Aperture front sight

[Pork Fat]

I picked up a nice little Stevens .22 rifle years ago at a gun show. It has a folding blade open rear sight just ahead of the receiver, a tapped hole for a receiver sight on the left rear, and a hooded front sight with an aperture up front. It is a Model 56C, labeled "Buckhorn Rifle" on the bottom of the barrel, just forward of the stock.

My question is- What is the sight picture supposed to look like? There was nothing resembling one when using the notched open blade. This led me to install a no-name aperture on the receiver, which is not made for this rifle and seems a bit fragile. Much better sight picture, but without a bead or post I can't really use a 6:00 hold. I just use point of aim, which works fine for tin cans, but not so good for bullseye paper targets. The ring around the front aperture obscures a great deal of the target. It does center itself nicely, small ring inside bigger, fuzzy ring.

I believe that this rifle was slightly tarted up over a standard model and given target pretensions. I would like to see what it can do, but my ignorance of this sighting arrangement and a lack of Stevens factory support keep my $90 find a cabinet queen.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Aperture front sights are common on target rifles. Technically speaking, the right sight picture is simply the target. The eye will automatically center the apertures, front and rear and the target. If you stop and refocus your eyes, a perfect sight picture would be three conincentric circles -- the inner one being the bull, the middle on being the front aperture, and the outer one being the rear aperture.

 

[Pork Fat]

Oh..

I guess that having the proper targets would help then. Too large of a bull, like a pistol target, makes it all a black on black blob. I should get some proper smallbore rifle targets and set them at the correct range to give a little ring inside the front sight. Thanks for clearing that up. Now I just need to find a better rear sight.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

You are correct in assuming that an aperture front sight must be matched to the target.

Your sight probably unscrews at the rear -- you can take the rear of the sunshade off off and the aperture will fall out. When the sight was originally purchased, it came with a small tin of inserts which could be interchanged inside the sight, including apertures of different diameters and posts of different widths.