no plate to convert the gun back to standard irons like in the IOS, DPO, and Atlas systems
2) All of the Chambers plates are BUI forward of the optic and their ACRO cut has no BUI option. I generally prefer a BUI behind the optic and recognize that this is a limitation with most of the IOS plates.

I suppose that I should mention WC’s True Zero plate system. It looks to sit a little higher, but is probably a great option for the EDC X9 and other external extractor guns that cannot get the IOS.

[HeavyDuty]

No, my Romeo X Compact won’t fit into the footprint milled for an EPS Carry, but it is so low that the dot height is just about identical with the original sights, which is exactly what I wanted. And it’s so close to fitting that if I really wanted it to I am confident that I could remove the 0.010” necessary either off the slide or the sight or both to make it happen. I mostly only wanted to because the rear sight on the Romeo is better, but once I realized that I’d have to change the front to something impossibly short for it to zero I decided against it. I’ll just remove the front sight.

That’s unfortunate - I was convinced a Romeo-X Compact wouldn't fit my LTT 92C’s EPS plate, but I looked at it under magnification with good light and found it pressed right in. The curved end makes exact positioning essential.

[Elwin]

No, my Romeo X Compact won’t fit into the footprint milled for an EPS Carry, but it is so low that the dot height is just about identical with the original sights, which is exactly what I wanted. And it’s so close to fitting that if I really wanted it to I am confident that I could remove the 0.010” necessary either off the slide or the sight or both to make it happen. I mostly only wanted to because the rear sight on the Romeo is better, but once I realized that I’d have to change the front to something impossibly short for it to zero I decided against it. I’ll just remove the front sight.

I have a similar setup on two guns with a very low direct milled EPS Carry that requires a very short front sight. I just filed on plain black front sights to get them zeroed with the EPS rear "sight." I wouldn't say it's impossibly low, just vestigial, which is fine for backup irons.

[Norther]

I could try that. At least I wouldn’t have an empty dovetail. The sight on it is a narrow fiber optic, but I’d be cutting it off below the fiber so it could work. I think it would be a little shorter than that though. I have a flat topped slide and the bottom of the window is even with the top.