Here's something that I have put together over the past week. I will not hunt with an NECG receiver sight. It's like shooting at your game through a peep hole in a solid wall. This sight is .100" lower than the one I made for my M77RSI. I was able to do that, since I don't have bolr handle clearence issues to deal with on the #1. I am very used to the XS ghost ring sights and that is the only receiver sight that use on any of my hunting guns. I made this one by cutting and filing a ledge on the bottom of a Burris Ruger to weaver adapter and cutting and reshaping the attachment portion of an XS low Weaver back-up sight. I then drilled and tapped two 4-40 flathead countersunk allen screws and attached the two. It is low enough that the front sight will not have to be much higher than the factory sight. It attaches and de-taches in a few seconds with the Torx wrench supplied with the Burris adapter.

Nice. I like that a lot.

Very industrious!!!

That is awesome!!

Can we have atop view pic please?

I plan to shoot the rifle with this sight on Friday, to find out what size front sight I will need. I will try to get a shot of the top and post it then.

That is interesting enough and like something I have wanted for quite a while, that I ordered a set of the adapter bases and one sight. I did not know that they existed. From the looks of the bases I might be able to also mount a scope a the same time and have my ghost ring remaining on the rifle?? Maybe clamp the xs onto the base and just add a higher front sight? Anyway it will be something to play with. If it works out, I have two tropicals to get the treatment, plus a little 7x57 1-a.

Like you I do not like the NECG peep for the Ruger #1, I have one for a CZ 550 and it's fine.

rj308,

Wow! Too bad the Ghost ring company and Burris do not cooperate and make them for the market.

An elegant fix in both practical utility and aesthetics. Rugged and unugly irons that actually work.

Congratulations.
1B

Jkingrph, You probably can have the scope and XS low Weaver back-up sight mounted at the same time. But you will have to use very high scope rings to be high enough for the scope tube to clear the XS aperture. And then you might not be able to find a ready made front sight tall enough to work. What you can do is have the aperture removed when the scope is mounted. But it would be simpler (and faster) to just use quick detach rings on the scope and once it is removed, attach the pre=zeroed XS low Weaver back-up sight with it's one attachment screw. That is what I do with my 10/22. 1B, I was thinking about talking to Monte or Dennis at XS about producing a detachable for the Rugers. They may not sell a lot of them, but I bet they would sell more of them than the Ruger back-up sight that they sell, that requires drilling and tapping the receiver.

rj308

Thanks for your comments, basically all those mounting ideas flashed through my mind when I saw your pictures and read your ideas.

I may end up trying what you did, and modify the mount and sight as you did, I probably can do it with a file and my drill press, if I go slow.

Why don't you send the idea to Ruger to see if they would be interested in adopting it and putting into production. They used my idea when they made the stamped magazine loaders for the P series pistols.

Since XS is primarily in the sight making business, I think there would be a 1000% better chance that XS would start making such a sight as opposed to Ruger. After all, the only re-engineering that XS would have to do is change the attachment setup from Weaver type to Ruger, on their Low Weaver Back-up sight and it would be done. I will speak to one of the folks at XS this week, when I call to order a couple more front sights from them. I'll let you know what kind of response I get from them. I fired my K1A on Friday to determine the front sight height, with the ghost ring sight I made up, pictured above. It needs to be .500 tall. That is only .100 higher than the factory front sight that the rifle came with, about what I estimated

I would order it as soon as available. This is truly a valuable feature for the ruger platform !

Congrats for that work.

I called XS sights today to order a couple of front blades. I talked to the gent that took my order about the possibility of XS making a detachable ghost ring sight for Rugers. He said they did not do it because "you would end up with a big glob on top of the Ruger sight rib". I told him not necessarily, because I made one using the Burris adapter and it is low enough that the front sight only has to be .100" higher that the factory front blade. He did not comment on that. It sounds to me like they are not very interested in the idea or else I did not talk to the right person.

Ask for a patent !

