Charlie Askins/Changing POA/POI on a revolver in the old days question

[backtrail540]

I PM'd another forum member this:

"I am reading "Unrepentant Sinner" by Charlie Askins and I'm at the part where he is the firearms instructor for the border patrol. He just ordered new colts and when sighting them in he bends the front sight for windage, which i understand. Where i am lost is when he talks about elevation. If low he files the front sight. That's a given. But if it shoots high he "filled the rear notch".

I'm having trouble understanding what is meant by this. If they aligned the top edges of the sights, filling the notch would just provide a more shallow sight picture, no? Or does he somehow raise the sides of the notch? Or am i just missing something altogether?"

They suggested I post it here in the revolver forum to see if any forum members had any better insight.

I assume they used the same equal height/equal light sight picture using the top edge that we do today. If that is the case then material added to build up the height of the rear sight would be the only way to get the wanted correction, right? Or is there a trick that I am missing out on that they used in the old days?

[1slow]

Filing the top of the rear notch would raise the rear of the pistol thus making the point of impact lower.

[backtrail540]

I hadn't even considered a spelling error as the culprit. Hmm..I was assuming an old trick that I was unaware of.

[Wayne Dobbs]

Those old Colt service revolvers had very deep rear sight notches (furrows??) and you could get away with filing on them. Not so applicable today.

[backtrail540]

I guess the language just threw me off a bit

" I made a tool to bend the front sight either right or left to bring the gun to zero, I filed down the front sight if the gun shot low and filled the rear notch if it shot high."

For some reason i just did not compute a well placed spelling error but it makes sense to get the proper correction unlike what i was thinking.

[BillSWPA]

Bending the front sight was sometimes done in the past, but is not the best way to adjust windage. The better way is to turn the barrel slightly.


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