Winchester 52B -- Iron Sights Recommendations?

abruzzi

New member
I bought the new version of the Winchester 52B this past week and have decided to put iron sights on it -- aperture sights at the receiver (which has a left side drill and tap ready for it) and a hooded front site (which will require milling or a band).

I have no experience shooting with iron sights and have run into a LOT of options with very wide price and quality ranges. At one end are Williams sights available from Brownell's for under $70. At the other end of the spectrum are Redfield Palma and PNW aperture sights for nearly $300. Lyman apertures are somewhere in between.

I frankly don't mind spending the money for the $300 sights if the gun can shoot up to them -- I'd spend that on a Leupold with bases and rings anyway.

Does anybody have any recommendations here. Thanks for any thoughts.
 
I would suggest visiting the sight manufacturers web sites to better understand the capabilities and purposes of their various models. Your intended use of the rifle (long range vs. short range, hunting vs. benchrest, etc.) will drive the decision. I'll pass along what so many experienced shooters have told me, and that is, don't scimp on the sights (iron or otherwise). Good luck.
 
I would carefully measure the distance between the centerline of the screwholes and look for a compatible older Lyman designed for the original Model 52. They will be steel and precision made and will not develop slop like some aluminum sights.

It is unfortunate that the newer peeps all have aluminum parts or bases.

You may wish to check with Ashley Outdoors. They may be able to make one that uses the rear scope base holes.

[This message has been edited by 700PSS Shooter (edited September 24, 2000).]
 
One of the nice things about Williams and Lyman and, I think, old Redfield reciever sights is that they all use the same screw size and spacing. Your 52b is undoubtedly tapped for this standard screw arrangement. Therefore, you can get any of these that happen to be available or within your pocket book limits, use it and upgrade later if your want to do so.
As far as the shooting goes, they all boil down to a little hole that you look through and they all shoot the same, no matter what the cost.
The target types extend futher back towards your eye, which is a little more accurate, especially when fitted with a very small aperture disk. However, the further back they extend and the smaller the aperture, the harder they become to use on anthing besides fixed targets. Probably more delicate too. You don't want these unless you intend to shoot targets competitively, in which case, the 52b sporter was not the right rifle to buy (should have got an Anschutz Target model, no doubt).
Despite the fact that they all shoot the same, there is an enormous varatiation in the quality of the sight. The cheapest adjust with just dinky little screws to hold them. Its a pain to have to always carry around a little set of screw drivers to adjust your sight in the field. Adjustments are not so fine and positive either.
Then you have ones with click adjuxtments, but the cheaper ones do not lock and unlock with as great an ease and they do not have engraved little arrows to tell you what way is up or down or left or right so that you just have to guess in the field or work out a little mechanical engineering analysis to to figure out which way to turn the thing.
The original Winchester 52 sporters came with the Lyman 48F. This was undoubttedly the finest "all around" reciever sight ever made for this rifle. It had every feature one could want in a receiver sight. All the of the parts were serial numbered because they were hand fitted and "went together" perfectly. It is long out of production, of course, and if made today to the same standard would be outraguosly expensive. If you want the very best, try to find one of these. In the meantime, however, you can use any of the modern ones that take your fancy, and try another if that does not satisfy you. When you find the Lyman 48F, it should fit in the holes in your rifle, no problem.
The only potential problem, however, is that these sights often require a little cut in the stock to fit. If the cut gets too big for the sight you finally settle upon, you would have to fit a small wood patch if you wanted a neat appearance.
As far as the front sight goes, I have come to appreciate a rather thin front blade on a rifle like this. The blade can be intentionally installed high and filed down after you figure out by shooting how high it should actually be. Gunsmiths can really mess up installing aperture sights. There is really very little room for error in the installation of these sights. Too high or too low and the receiver sight will not be adjustable to the middle part of its range for normal shooting distances. It may not zero properly, even worse, it may not even go up or down far enough to zero the rifle or as you want. Don't underestimate this problem, I have learned all of this in the School of Hard Knocks. Sights with beads, complicated inserts, etc. are sure to be botched by the average gunsmith. So keep it simple and fixable in the worst case senario.
If you get a front ramp, be sure to get it checkered, grooved or stippled to cut glare right from the beginning. The banded ramps, which I like, cannot be removed and reblued without marring the barrel if you decide you would like this feature later.
Banded ramps just seem more substantial to me as compared with screw in ramps. Maybe this is wrong. I cannot imagine milling a barrel to fit on a front sight, as this might somehow induce a stress that would affect accuracy, or so I would imagine.
Oh, and don't worry too much about the size of the aperture on the disk that may be available on the sight you wind up with. For general shooting, a large size aperture is desirable, as it gives a wider field of view. If you find that your aperture is too small, you can just drill it out to a larger size later, no trouble.
 
Herodotus-what an excellent reply. I too am toying with the idea of installing an aperture iron sight setup on my "new model" 52. I feel much more prepared to do this after reading your post. Thank you.
-Paul
 
First, thanks for the good suggestions. Now a report.
http://www.lymanproducts.com/product4.html

Lyman makes a current production sight -- the 57 WTR -- which it says fits the Winchester 52B. They also make a front sight -- the 17 AHB -- which they say is appropriate for the 52B.

Lyman also gave me the names of several antique sight dealers whom I called. They are as follows:

Gary Fellers 817-346-9633
Howard Eaton 606-346-9300
Nick Stroedel 505-847-0047
Ken ? 717-755-9070

I have decided to buy a 48FH for $115 from Fellers. According to him the FH differs from the F in having a very slightly higher base position, to accomodate looking over a ramp sight apparently. This model happens to be in near mint condition.

I spoke with folks at Champion Shooters Supply -- web site http://www.championshooters.com/ and at T2 http://www.abts.net/~mackiet2/T2PG6.HTM and
O K Weber web site http://www.okweber.com/

It appears that the currently manufactured Japanese version of the 52B does not have anything to mount a front site on. It seems the old 52B's were drilled and tapped. The suggestion was to go ahead and drill and tap the barrel for a front site -- Champion Shooters said they do it every day.

The question then would be what to put in it. Lyman is one option, and it's reasonably cheap. The only advantage to putting an Anschutz front site in it (I know this may be some overkill ordinarily) is that you could spend even more money to put a magnification optic in it from Centra sold at http://www.centershot.com/

The fact that I am 52 myself makes that germane. My biggest concern about a blade sight is the width, and it needs to have some sort of mounting system too. The cross hairs I have seen on some globe sights are VERY VERY thin.

Anyway, I am going with the Lyman 48FH and will probably drill and tap the barrel for some form of globe sight. Again, thanks for your suggestions, all of which were helpful.



[This message has been edited by abruzzi (edited September 27, 2000).]
 
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