HoraceHogsnort
New member
Has anybody her installed Hexsites on their gun(s). It has the appearance of a pretty good idea. http://www.goshen-hexsite.com/index2.htm
Hexsites
- Thread starter HoraceHogsnort
- Start date
Heh. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of the concept. Unfortunately Tim doesn't make a version for my gun, so with his personal permission I've been developing my own homebrew clone. Try not to laugh at the infamous "Goshdarn Hacksite":
Weird as hell but it works.
Part of the Hexsite "recipe" is sights that are as black as possible with no glinting. Tim gets there with high-tech polymer coatings over steel cores or bases in his latest variants, and they work great. Lacking high-tech materials I put my whole setup in a full-length tube to shadow it all. That works too, except it drove me into custom homebrew holsters. Real Hexsites fit in standard leather for the gun...mine emphatically don't
. (But hey, it's slick as hell on the draw!)
Pictured is the "Mk4" version (I've been tweaking on this for a while.) The "Mk5" is way better but uses design elements Tim hasn't released yet, so no pics allowed per a promise I made to Tim.
It's still a Hexsite variant, which means you focus on the target instead of the front sight. It's absolutely revolutionary, it changes everything about how you shoot - for the better. Highly recommended and then some. Once you do target focus, safety goes up because you can see what the target is doing - did he pull a cellphone or small gun? You can keep both eyes open easily. Speed goes way up because you don't need to shorten up your focus to the front sight before firing.
Weirdest of all, you'll get this feeling like...hmmm...once you have the gun lined up on any target and behind your eye, the gun will auto-track to whatever you look at without you thinking about it. All you need to worry about is where to look and when to fire. It feels bizarre but natural the first time you do it.
Colored or glowing "stuff" on either the front or rear sights interfere with this "auto-tracking" process in ways I don't fully understand. And yes, I tried that in connection with a hex rear - here's the "Hacksite Mk1.5":
The closer I've gotten to Tim's total recipe, the better the results have been. He invited me up to his shop and let me try out his real sights on airsoft Glocks in his shop.
He wants anybody else to ask permission before doing a "Hacksite". With some modest effort his Glock sight package could actually be homebrew adapted to other guns fairly easily although a New Vaquero would be a stretch 
.
Weird as hell but it works.
Part of the Hexsite "recipe" is sights that are as black as possible with no glinting. Tim gets there with high-tech polymer coatings over steel cores or bases in his latest variants, and they work great. Lacking high-tech materials I put my whole setup in a full-length tube to shadow it all. That works too, except it drove me into custom homebrew holsters. Real Hexsites fit in standard leather for the gun...mine emphatically don't
. (But hey, it's slick as hell on the draw!)Pictured is the "Mk4" version (I've been tweaking on this for a while.) The "Mk5" is way better but uses design elements Tim hasn't released yet, so no pics allowed per a promise I made to Tim.
It's still a Hexsite variant, which means you focus on the target instead of the front sight. It's absolutely revolutionary, it changes everything about how you shoot - for the better. Highly recommended and then some. Once you do target focus, safety goes up because you can see what the target is doing - did he pull a cellphone or small gun? You can keep both eyes open easily. Speed goes way up because you don't need to shorten up your focus to the front sight before firing.
Weirdest of all, you'll get this feeling like...hmmm...once you have the gun lined up on any target and behind your eye, the gun will auto-track to whatever you look at without you thinking about it. All you need to worry about is where to look and when to fire. It feels bizarre but natural the first time you do it.
Colored or glowing "stuff" on either the front or rear sights interfere with this "auto-tracking" process in ways I don't fully understand. And yes, I tried that in connection with a hex rear - here's the "Hacksite Mk1.5":
The closer I've gotten to Tim's total recipe, the better the results have been. He invited me up to his shop and let me try out his real sights on airsoft Glocks in his shop.
He wants anybody else to ask permission before doing a "Hacksite"
. With some modest effort his Glock sight package could actually be homebrew adapted to other guns fairly easily although a New Vaquero would be a stretch .HoraceHogsnort
New member
Is this sight for Glocks only or could I get one for my Series 80 Colt Commander?
