I took my .30-30 model 99 out for a coyote patrol this afternoon and when I got home I started to wipe the barrel with an oily rag and realized my front sight blade is gone.
I have no idea how I did it and I don't recall bumping it against anything and I'm careful with my rifles (I thought anyway)
Anyone else ever had this happen?
Man thats gotta suck! was it a dovetail type sight or a Blade with the screw or pinned?
It was the dovetail type. The dovetail base is still there but the blade is gone.
I've got a couple of scoped 99's so I'll take a front sight off of one of them for the time being.
It has an old Marbles rear sight on it and it's the only iron sighted rifle I can see to shoot worth a darn.
That blade is peened in from the bottom and is not easy to dislodge unless someone had fooled with it in the past. I've seen the blades knocked out on scoped rifles
It very well could have been fooled with at some point but it never crossed my feeble mind to check and see if it was tight.
Lesson learned though, i went through and checked the sights on the other rifles and they are good and snug.
Yup. I've lost a dovetail front sight before. It was lost from a Remington 552 .22 that I bought for a birthday present for myself in 1962. Went out for a little walk about with it when I was home on leave in '74 and as I was cleaning it when I returned noticed that the front sight was gone. It had stayed in place since '62 and was there the last time I took a shot that day but when I got home it was gone. When I replaced it I played with the new front sight until it was zeroed and then sweat soldered it in place. It's still there today.
Kinda like the time, the afternoon before the deer opener, alot of the fellows back than would like to shoot there rifles to make sure they were ON, my Marlin 45-70 was all set, but I fig id show off, took my shot hit the bull, but as I was looking thru the scope, my crosshairs, were laying in the bottom of the cheap scope! back than you were screwed as there were no big stores to run to get another one. and the rear sight was back home. talk about bummed, I had to use the 44 blackhawk, the small racked 8pt. never knew what hit him tho!
Had a kid show up at deer camp one year with an el-cheapo sporterized No.4 MkI .303 Enfield- minus the front sight blade, somehow lost in transit. Someone noticed it the evening of opening day and asked the kid how he expected to hit anything without a front sight. He replied that he simply switched to one of the sight protector ears as a substitute! I whittled a halfassed wooden replacement and epoxied it in place, and told him he better take a couple shots at a candy wrapper or pine cone the next day to see where it was shooting. Of course he ignored my advice, and instead whacked a forkhorn with it. Ah, the hubris of youth...
(Oh, and of course the ammo he had with him was full metal jacket stuff. We filed the tips off a couple cartridges to give him a semblance of legality. Naturally he used one of the unaltered rounds to shoot the deer. "You can lead a man to logic, but you cannot make him think.")
I had a scope fall off once. Sighted in the day before, everything peachy, then walking down a trail the next day, clunk, right in the dirt. Thought it was the funky magazine (99C 338 Federal), but nope, whole darn scope.
How can you be sighted in one day and falling off the next?
I have lost a sight blade lost on a Savage 99 EG while hunting. It too was a dovetailed base with a silver blade "peened" in place. No previous indications of being loose, but it "disappeared" after a morning of slipping through a creek bottom. This rifle was scoped so I didn't notice the loss until I was back at the house cleaning the rifle. Went so far as to search the path I'd hunted that morning with a metal detector....but no luck finding a small piece of metal (smaller than a penny).
My only other "sight" loss story was with an older scope that had the crosshair come loose....during a hunt. I was sitting on stand when a nice 8-point came along. When I raised the rifle to shoot the buck... the crosshair was laying at the bottom of the scope. The distance was fortunately close (about 50 yards) so I just trusted that the scope was still sighted, just minus an "aiming" point. I centered the buck in the scope (like you'd do with a peep sight) and fired. Bullet hit exactly where I'd hoped and the buck dropped.
Maybe crosshairs aren't really needed, but also maybe I just got lucky....so the scope was replaced.
I dug through my parts drawers today and found a Fire Sight type sight that is the right height ( measured sights on 2 other rifles) so I filed it down until it fit the dovetail on the rifle barrel.
It looks out of place on that old 99 but man can I see it!
On my trapper 99 iv had trouble seeing the front sight thru the peep, so i replaced the steel one with a Smiths or King I cant rember for sure, but it has a red bead with a little mirror, that reflects light to it cool sight! also have one like it with a gold bead! got them off ebay! Not savage but I can see it!
Those are great front sights, John. I had one on a Winchester M70 back in another lifetime, and it worked like a charm.
Sounds like a neat sight, I don't recall ever seeing one like that.
I just checked there King sights gold stamped A2 the red bead looks to be stamped M2 they run 40 to 60 bucks I tryed to take a pic but the flash made them look fuzzy ill try tommorow in the day light if they come out maybe I could tex you a pic! I dont want to sell the ones i have.
Thanks its the 1st one in the line of 3 on the right side of the page! Im sure a fire sight or fiber ob. type sight would show up better than the king sight, but its kinda diffrent type sight!
It very well could have been fooled with at some point but it never crossed my feeble mind to check and see if it was tight.
Lesson learned though, i went through and checked the sights on the other rifles and they are good and snug.
take a silver nickel and cut it to size , peen for width and install, solder it in .
norm
It very well could have been fooled with at some point but it never crossed my feeble mind to check and see if it was tight.
Lesson learned though, i went through and checked the sights on the other rifles and they are good and snug.
take a silver nickel and cut it to size , peen for width and install, solder it in .
norm
Truthfully, That crossed my mind. I've seen a silver nickel or dime used as a front sight on a lot of old rifles in this area.
That seemed to be the standard ranch repair when a front sight went AWOL.
We used a chunk of silver solder material to make a taller front blade for my Pop's M1920 .250-3000 when we installed a Lyman 54 on it and found the original blade to be too low. (That Lyman 54 cost me a whopping $25 at a gun show, which should indicate how long ago we did this!) Weirdly enough, I have that original blade we took off still rattling around in my sight drawer.