I have a couple of Commie guns with home-brew iron sights and I'm having picture problems, probably thanks to presbyopia.

I made them with small rear apertures and the front rings are sized for just a little fuzz around the bull. But I am getting distortions and it takes a lot of squinting and "stare through" to get a sporadic round bull.

I think it is because the rear peeps are a little small, I get some white fuzzing and shape shifting. But I'm afraid to drill out the rears and completely wreck what little precision I think I have. The sights I have were a real pain to make.

So, has anyone experimented with peep sizes on each end? For example, what happens if you leave the rear small and open up the front? Or vice versa, opening the rear and leaving the front alone?

Thanks for any help....

Small and large are relative terms, but you should have a pretty generous amount of white around the bull. IIRC, the front aperture should be at least 1/8" (3.7mm sticks in my mind which is 0.145") on a gun with a 28" barrel. The rear should be sized according to that, so that you get 3 concentric circles - rear, front, bull.

Dave, I've built some target and hunting iron sights over the years, and would ENCOURAGE you to bore out your rear apertures.
Are they "fixed" or are they cylindrical , threaded, and removable ?

GTC

Homegrown, cut and welded, Cross. Rube Goldberg all the way. I could drill and tap for an adjustable peep, but I'm cheap.

All right, I will get out the number drills and go one at a time.

Dave the DEPTH of a rear aperture tunnel, it's diameter, and it's degree of polish internally can really have starling effect on the amount of light it "gathers".

The THICKNESS ( or depth ) of the actual aperture hole should be kept minimal, ....and conversely, the tunnel in front of it as large as the limitations of a particular design allow.

Matte finish on any part of the sight or aperture that the eye actually faces defeat troublesome glare. Conversely, polishing the "tunnel" to a mirror gloss WILL improve the sight picture.

Neat stuff, ...the baseline I was given by some old boys who wrote about this at length, and built really Skookum gear was , "Remember light is chaotic, it bounces around so to speak".

Mattes and polishes apply to your front tunnels, ramps, posts, etc, too.

GTC

What I can add, and what I"m adding is NOT cheap, but in the end, IMHO you have to make the combo work to your eyes and your brain.

That can be way different from one to the next.

Jeff

Yeah, I made these to be "apertures" without much of a "tunnel" -- the front face of the rear is beveled or countersunk, then matted, as is the rear/rear face. I'll go up a size and leave it in the white for now, at least until I've got a "round" picture.
Thanks.

Blacken em' with a Sharpie, and than burn a match under em',Smoke em', as it were.....fast, and certainly cheap.



This is damned frustrating, you're asking for advice, and than basically denying the veracity of that given.

The aperture size that you "think" is working, "in the White, may very well be the drizzling CHITS, once blackened.



Jeff just made a damned good point, about how this all comes together, ...maybe worth reading again.

Hell, maybe your brain wants a chromed rear and front sight.

GTC

I always ran with about a 38 to 45 thou rear app. On my smallbore gun (which I shoot very little) the front app is big enough that the width of white around the bull is about 1/2 the total width of the bull. But it can vary somewhat depending on light.

As far as shiny/matte/thickness at the holes, etc, I'd reread & try to understand what Xfire is saying. He has a firm grasp on this stuff.

Okay, Cross --
I'll blip up a size at a time, and BLACKEN it each go. Howzat?

Smoking is your friend in this instance....

You have NO clue where the edges are if they shine.

A piece of gray masking tape 'smokes' real well!!