Red Dot: Milling slide vs rear sight plate

[TacticalGuju]

I do not have any experience with red dots and I have a HK45C. On hkparts.net I came across a rear sight plate that allows mounting of a Burris Fast Fire 3 or Vortex Venom. Even though you lose the rear sight as a co-witness it does away with the need to have the slide milled. Are rear sight plates a good mounting option for an optic? Are there any advantages to milling the slide?

 

[12Bravo20]

I look forward to everyone's experiences on this. I'm thinking about putting a micro on my Glock G44 and will have to use a dovetail mount.

 

[Texas10mm]

I bought a plate for my XD(M).

It's nice. But it does sit the red dot quite high above the bore.

I have a 1911 that I'm thinking of having the slide milled to accept a red dot.

I will add make sure that you have and really like the red dot if you're going to get the slide milled. It's kind of hard to go back once the slide is milled.

 

[doubleh]

I voted for the plate and have three guns rigged up with them. None are defensive guns. For that I'll stick with iron sights. The red dots sure are nice for banging gongs, destroying coke cans and rocks, and other fun stuff.

 

[Ohen Cepel]

The plate is a fine solution if you're wanting to get into a dot for not a lot of $$. They sit higher and there is another possible point of failure with the plate. However, much cheaper than having your slide milled. To me, depends on what you want it for and use.

I have put the plate on some things which were just to get me more dot time as my eyes are going (or you can't mill said slide) but I try to buy new things with the cut when possible.

 

[a2x4bbl]

Mill the slide and suppressor height sights . But if you were going to sell a gun I suppose the dovetail set up would be the way to go . I mill and drill and it doesn’t bother me , others cringe .

 

[12Bravo20]

I'm waiting to see if Nelson Precision Manufacturing ever releases their aluminum slide with RMR cut for the Glock G44. The more I think about it, I don't know if I want to hang a micro red dot on the polymer slide of the G44. I definitely do not want to cut the OEM G44 polymer slide.

 

[Nuclear]

I've used the rear sight plate with two different experiences. The first one was on a Sig 1911 GSR (full size 5" barrel) with a Novak dovetail, and it was good for using a Burris fast fire 2, but I had to modify the plate to match the top radius of the slide. With that experience, I tried to use one on a Walther PPQ, and it sat so far up that I had trouble finding the dot post recoil. So I'm either going to try a circle dot or bite the bullet and mill the slide.

Milling the slide allows you to co-witness the dot and the irons, or at least get closer to where you can use the higher suppressor sights to co-witness.

May advice would be to try the plate first, see if it works, if not, and you still like the red dot, go with milling the slide.