Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Replacing soldered on front sight on Browning B92

I've got a Browning/Miroku B92 in .44 Magnum with a soldered on one piece front sight. Miroku later moved to a two piece design with a replaceable blade, but mine is an older one that doesn't have that.

The problem is that the factory sights are darn near invisible - useless in the field for my purposes. I replaced the semi-buckhorn rear sight with a Skinner barrel mounted aperture sight, and that took the situation from miserable to merely unacceptable. This setup zeroes OK, but the front sight blade is way too small to focus on. I shot some nice tidy 16 MOA groups with it off a rest at 25y When I moved the target in to 15 yards, I shot about 4 MOA (which might be the mechanical capability of the rifle?). The fact that the groups shrink so incredibly moving the target in says I'm definitely experiencing a front sight focus (or lack thereof) issue.

On my 1886 I use the same Skinner rear and a Skinner dovetail front sight spray painted orange on the face. That setup works great - I've shot fairly consistent MOAish groups at 100y with it. It's also fast enough combined with the barrel aperture sight that I'd trust it for a dangerous game sight. The Skinner front sight is wider and has a sloped, serrated face that hold paint pretty well.

So the question is, how to I get a sight more like that on my B92? I can see several possibilities -

1) Remove the current sight/base, and solder on a new base that would hold a Skinner front sight, possibly cut down to get the right height with the base. I'm not sure which of the available bases would be good - Marbles maybe?

2) Install a one-piece sight (what one?)

3) Mill off the blade of the current sight, and replace it with a slot in the base. Then fabricate a custom blade and solder or pin it into the base.

Of these approaches, I'd like feedback on which would make sense and why. I'm not sure what's involved in removing the existing sight, for starters. I'm going to be hiring a gunsmith to do the work, but I'd like to have a clear idea of what I want done first.

I don't have a Browning B92 to look at so I'm not sure it's applicable to your problem. But I did do something similar with a silver soldered front sight. We milled off the blade and top of the ramp. Then cut a dovetail slot to accept a dovetailed blade of the correct height with a gold bead. I needed the dovetail to help correct windage for a rear aperture that wasn't as straight as it needed to be. Worked very well and looked original.

Goodluck on your project.

OK, that's another option - instead of milling a slot into the front sight block, I might be able to mill a dovetail. I'll have to look to see if there's enough material.

Your 44 mag barrel should be pretty thin, how about making a thicker front sight with a slot underneath it to fit over the existing front sight and then drilling a hole in the new sight and old sight and pinning it in? Good luck with it, Mel

One thing I'd like some info on is how hard it is to remove the current soldered on base without damaging the barrel.

As melchung notes, the barrel is relatively thin at the muzzle. I don't believe it can be machined for a dovetail safely (hence the lame factory setup) and whatever I do will have to be attached to the top either via the existing base or a new one.

I found a good picture of the B92 front site and it does look like a piece of crap. I think I would check out Brownells for a low ramp front sight. Silver soldering is not very difficult to do with a little care. I've done it, but I am not an expert at making it look pretty.

I took option number 3. It worked out great for me. I needed the extra height for a receiver sight. My eyes have always liked a peep sight better than a buckhorn.

Thanks for that picture, Mathsr. It confirms that what I want to do is reasonable. Did you increase the blade width while you were at it?

That is beautiful job im going to try very similar using brass.Im going to put on a chaippa ladder rear same as Uberti and Taylor 60.00,Im going to use top half of a skinner brass front