Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Winchester M1906 Marbles Sight Installation

As I noted last time I'm searching for projects, mostly catch-up jobs, to do while awaiting my EMF M92 from Steve Young (aka Nate Kiowa Jones) of Steve's Gunz. The first of those projects is the Winchester M06 (aka 1906) that was my maternal grandfather's. When I got it it had just come out of 20-30 years of storage in my grandparents' attic and had a coat of fine rust over most of the exterior. However, the internals and wood were in pretty good condition and it WAS my grandfather's gun so...

Sight Installation Closeup

Well I had it bead blasted and reblued. I messed with some modern open sights for a while and then a few days ago I re-installed the #21 front sight and ordered a Marble's tang peep from MidwayUSA. AT $125 (less a nickel) it isn't inexpensive but not all that bad either. I received it today and quicker than Teddy Kennedy after bourbon and ice I had the sight on the gun.


Although I wrote the people at Marble's prior to ordering the sight so that I could be sure it would fit AND that the screws would be properly threaded I wasn't all that certain. Their response to my inquiry Will this tang sight for the Winchester 1906 work with the factory drilled and tapped mounting hole? Is a new tang screw included properly threaded for the Winchester? was Q1 - Yes Q2 - Yes, you may have to change threads. Not at all reassuring. However, all threads and hole spacing matched perfectly. The only problem was that the replacement tang screw was a bit long. No problem that, a few minutes with a grinder and it will be just fine.

This is a wonderful sight in another way. It is easy to adjust (I hope not TOO easy!). Looking through the aperture, I was quickly able to roughly zero the new sight by aligning it with the sight picture of the old open sight. The adjustments were easy to make and there was no roughness in the threads. I then removed the new/old rear sight. I hadn't done that before I took this photo (too excited).




Well, I'm bound for the basement to do some grinding on a tang screw!

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