I got the AHG rear sight benchrest extender rail/riser (purchased from Nordic Marksman), for my Anschutz 1907. This allows the rear sight to be moved back for comfortable benchrest style shooting, without having to crane my head and neck forward.
Here it is on the 54 action, with the front all the way up to the load/ejection port. Rail extender is 20cm long.
The rear sight is now slid back to about where I like it. After some more shooting to confirm, I may take a Dremel and cut off an inch or more off the extender rail so it lies under the rear aperture out of the way.
The masking tape is a temporary solution to prevent scratching my eyeglasses. Due to the offset of the eyeglasses lens from my brow, I have to get really close to the aperture and sometimes hit it with my glasses. I have potential solution to this using a liquid rubber solution for lightly coating the edges of the aperture edge to eliminate that issue. Once I trim excess on the extender rail and sand off the burr, that rail edge will be out of the way.
View of the front sight, now fully outfitted with bubble level and the iris.
The rear sight rail extender comes with the front rail riser so as to make the front and rear proportionally level with each other. The rail risers required an elevation change of 7 clicks up for a total of 14mm up at 50m. Windage was unaffected other than one click either side which might have been the wind, which speaks to the impressive precision manufacturing on these rail risers and the rifle's dovetails.
Front sight view.
Man do I love that front iris with its thick black ring and horizontal bar. I am not able to align the thin little leveling sticks that come as part of the globe, because of how the iris threads on and tightens. (The globe can rotate 360 to any orientation). I guess one is supposed to pop those sticks out if an iris is used (?), but I am going to leave them in. Being thinner than the iris' thick black bar, my brain does not notice them - they are essentially invisible. And the bubble level on top is the prime indicator for me to control cant.
Today I shot three targets, 10-shot groups each, from the bench with front BR rest and rear rabbit ear bag. Ammo was SK Rifle Match ("Red"). Wind for most of the session was nil, flags were still, and it started to pick up on the last target.
Scores are approximate since the 10-shot groups shredded the paper.
Target 1, iris 4.0: I am fairly sure that one crazy flier into the 7 ring was a bad round, but of course I will never know for sure. It could have been a rogue breeze, but not likely since wind was really dead early this morning. My lot of SK RF seems to have 1 or 2 crazy fliers per 50-rd box.
Group = 1.219" (without that one flier it was 0.575")
Score = 96-6X
Target 2, iris 3.6: The group started high and right for some strange reason. (The rising sun was heating the air rapidly, from below freezing to well above freezing during this session, so maybe it was air density change and thermals coming off the ground). I had to click one down and two left. Two left was too far as can be seen by that left 9 ring shot. I clicked back right one and it centered the rest.
Group = 0.889"
Score = 95-4X
Target 3: Those three high left shots were my mistake because the wind did come up and I forgot to notice the flags. I clicked one right and I forget if I clicked down one, but anyways the next 7 rounds centered nicely. Never forget to watch those flags!
Group = 0.684"
Score = 97-5X
Overall I was happy with those results. I will report back on where I finally decide to trim that rear rail extender.
I promise I will get off the bench soon and try some unsupported positional shooting. (Benchrest is just so relaxing, its hard to leave the bench!
).