HoraceHogsnort
New member
I think I'm going to give this a try. I'll call Tim tomorrow.
Well...the current "drop in" setup is for Glocks, which have a fairly conventional rear mount setup but a somewhat bizarre front mount...it's not a dovetail at all, it's a bolt-in-from-the-bottom affair. I'm talking here about the Glock design that the Hexsite has to match.
Pics make it obvious here:
http://www.goshen-hexsite.com/pistols.htm
The rear Hexsite aperture piece is the more complex bit. The most recent design is made of a high-tech plastic so hard and tough that when I first saw one and knocked it against my front tooth gently, I said to Tim "OK, so that's a metal one" - and I was wrong. That's the current Glock-kit production and what will be the basis for alh the other drop-in Hexsite kits down the road.
It's set up to fit on a separate, detachable stainless steel dovetail unit that the main hex aperture piece bolts down onto. The one shipping now is for Glocks but others are in the works...I think the XD is actually done, it's just a matter of ramping up production.
In addition to the hardware bits, Tim also has to get the front and rear sight heights dialed in for each gun type supported. On a custom basis he can do that in his shop but he's working as hard as he can to get regular production in place on a lot of guns.
Meanwhile, yeah, the Glock parts can be adapted to other guns yourself. One answer would be to take plain steel sights for the gun in question, bought cheap, and basically grind them flat until nothing is left but the dovetail bases. You would then drill holes up through the bottoms and screw the Glock part tops onto what's left of the old sights.
There's already a threaded screwhole up through the bottom of the Glock front sights to use as the connection between that and the modified original front sight milled down. And there's already a precision-centered hole in the hex rear aperture meant to bolt it down onto a dovetail like the one supplied for Glocks.
To get the front and rear sight heights correct, you would measure the current heights of sights that work on your gun now. This is what I did developing the "Hacksite": I took sights that were already dialed in, measured, and when I added the rear hex aperture I knew how much rear sight height I was adding between the top of the old rear sight to the MIDDLE of the new aperture...that was my "added rear height" number. I then added that same number to the original front sight height. I've kept those same measurements in use in the Hacksite Mk2, Mk3, Mk4 and now Mk5 and they've always worked.
Could the same process work with the Hexsite Glock parts kit? Yeah. You'd need a precision mill and drill on the old sights to turn them into bases for the Hexsite parts meant for a Glock, but yeah, it would work and I know Tim wouldn't be at all upset if people started homebrewing that. He's still getting paid for the Glock parts. But he can't provide support for that sort of effort because, well, he's not going to know how good you are with the mill'n'drill process.
(Note that the front sight height will be higher, esp. in a revolver where you can see it. On my Hacksite full-length tube, the fact that the tube isn't parallel to the barrel is obvious - that's what deals with recoil. By the time the bullet clears the muzzle after firing, the barrel rocks backwards to end up at a point that IS parallel to the tube I use! In a semi-auto the same thing is going on, but this "barrel points down a bit factor" is often hidden within the slide where it's not obvious.)
One more thing. 80% or more of the "magic" of this critter is at the rear. If you combine the Glock-kit hex rear aperture with a conventional plain black front sight for your gun (avoid fiber optic, tritium, dots, etc.) you'll have a very good system over. The Hexsite front is still slightly better if you can get it on there, as it's "blacker" when seen from the rear (dimples in shadow), is glint-resistant and has that small aiming notch in the top-center. But you can get started without all that, adapt the front later if you want. Those front sight elements do help; I added the aiming notch halfway through the Mk4 development cycle and it did shrink up groups and increase speed a bit.
Each time I altered my setup closer to Tim's overall recipe, it got better.
Pics make it obvious here:
http://www.goshen-hexsite.com/pistols.htm
The rear Hexsite aperture piece is the more complex bit. The most recent design is made of a high-tech plastic so hard and tough that when I first saw one and knocked it against my front tooth gently, I said to Tim "OK, so that's a metal one" - and I was wrong. That's the current Glock-kit production and what will be the basis for alh the other drop-in Hexsite kits down the road.
It's set up to fit on a separate, detachable stainless steel dovetail unit that the main hex aperture piece bolts down onto. The one shipping now is for Glocks but others are in the works...I think the XD is actually done, it's just a matter of ramping up production.