I finally got motivated and got out in my garage workshop and started. My initial thoughts were to slowly file everything to fit but that's a lot of pretty good steel to file, so I slowly ground off everything in front of the screw groove(a clearance groove for the clamping screw) on the xs system sight then carefully filed to the back of the line made by the screw groove.

Next I ground most of the metal off the botton of the Burris adapter behind the Pictinny groove and carefulley filed it flat and flush with the bottom metal of the groove. This gave me a good reference surface to align a hacksaw which I slowly sawed forward to the back of the clamp jaws which hold onto the Ruger rail. Then I sawed down and removed that top piece of the rail and cleaned up with a file, being careful to keep the surface flat. Next I worked on the new ends of the Burris adapter and the XS sight and filed them slowly so the top and bottoms meet up flush. All this took me about a 1 1/2 hours of careful filing and fitting. Wish I had a small milling machine for this. After this I am not trusting myself to drill and tap, so will probably take the two pieces down to a local gunsmith/machine shop and have that done. After getting the two pieces attached there is still a little bit of sculpting and blending them together.

I stuck it all together with of all things a little strip of duct tape to see how it looks and sights and really think this is the best peep sight setup I have seen for the #1.

Currently I have 3 #1's with iron sights and if I like this as much as I think, will be making two more sets soon.

I wish XS would make a ready to install sight like this,.

Good work. I knew you could do it. It would be so easy for XS to make this sight and I think they would sell enough to make it worth their while. But, as I said before, when I talked to one of their reps about it, they did not seem interested.

My Lyman Centennial 2nd Edition had an XS Ghost ring mounted in the rear screw holes wheni bought it. It fir onto the barreel w/o any obvious tweaking.

I had those irons removed By Dan Pedersen and replaced with a Montana Vintage Arms Creedmore type tang sight and a Soule front combo.

1B

yes. XS has had a sight available for years that will fit #1's and 3's that are drilled and tapped for scope blocks. Some years ago I had one mounted on a #3 in 30-40 Krag. They just have not offered anything quickly detachable for Ruger sight ribs.

After some thinking and locating some flat head allen socket screws at a local fastnall store, I think I will do the drilling and tapping myself. I have a set of taps and dies, with taps in 4-40 and 6-32. I was thinking the larger 6-32, but see no need as scope mounting screws are fairly small and can take quite a bit of abuse and shear resistance during recoil and these will have nothing like that, so will probably use the smaller 4-40.

I am thinking it will take two hole sizes, a smaller one for the threaded portion, and a slightyl larger size where the countersink will locate so the screw can go through that section easily and allow the two pieces to be drawn together tightly.

Although my filing looks flat and seems to fit quite well when I do the final assembly I will probably use a bit of JB weld between the two sections and in threads or possibly some hi strength loc tite there.

It will aid hole alignment if you transfer the tap-drill hole through both mating parts, at assembly, later opening up the clearance holes.

Actually I have an x/y axis vise, and I thought about clamping both parts together and drillin the tap holes through at once. I'm thinking, drill and tap one, do the clearance countersink and assemble with one screw, then go back and do the last hole. That way everything will have to match.

J, that is the way I did mine and I used 4-40, countersunk allen screws. I used black tinted epoxy between the parts and loctite on the screw threads. It's not going anywhere.

rj, I ran by the fastnall store this morning and was going to buy a box of screws and they literally gave me a dozen and a small single use tube of red loctite, gratis. I tried to pay them and no go, so I said my next bigger nut & bolt purchase would be there,

The young man waiting on me said the 4-40 would be better because more threads would be gripping, and would have plenty of shear strength especially considering small size of the parts.

Considering the space available and the small size of the screws, I may place 3 screws, in a triangular pattern. It should resist bending or stressing better in both axis left and right and along the length of the little assembly, but lay out and assembly is for later next week. I am now about half way over to Jackson, Ms to see my new grandson.

I am also looking into getting a ghost ring on to my #1. My initial thoughts were to see if the existing rear sight dovetail was the same size or smaller the the sight dovetail on a 10/22 or a Deerfield carbine. Both of those guns have dovetail mount ghostrings available.

