Ruger Mark IV, rear sight removal, DON'T!

P

Prof Young

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I got a hankering to put a scope on the Ruger Mark IV. This arose from having everything I needed save the picatinny rail which can be had from Ruger for about $10. Rail arrived with only three screws but four screw holes. Before I called Ruger to complain I thought I'd see if it actually need four screws, and tried to take the rear sight off. HUGE MISTAKE. The thing is dovetailed in there TIGHTLY. I put a double layer of thick duct tape on the right side and used a brass punch. Couldn't get thing to budge and managed to scar the surface of the gun anyway. (DANG!) Looked for help on line and that's when I realized it only needs three screws and you DON'T HAVE TO TAKE THE REAR SIGHT OFF. Geez-ma-kneez!

Got it all mounted. (pic below) Took it to the range and was getting three inch groups resting my hand on the gun bag.

Life is good.
Prof Young

p.s. Was shooting about ten yards.
 

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Out of curiosity, which direction were you trying to drift it out?
Dovetails are deliberately out of parallel. Sights are meant to be installed from right to left and removed from left to right. i.e. you should have been striking from the left side.
 
1911_Hardball said:
Out of curiosity, which direction were you trying to drift it out?
Dovetails are deliberately out of parallel. Sights are meant to be installed from right to left and removed from left to right. i.e. you should have been striking from the left side.
Click to expand...
How do you adjust windage then?

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
Wow. Good to know.

Yep. I was trying to drift it right to left. No wonder it wouldn't budge.
I don't think I'll be doing three inch groups at 100 yards. Gun might be that good, but I'm not . . . at least not yet.

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
"...adjust windage..." The rear sights are adjustable.
Generally, Ruger .22's aren't designed to have anything removed or added by the owner. They're well known nightmares to work on.
"...I'm not..." I think you'll find that great big scope to be awkward and heavy at the very least.
 
I just changed out the factory black notched sights for a set of adjustable fiber optics on my M4. I didn't realize the whole left to right, right to left thing, maybe I just got lucky, but I got it done. Only thing I marred up was the old sight. Used a gunsmith block to hold things semi steady.
 
The Ruger is an adjustable sight. No need to drift it to adjust.

I put a RDS on my MKIII. It is a pest sniping machine.......
 
Nope, it's a pistol long eye relief.

Railroader: Looking at the pic I can see why you'd ask. It's an adjustable long eye relief scope. Goes from 4-6 magnification if I'm remembering correctly.

Life is good
Prof Young
 
Looking at you picture with the damage on the ejection port side tells me you were driving the sight the wrong direction. Thats the side that sights are commonly driven in. To remove go to the other side of the gun. And use a sight pusher tool.

And what were you using to beat on the sight with? I have a 3/8ths brass rod I use.
 
ThomasT yeah . . . .

ThomasT:
Yeah the guys above helped me figure that out. I too was using a brass rod. It occurs to me that I've always assumed it was brass from the color. Maybe it's not.

Any suggestions on how to repair the damage?

Life is good
Prof Young
 
If it's carbon steel, not stainless, you could file and sand off the punch mark and reblue with Super Blue. Use sandpaper rolled on a thin dowel or small files.

By the way, after the Op posted this thread, I had to remove the fronts of a Kahr K40 slide and a Kahr p45 slide. The Kahr k40 front sight came off without a hitch drifting from left to right. The sight base is beveled so I used a covered punch at the base of the blade and it came off smoothly.
But the P45 front sight was an entirely different miserable story.

The sight is MIM so the blade broke right off. Now I was stuck with a bevel sided base tight in the dovetails. I started with an aluminum rod. No go, it was too soft. Then I tried a brass punch. The punch took the brunt of the force and dinged. Then I tried mild steel rod. No, the steel rod dinged. Then a hardened steel punch and all it did was ding the base even more. So now I had a stuck, broken dinged up bevel sided base that would not budge.

I read about a gun that used his milling machine to take down the base to almost zero and punched it out. He suggested using a small square file to do the same if you didn't have a milling machine.

So for three hours I used a chainsaw file to cut a round notch into the base being careful not to go near the slide dovetail sides. Finally got it down to pretty thin, used a screwdriver are the punch and got the sight base to slide out. The moral of the story is that you have to believe that you will get it out!
 
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You did good on finding a fix. While reading what you did I was thinking that using a hacksaw and cutting a slot would also work once the sight was cut all the way through. The cut would relieve the pressure. I don't know why some sights are installed so tightly.:confused:
 
I did consider using a hack saw which would have worked, but felt it was too risky because the sight base smaller than the slide dovetail, and one could easily slip and saw a groove on either side of the sight base. Keeping the saw perfectly level for that many cuts would have taken courage. The file was the slow but steady way!LOL
 
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