In addition to the hardware bits, Tim also has to get the front and rear sight heights dialed in for each gun type supported. On a custom basis he can do that in his shop but he's working as hard as he can to get regular production in place on a lot of guns.
Meanwhile, yeah, the Glock parts can be adapted to other guns yourself. One answer would be to take plain steel sights for the gun in question, bought cheap, and basically grind them flat until nothing is left but the dovetail bases. You would then drill holes up through the bottoms and screw the Glock part tops onto what's left of the old sights.
There's already a threaded screwhole up through the bottom of the Glock front sights to use as the connection between that and the modified original front sight milled down. And there's already a precision-centered hole in the hex rear aperture meant to bolt it down onto a dovetail like the one supplied for Glocks.
To get the front and rear sight heights correct, you would measure the current heights of sights that work on your gun now. This is what I did developing the "Hacksite": I took sights that were already dialed in, measured, and when I added the rear hex aperture I knew how much rear sight height I was adding between the top of the old rear sight to the MIDDLE of the new aperture...that was my "added rear height" number. I then added that same number to the original front sight height. I've kept those same measurements in use in the Hacksite Mk2, Mk3, Mk4 and now Mk5 and they've always worked.
Could the same process work with the Hexsite Glock parts kit? Yeah. You'd need a precision mill and drill on the old sights to turn them into bases for the Hexsite parts meant for a Glock, but yeah, it would work and I know Tim wouldn't be at all upset if people started homebrewing that. He's still getting paid for the Glock parts. But he can't provide support for that sort of effort because, well, he's not going to know how good you are with the mill'n'drill process.
(Note that the front sight height will be higher, esp. in a revolver where you can see it. On my Hacksite full-length tube, the fact that the tube isn't parallel to the barrel is obvious - that's what deals with recoil. By the time the bullet clears the muzzle after firing, the barrel rocks backwards to end up at a point that IS parallel to the tube I use! In a semi-auto the same thing is going on, but this "barrel points down a bit factor" is often hidden within the slide where it's not obvious.)
One more thing. 80% or more of the "magic" of this critter is at the rear. If you combine the Glock-kit hex rear aperture with a conventional plain black front sight for your gun (avoid fiber optic, tritium, dots, etc.) you'll have a very good system over. The Hexsite front is still slightly better if you can get it on there, as it's "blacker" when seen from the rear (dimples in shadow), is glint-resistant and has that small aiming notch in the top-center. But you can get started without all that, adapt the front later if you want. Those front sight elements do help; I added the aiming notch halfway through the Mk4 development cycle and it did shrink up groups and increase speed a bit.
Each time I altered my setup closer to Tim's overall recipe, it got better.
Last edited:
I talked to Tim about this thread.
Put simply, grafting the Glock-intended front sight onto a non-Glock may vary from "doable" to "close to impossible" depending on the gun. The XD series front sight mount in particular is very small and would be a royal bear. In all cases we're talking about some very precise machine work and even then, a "two piece" front with the upper blade bolted to a different base might not be as strong.
Combining the Hexsite rear aperture piece from the Glock kit with a conventional front should prove easier in most cases. Might even be possible with some revolvers, esp. if they have adjustable sights - that means they'll have at least one tapped screw in the topstrap already as a mounting point. You might have to go to a taller front blade but if swappable blades exist for your gun, taller (or a shape-it-yourself blank) should be easy enough to get.
Put simply, grafting the Glock-intended front sight onto a non-Glock may vary from "doable" to "close to impossible" depending on the gun. The XD series front sight mount in particular is very small and would be a royal bear. In all cases we're talking about some very precise machine work and even then, a "two piece" front with the upper blade bolted to a different base might not be as strong.
Combining the Hexsite rear aperture piece from the Glock kit with a conventional front should prove easier in most cases. Might even be possible with some revolvers, esp. if they have adjustable sights - that means they'll have at least one tapped screw in the topstrap already as a mounting point. You might have to go to a taller front blade but if swappable blades exist for your gun, taller (or a shape-it-yourself blank) should be easy enough to get.