The other idea was to order a ghost ring inset for the factory #1 rear sight. Ruger sells one for the Mini 14/Deerfield.


There is also the XS sight for the Deerfield:
If it just requires some filing on the sight to get it to fit this might be a good option.

Too far from the eye, field of view will be too small when the ghost ring is mounted that far forward.

rj308,

The ghost ring setup on my Lyman Centennial -- with a 26" barrel of course -- worked fine.

1B

That's good if it will work for you. When the ghost ring is too far away from my eye, the field of view through it is too small and the aperture obscures too much of the target. I like it close enough to my eye that goes out of focus, hence the name "ghost ring".

Behind the rear scope mount seems the perfect, out of the way, place for the ghost ring, if there's enough room. Another thread showed a pop-up ghost ring that self-deployed when the scope was removed.

http://www.brockmansrifles.com/sight_options.asp

Needs some room.

Yes, that one is pretty cool. I like that concept.

I am almost ok with using something mounted on the existing rear site dovetail as it will be better then what I have now. I am going to buy a cheap set of rings and take them to a machinist to have them cut down to just a flat top. Then maybe drill and tap that to mount a screw in ring.

If you mock it up using cardboard and tape you might find it's too far away from your eye.

That is not a bad idea. The OEM rear sight inserts are very cheap, I think I will just tack one or two onto my next Brownells order and see if I can make something that works. Otherwise I am going to sell the NECG sight set my rifle came with and buy the pieces that the OP used and try my hand at making his setup.

bunnielab, I'm sure your idea will work. I have use Mo-Jo sights on some of my mil surp rifles to get an apeature type sight without permanently altering an otherwise collectiable rifle. For my old eyes they work very well, but do prefere the longer sight radius afforded by the conversion first presented in this thread.

I did complete mine, and have not shot the rifle with it yet. I even managed to break a 4-40 tap in one of the holes to be threaded, fortunately there is enough realestate left to drill and tap another hole and it looks ok, like an extra indexing pin installed.

I purchased another couple of sights and some ase adapters and need to get out and start grinding, sawing and filing and make a couple of more sets. They look quite nice when mounted.

Time involved is not too great, I first used a hack saw to cut off excess from sight and base, using slots as guide to cut straight, then a fine slow speed grinder to remove excess, the start to work with file going slow and carefully keeping mating surfaces flat and square, then finally setting up and drilling and tapping screws, then to fininsh I filed scred heads flat and flush before blueing.

Any pictures you have of the finished unit would be much appreciated. I'm pretty sure I could do the work myself, but I only have access to a pretty crappy drill press so I am somewhat leery about the drilling bit.

It looks like my front sight is a NECG aftermarket as well, so as soon as I can get it off (my stock of super tiny Allen wrenches is sadly short) I will sell the set and get working on making a ghost ring.

Don't suppose you'd build me one?

http://xssights.com/index.php?nID=sights&cID=Sights&pID=sights&sID=rifle

Check out the lower, right corner--shows a Weaver style base w/ a dovetail way and ghost ring; that particular one made for a Remington 700.

For my pre-'64 m70 I'd like to try to keep the original iron sights intact, so must use the lowest profile base (Warne Maxima w/ q/d rings). What I plan is to precisely mock up a ghost ring from cardboard, so I can try it at the range, making necessary adjustments such that I will have exact dimensions to fabricate a steel one. I would drill & tap 2 holes, horizontally, in the rear of the rear base to which I can attach a very low profile ghost ring which will clear my scope. The mounting holes can allow for a small amount of fine manual adjustment.

This design will allow me to fabricate the whole thing myself at no cost.

Looks like Skinner sights has taken up the baton

http://www.skinnersights.com/ruger_firearms_22.html

I had already made one of the ones in the post here and found a link for the Skinner today. It looks like a more permanent installation, but on a couple of my rifles that will be fine.