Trouble sighting in my SBH Ruger

I will try to explain this as best as I can, the Super Blackhawk I am referring to is second from left:



I tried to sight in this gun shortly after I got it back from Doug Turnbull. It printed high at twenty-five yards with my load of a 240 gr. cast bullet loaded to about 1150 fps and the rear sight bottomed out. I set the rear sight at about mid-height and determined how tall the front sight needed to be. I had my gunsmith, Keith Warner, cut off the front blade, mill out a slot, and install a pinned in blade.

I often use a load of 240 gr. RNFP loaded to around 900 fps, a 240 gr. JHP at 1400 fps, and a 180 gr. JHP at 1715 fps, and all are capable of being dialed in with my rear sight adjustments.

As I said, works for me.

Bob Wright
 
Bob if you take a second to stop preaching about what you'd do without trying other options and take a look at the OP's second picture and compare it to the picture of your SBH you'll notice that your sight is quite a bit lower than his (BTW it's no where near the middle of it's travel) and your shorter barreled SBH looks to be very close to bottomed out. So maybe it would be better to fix the OP's rear sight to get proper travel so that if he does need to put a taller front sight he can get the right height to go with a proper functioning rear sight.

Just don't preach to me any more, cause the pictures show clear enough that the OP's sight should have quite a bit more travel;)
 
You could take the rear sight off, and remove the spring and the spacer/spring retainer. That would let you lower the rear sight, but make it a fixed sight gun.
You could try a lighter bullet.
 
Anyway, I can't lower the rear sight any more than it is because the adjusting screw starts to tap into the cylinder. It's just the way the gun is made.
Click to expand...
Need to shorten that screw. I don't know where it came from but it is to long. You should be able to bottom out the rear sight with room to spare (screw should not protrude into cylinder frame). After you have verified it is still shooting way to high bottomed out (with the load you want to shoot), then a taller front sight is indeed in order. As Bob suggests file it down tell you at 'midpoint' of adjustment, so you still have room to play when you change bullets or velocity.
 
The issue is with whoever shortened the barrel not having put on a taller sight when they cut it back...
Click to expand...

It was a new purchase for me. I took it to the range before I did anything to it, and even with the original barrel length, the groups, although tight, were printing about 12 inches high at 25 yards. That's with the full length barrel.

And then after the barrel was shortened, of course it's still printing too high.

It had a different rear sight blade on it than what came from the factory. I don't know what loads the original owner was shooting, but the rear sight blade was definitely part of the equation.

My gunsmith has since 1) shortened the rear sight elevation screw and 2) replaced the rear sight blade with a significantly shorter one. I'll likely be taking it to the range this week.

Wish me luck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top