Sight black

M

Mike38

New member
I came up with something today, and thought I'd share it. Either it's a great idea, or the dumbest thing ever, not sure which yet. Even though I'm 57 years old, and have less than prefect eye sight, I still use iron sights for pistol shooting. Bullseye (Precision Pistol) and Combat Pistol, I still use irons. But any glare what so ever on that front sight, plays havoc on me. So while in Walmart today I bought a pack of dry erase markers for the white board in my work van. Looked at the black one, and thought, why not try it for sight black? I do believe it will work. It goes on the sight a real glossy black, and at first I thought nope, this is bad. But in 20-30 seconds, it dried to a flat black, and appears like it will work great as a sight black. Anyone else do this? Think it will work? Or am I crazy?
 
Birchwood Casey used to make a sight black in a aerosol can. It was a black paint like marerial that could be wiped off. Then there was a sight black "cigarette lighter" tool that used carbide to black sights. You drop a piece of carbide along with water, which would generate acetylene gas which you would light. The acetylene would burn with a smokey flame, allowing you to black your sights. Blacking sights isn't something new.
 
I've seen guys use the burning sight black, but something as easy as a dry erase pen is interesting. I tried a regular 'Sharpie' pen, but it leaves a glossy finish which I didn't care for. I'll give the dry erase thing a try and see how things go.
 
Never tried the dry erase marker but it would make it simple. Years ago I used candle smoke to put soot on the sight. Now I use the commercial sprays. I will have to try the marker.
 
I've used the Birchwood Casey sight black in an aerosol can, magic marker, and flat black paint. They all worked- and helped.
 
I use a Sharpie marker on the sights of my stainless guns. Also have flat black model paint. For the paint, the trick is to make sure the sight is free of any oil or grease before painting.

Not permanent, of course, but easy to touch up...
 
Why do those of you using a flat black ( however you get it) prefer it to a flouresent on sights?

Wally World sells paint pen markers with several different ( green, orange, red) colors and some white flat. I like a brighter color on the front sight, to distinguish the front in the rear sight, on darker targets. They do work better over a white undercoat.

Just glare hasn't bothered me yet. But the flat flouresents would handle that. I have also tried cutting very small pieces of adhesive backed flouresent paper for use on the back of the front sight, but that's very fussy.
 
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Birchwood Casey still makes the Instant Touch-Up Pen in Flat Black. Not saying it is any better than magic markers and other remedies, but it does stay on for a long time.
 
I personally am used to the 3 dot setup. When I first bought my CZ-85b, it came with some VERY worn out looking white dots from the factory. I don't have the $$ for new sights at the moment, so I took some of my wife's hot pink nail polish and added it to the dots. It helps me pick the sights up a lot quicker.
 
I just pull out my ordinary book of matches... and 10 seconds later... voila!
blackbody sight sucking every photon in & not letting a single visible one out.
:cool:
 
Why do we prefer black sights? Contrast. I competed in action shooting heavily for five or six years, and I started with:

1970's- Red Ramp front/white outline rear: Kind of busy sight picture. On bright days that front sight stood OUT but in dark conditions red becomes grey. The additional white line around the rear notch didn't seem do do much, IMHO.

1980's Then three dots became the rage. I had a Springfield defender 5" with Wilson 3-dots. Only- the tree dots picture was still "busy' and the dots weren't even correctly centered. My mentor suggested blacking out the dots and trying again. Hey- that really worked! I shot that Defender for a couple of season and won a couple of matches against the master Class shooters who had full-on race guns.

1990's Then I went to all-black full-size sights with a decent sized rear notch...wow- that's a bold sight picture. I was running Wichitas on my race gun, and I made a custom set of Millet's for my Security Six that had a sight picture that was 99% as good as a Bomar- I disc sanded off all the lines, bars, etc and re-serrated it at 50 lpi, and made a post front sight.

So- experiment yourself. Try it, and compete so you can measure any improvement.
 
Just for info, in the distant past (1970's and earlier) an important part of every shooter's "kit" was a miner's "carbide" lamp. These produced acetylene gas (C2H2) by mixing calcium carbide (CaC2) with water. The resulting flame is normally clear and very bright but the lamp can be adjusted to create a lot of smoke, which was how it was used to blacken sights.

There is a good Wikipedia article under "carbide lamp."

Jim
 
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