First I would like to mention that if you check out Wikipedia‘s article on iron sights you will find a lot of great information there.

As always I will have links and pictures in the show notes on the website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_sight

Iron sights or open sights are simple any sighting system that does not use magnification. These are found on pistols, rifles and shotguns. This episode we’re coving the spectrum.

Night sights are pretty simple really. The are found on pistols and are glow in the dark circles found on the posts of the rear sights and the front post of the front sight. In the dark you will not be able to see the posts and there for will not be able to line up your sights. By having these glow-in the dark circles you just have to line the circles up three wide and you are good to go. Its really that simple.

I found a company via google fu called Meporlight and they have a huge line of night sights. Not only night sights for pistols but for shotguns and rifles. A quick perusing of the site and it looks as though they have taken regular sights and created a night sight version of them.. for example they make a bennelli ghost ring night sight. Rifle night sights and such.

Peep sights which are also referred to as aperture sights. This type of sight is commonly found on rifles. So what is a peep sight, well think of it like a peep hole in a door. You have a round disk with a small hole in the center of it. The size of the hole can vary and the smaller the hole the more precise your focal point is on the target. Instead of seeing a complete picture of the target you are focusing on your point of impact rather than the target as a whole. It seems that the purpose of these types of sights are to remove your peripheral vision and only leave your sight picture for you to focus on.

Ghost Ring sights are a type of peep sight, the difference is that the opening is much larger. To the point that the disk is no longer a disk but now a ring. And when you focus on the front sight the rear sight which is the ring blurs to the point that it disappears hence the naming ghost ring. Ghost rings are popular for quick target acquisition while maintaining an acceptable level of accuracy. These are common on shotguns.

While on shotguns there is another common sight you will find and that is the beaded sight. This is the most basic sight. It is just as it sounds, a bead. A bead is soldered or tapped to the end of the barrel as a front sight. There is no rear sight for lining up. I have a old bolt action shotgun which has this sight and for shooting trap it does just fine. I have not tried hunting with it so I don’t know how well it would work.

Lets head back to the pistolas… and talk fibre optic sights. First time I heard this term I had no idea what to think. I was thinking fibre optic cable and could not think of how that would work. Until I saw it and it makes total sense. How a fibre optic sight works is you have a standard two post rear sight. The fibre optic part is found in the front sight And it is a piece of round plastic (I am assuming is made of plastic) that is about a centimetre long. It is held into place on the front post at the front and rear of the fibre optic piece leaving the top center of the fibre optic exposed. The purpose of this is so the light is collected through the top of the fibre and “lights up “ the sight. When looking at our sight picture you see your two rear posts and your front sight is a light up circle. Fibre optic sights aid in focusing on the front sight while shooting.

And the last sight I want to talk about is for all you cowboys out there, or fans of the single action revolvers and 1911’s. That is the trench sight. Now I don’t know how common these sights are on 1911’s but their were the only ones that came up when I googled it to get a picture for the show notes. So I decided to take a couple pictures of my revolver for the sight. So what are trench sights… Your rear sight is a groove or trench that is in the back strap of your revolver (the back strap is the piece of the frame that is over top of the cylinder) or the slide of the 1911. When creating your sight picture you take the front post and put it in the center of the trench.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS