Rossi Rifleman

The guy I bought my .357 from has a .454 in blue. Since I saw him sell the 16" .44M he's had for sale for years yesterday for $450 I wonder if I could get the .454 at a reasonable price....

GasGuzzler wrote:The guy I bought my .357 from has a .454 in blue. Since I saw him sell the 16" .44M he's had for sale for years yesterday for $450 I wonder if I could get the .454 at a reasonable price....

Only one way to find out...

Good luck!

Dan

Well, I am going to have to peen the front barrel dove tail in order to give it more "purchase". There is not enough of a lip to allow the front sight (even with a carefully crafted, shaped shim) to be drifted into place, it simply jumps put the top. It is the front edge (closest to the end of the barrel) that is the culprit.

I have the barrel bands, magazine tube and forestock removed so I can properly back up the barrel for the peening operation.

Details with pictures to follow...

Dan

Here are some pictures so far:

Rear sight installed:





Setup for peening the front dovetail:







After some peening work (probably not possible to see the actual results):



BTW, I'm using an 8 oz. ball peen hammer with a 3/16" diameter drift punch. I'm mostly there but I'm going to continue working it until it looks good enough to accept the sight dovetail. The sight is still much too small so some sort of shimming will be required.

Other sights that I have installed (Tru Glo on Glocks for instance) came with dovetails on the sights slightly oversized so filing them down a bit with a triangle file was necessary for a custom fit. I sure wish these sights were oversized, I can handle that easily enough.

This is tedious work, but I'm patient...

Dan

To be honest I'd be leery of trying to beat it into submission.
Shim(s) are the thing unless it's too small to remain captured by the dovetail and if that's the case Marble's has to make one with an oversized dovetail.

Archer wrote:To be honest I'd be leery of trying to beat it into submission.
Shim(s) are the thing unless it's too small to remain captured by the dovetail and if that's the case Marble's has to make one with an oversized dovetail.

I'm just gently reforming the lips of the dovetail back to their original shape. The upper edges were lifted up slightly by my attempts at drifting in the front sight with shims.

I'm still gathering information on the dimensions of the dovetail on both the barrel and sight to see what the measured differences are. I'll post what I find out.

Dan

Dan, try cutting up a beer/soda can and see if that will work for shimming.

Another option is to get a welder to run a bead on one side of the sight dovetail to give you a bit more material to file down to size. It's a bit of a royal pain but if peening the barrel dovetail back to the original shape doesn't work I think that's where I'd go.

Some good suggestions here (beer can shim for one). My Dad was an aircraft tooling specialist and this sort of work was right up his alley (very resourceful and also a firearms enthusiast). I've got his old Kennedy tool chest stocked with his Starrett precision tools as well as several tools he made himself).

I've been away on business and this weekend is jammed with county fair stuff so I won't get back on this until probably next week.

I want to start by measuring the dovetail in the barrel as well as measuring the front sight to see what the dimensional differences are. I have a 3d CAD system here and I will do a simple model of the parts.

Stay tuned...

Dan

Sorry I have not been keeping things up to date here. Rifle is still on my bench in the same condition as the last post, I just have not had the time to re-engage the project (extended motorcycle trips, farm/tractor work, repairs on other things around here, etc., etc.).

I will get back to this soon. First thing is to make precision measurements of my dovetails and compare them to the sight set. My rear sight is installed but I don't like the fit, will show pictures to clarify my concern.

So, be patient and stay tuned...

Dan