Thanks for putting that up, Joe........I've more or less figured out how to operate the camera, and a friend gave me some help with cleaning up the contrast, and color balance. Sure not at all like conventional photography...........and is taking some getting on to.
I guess it would be fair to call the sights pictured above .......3rd generation. When I started building them , some years back, each was a one off. That is to say, all the threading was done single point , in the lathe, and outside of obsesively close tolerancing on the aperture seats, dimensions varied somewhat.
I've added some dedicated fixtures, and tooling since, and this brings them in a lot closer to " Print". The final cleanup, and round off of the drawings will be accomplished with this run of parts, I can than clean up/ edit / revise the master drawings, make some new copies, and burn the old.
With some really nice new taps and dies at hand I don't miss running a miniscule boring bar to cut the 5/16-40 tpi threads for the level cell nuts one bit.
The 1/2-40 ID threads, in the body of the sights are being tapped with a custom bottoming tap, in a custom fixture I cobbled up. I'm more than pleased with the quality, and concentricity. The aperture insert retaining nuts are still single pointed in the lathe, and that will be looked at next, although the tooling to equal that quality of thread is going to be expensive.
These sights are slotted vertically ( .020" typ.), with a "dogleg" slot at the bottombck to the seat ( this dogleg slot required grinding a flat Swiss file to .066" width, and .020 thickness). It is not necessary to remove the nut , for an insert change , a nice feature, similar to the old Redfield Olympics, and Internationals.
The big honker, at the center of the pic. is actually fitted up with Olympic apertures, It's one that I made up for Ronbo,out of tool steel ( never again!) and that the silhouette commitee would not approve for NRA sanctioned Comp.................so, it's going on a big " Gong Gun", currently in progress.
The smaller pieces are all set up for 17A apertures, and the next drawing, and subsequent tooling spree will look towards the slightly larger MVA size inserts.
Wish I'd had better luck with lighting , and color contrast on this pic., it doesn't do justice to the subtle variation of color shades, in the nitre bluing......acomplished by varying grits, and degree of polish.
Will be playing with Staff sights, and scope mounts by Christmas,..........and will post results, as things go foward.
best regards, GTC