Michael Tinker Pearce
Member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2016
- Messages
- 1,575
*dons flame-repellent suit.*
Look, I know a bit about how sights work. Eye relief, sight radius, all that stuff. I know the theory and practice and that knowledge has served me well. In the future I will continue to use that knowledge, and experience tells me it will continue to work. But I have encountered a real-world situation where practice contradicts pretty much everything I know about how iron sights work on a handgun.
I have a gun with sights that are, by any reasonable standard, very, very bad. The sight radius is extremely short- 2-1/4". Terrible. The rear sight is tiny and narrow, though in fairness the notch is relatively deep and well defined. Terrible. The front sight is too wide and completely fills the rear notch. Terrible. These sights are a perfect storm of awful. They are almost every single thing sights should not be and they should absolutely suck.
The problem is they are easy to pick up and I produce tight well-centered groups. In a fit of madness I fired the gun at a twenty-five yard target. The result? a 3-1/4" group. This should absolutely not work. I know this. You know this. The results disagree. Most of my 25 yard groups since are a bit bigger- closer to 4-1/2"- but smaller groups still happen if I am really on my game. It should be blind luck for me to even hit the paper at that distance, but I can produce decent groups reasonably consistently.
I was inclined to write this off as a fluke; some bizarre quirk of my imperfect vision and physiology. Then I let someone else shoot it. They produced well-centered and reasonably tight groups at seven yards. They commented on how easy it was to pick up the sights. Umm... OK.
Now a half-dozen people have tried this stupid gun, and they all said the same thing- easy to pick up the sights. At seven yards every one of them shot well-centered groups that were as tight as they usually produce with their own guns. It doesn't make sense.
One thing I have noticed- the front and rear sights are so close together that at arms length they are in the same focal plane; in other words both sights are in sharp focus, rather than the front sharp and the rear slightly fuzzy. I don't know how or if this affects things, but other than the damn sights working at all it's the only unusual factor.
Look, I know this shouldn't work. I'm not selling anything here. I have nothing to gain. I don't want to overturn the conventional wisdom. I don't want to revolutionize the industry. I just want to figure out what the hell is going on, and why this works works when it shouldn't. Because it bugs me.
I tried to discuss this in another venue, and everyone was keen to explain that it can't work, and lecture me about exactly why it can't work. Everyone was completely willing to ignore the fact that it actually does work. I'm hoping we can do better here. Any thoughts?
Look, I know a bit about how sights work. Eye relief, sight radius, all that stuff. I know the theory and practice and that knowledge has served me well. In the future I will continue to use that knowledge, and experience tells me it will continue to work. But I have encountered a real-world situation where practice contradicts pretty much everything I know about how iron sights work on a handgun.
I have a gun with sights that are, by any reasonable standard, very, very bad. The sight radius is extremely short- 2-1/4". Terrible. The rear sight is tiny and narrow, though in fairness the notch is relatively deep and well defined. Terrible. The front sight is too wide and completely fills the rear notch. Terrible. These sights are a perfect storm of awful. They are almost every single thing sights should not be and they should absolutely suck.
The problem is they are easy to pick up and I produce tight well-centered groups. In a fit of madness I fired the gun at a twenty-five yard target. The result? a 3-1/4" group. This should absolutely not work. I know this. You know this. The results disagree. Most of my 25 yard groups since are a bit bigger- closer to 4-1/2"- but smaller groups still happen if I am really on my game. It should be blind luck for me to even hit the paper at that distance, but I can produce decent groups reasonably consistently.
I was inclined to write this off as a fluke; some bizarre quirk of my imperfect vision and physiology. Then I let someone else shoot it. They produced well-centered and reasonably tight groups at seven yards. They commented on how easy it was to pick up the sights. Umm... OK.
Now a half-dozen people have tried this stupid gun, and they all said the same thing- easy to pick up the sights. At seven yards every one of them shot well-centered groups that were as tight as they usually produce with their own guns. It doesn't make sense.
One thing I have noticed- the front and rear sights are so close together that at arms length they are in the same focal plane; in other words both sights are in sharp focus, rather than the front sharp and the rear slightly fuzzy. I don't know how or if this affects things, but other than the damn sights working at all it's the only unusual factor.
Look, I know this shouldn't work. I'm not selling anything here. I have nothing to gain. I don't want to overturn the conventional wisdom. I don't want to revolutionize the industry. I just want to figure out what the hell is going on, and why this works works when it shouldn't. Because it bugs me.
I tried to discuss this in another venue, and everyone was keen to explain that it can't work, and lecture me about exactly why it can't work. Everyone was completely willing to ignore the fact that it actually does work. I'm hoping we can do better here. Any thoughts?
