Matthew Clark
Member
Hello everyone, I purchased a couple of these Rossi Gallery Guns. One for me (pictured) and one for my wife. Hers wears a Williams FP-GR receiver peep sight fitted to the dovetail on top. It sits low enough to utilize the factory front sight.
They are quite accurate with the Buckhorn sight fitted from the factory but the peep sight was a vast improvement. I had put a williams WGRS 54 on the dovetail and replaced the front sight with a taller Skinner partridge that is fileable for finished height and painted a white line on it. That was great but I decided I wanted to install a tang sight on mine. There are no stock screws in the tang that are through screws, only one inline screw. So mounting a tang sight required drilling and tapping of the tang. I located a Taurus tang sight originally designed for a model 62 or 73 on ebay with mounting screws. Proper positioning of the sight is very crucial, the sight is a little long and if positioned to far forward you will have to grind too much off the front of the sight for the screw hole to be functional. Some grinding will be necessary regardless for the hammer to clear the screw when cocking with the slide. It will bind the hammer and breech bolt if Proper clearance is not achieved. I ground them at an angle slopping forward. When I installed the hammer spur extension it also had to be altered. The GrovTech hammer extension for Henry 22lr pump and lever guns and Rossi model 92's fits the hammer width and thickness well. In this instance with the tang sight I had to reshape the bottom of the extension and bob the hammer slightly to get the clearance needed for action movement and hammer freedom during operation of the slide. See the pics! After all the grinding to fit had been accomplished I reblued the metal parts and used blue loctite on the tang screws. I did not use the supplied screws with the sight. I purchased 2 ea. 10 x 32 x 1/4" anodized screws from a hardware store. #21 wire gage drill bit for drilling the tang holes, and a 10 x 32 taper tap to start the holes and a bottoming tap to finish threading the blind holes all the way. Granted it was a bit of work to fit the sight but options are limited and to my knowledge no one builds a tang sight that is completely compatible. However I am very pleased with the outcome. I left the old zeroed peep sight in place until the tang sight was all mounted and co witness zeroed to it. Should only take a few shots to fine tune the zero. Even though the sight has a windage adjustment, co-witnessing the sight before drilling the front mounting screw hole will get the sight mounting holes positioned correctly so you have adjustment to spare.
So if you were wondering if it were possible to mount a tang sight on a Rossi Gallery Gun the answer is yes. It it something anybody can do, no would be the nicest answer I can give. Not everyone has the tools or training to accomplish this job. A gunsmith could certainly do it if you could convince them to fit the sight to the gun. These days folks don't like to alter components for liability reasons. The cost effectiveness if you have it done would likely not be something most people would consider worthwhile. Me personally, I had to try and I succeeded and I am very happy with the outcome.
If you wish to give this a try and have questions send me a personal message and I will be happy to assist you In any way I can. By the way the hammer extension is a personal issue for me on safety. It is not a must have deal. It could mean a lot less work if not utilized. One would have to try to find out.
Happy shooting!
