Thursday, March 29, 2007

Night sights

We're back from Texas and I have a buttload of pictures to post of the re-enactment. I'll get around to it this weekend.

What I wanted to comment on was night sights. The night before last I took a Commander (painted sights), a Colt Gummint (rip-off Novak's), and the S&W 1911 (real Novak's) and tried flash sight shit in a dark room. The results were surprising.

Best in show was the Commander with, what I thought, was a Hillbilly-Bob paint job on the sights. Lights out and they were clear as day. I contrasted by putting yellow-green on the rear dots and orange on the front. Both showed up wonderfully.

The other two basically sucked. I could see the Colt, but in a bad situation it would be a hindrance not a help. The Smith (with real Novak's) I couldn't see at all.

Of course, I'm over-zealous and felt like repainting every handgun sight in the house. I held off to see if there some advantages to unpainted sights that I am yet unaware of.

UPDATE: I forgot to link to the original post and the Brownell's page that I scored the shit off of. Apologies.

Comments:
What did you paint them with?
 
Yeah, we need to know the paint, please!

And if you say its 99cent Testors glow-in-the-dark, well, I think I have an unopened bottle of that in a box of model airplane parts somewhere in the attic. Be interesting to see how it holds up after 20 years....
 
The post has been updated to reflect materials used in the making of this post.

In the future, our editors will be working to insure that these loosely documented posts occur less often.

BTW, you assholes have fun at BM.
 
I've thought about using light activated glow-in-the-dark paint, but there two things that have prevented me...

1. For my carry gun(s), they won't be exposed to light to charge them, so the glow effect won't be there.

2. For my bedside gun(s), I wonder if the glow will last long enough into the night to be usable.

I'm guessing when you tested it, the sights had been in enough light for enough time to be all charged up. I'd like to know how well you can see them after they've been stored in the dark and not taken out until after you turn the lights off.

Is the bright color good enough to see well, or do you really need the glow to see them? If they aren't glowing, is white more visible?
 
Gungeek,

You bring up very good points. I may try starving the sights of the light and performing the same experiment.

Additionally, I'm in complete agreement with the carry gun. In lieu of tritium, night sights seem worthless on the carry.

Will repost later and thanks for the observation, Geek.

Benjamin
 
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