1911 rear site

J

Joe Portale

New member
Howdy,

Well my 1911 is acting up again. Today at the range I was having a terrible time keeping on target. First, I was hitting left, then hard to the right, did some Kentucky windage and hit the center for a while. I was all over the paper. Deciding that I was having a bad day it seem smart to switch to my Ruger P95 9mm. With the Ruger the shot placement was back on.

I found that the rear site on the Springfield 1911 is loose and sliding back and forth inside the channel. It is loose enough that I could see the rear site sliding around when shots were fired. My first thought was to grab a brass drift and peen down some of the metal on the slide to tighten up the site. Wrong? Right? Is this something better left to a smithy that has the proper tools? I am a bit paranoid about damaging the finish. What do you guys think?

Joe Portale
Tucson, Arizona Territory
 
We were taught to take a staking punch and punch the milled dovetail of the slide where the rear site slides into. Stake it along the length of the dovetail. Two parallel lines and maybe an "X" pattern (sorta like the Cross of Saint Andrew Flag the Brits use to fly). What you're accomplishing is increasing the bearing surface by creating a rough surface. Now, take your rear site and push it in place. It should stick now.

The beauty of this method is that you avoid putting a bunch of staking marks all over your slide. Of course, if you want a little extra security, you stake the site and slide together too.

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Vigilantibus et non dormientibus jura subveniunt
 
Joe, Gary's method is a good one. I do the same thing with a center punch. Just make a bunch of dimples in the bottom of the dovetail. Then I take the two punches to the range with me. Once the rear sight is adjusted with a brass drift to where I want it. I make it permanent by one dimple right in the center of the slide where the top of the dovetail meets the sight. On a lot of 1911s there is a line there and it doesn't take a huge punch mark to hold the sight in place. George
 
Joe: I had some trouble like you described several years ago; the dovetail was a little oversized for the sight. I put some LocTite Stud'n Bearing Mount on that dude, and haven't had any trouble out of it since. The dimple method the above posts talk about will work too, and will be more permanent than the LocTite, but mine's still holding, so it's just another option.
 
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