Just thought I would share how you can use a 10/32 sling swivel stud, some common hand tools, and a few hours of your time to greatly improve the rear sight on the SKS.
I considered buying a peep, but by the time you get tax and shipping on there you are spending almost 1/3 the value of the gun just for a sight. I want to keep my SKS what it is, a great fun plinker that can be had for minimal $$.
I'm not pretending to be a gunsmith, or say my work is quality, but it is what the SKS is; functional and rough.
In a nutshell, what I did was install a sling stud in the existing rear sight leaf. I simply ground off the rear part of the leaf that sticks up with the notch in it, drilled a hole through the leaf, put the sling stud through the hole and its held on by a nut on the underside. The existing hole in a sling stud is just the right size for an aperture, or you can drill it a wee bit bigger (I did).
Please excuse the pics, photo bucket won't let me crop them and I cannot upload all the ones I wanted to use.
The first step is to put the stud in a drill and use the file to take the height of the shoulder down. Otherwise your peep will be too high.
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The stud after filing down shoulder
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Next step was to run a die up the shaft to give it threads all the way up. Then cut it to length and clean up threads again. I also ground the face of the stud flat and then drilled into the peep a wee bit with a large diameter drill bit, just to give it that concave opening that you see on a lot of peep sights.
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Here is is mounted on the rear sight leaf (whats left of the leaf after I butchered it) You can't see it here but I ground the top and bottom of the sight leaf to make it a flat surface. Normally it sits at a bit of an angle to the barrel, but I want the peep hole to be mounted parallel to the bore.
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The only issue I have is that with the nut on the bottom of the leaf the lowest that the leaf will sit is at the 300 yard mark on the ramp. The good thing is that I can just adjust the front sight to zero it for 100 yards. Or I may just grind the nut thinner so that it sits lower.
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This was a fun and rewarding project. I also plan on turning down the front sight in my drill to make it a thinner "target post". When I shoulder the gun and look through this sight it looks tenfold better than the original notch. I am eager to hopefully get out and shoot it this week. If everything works well and is sitting where I want it, it will be permanently bedded/ glued in place with devcon. Should be just as durable as the original, and its even less "snaggy". I need to pick up some cold blueing to get on there too.
I considered buying a peep, but by the time you get tax and shipping on there you are spending almost 1/3 the value of the gun just for a sight. I want to keep my SKS what it is, a great fun plinker that can be had for minimal $$.
I'm not pretending to be a gunsmith, or say my work is quality, but it is what the SKS is; functional and rough.
In a nutshell, what I did was install a sling stud in the existing rear sight leaf. I simply ground off the rear part of the leaf that sticks up with the notch in it, drilled a hole through the leaf, put the sling stud through the hole and its held on by a nut on the underside. The existing hole in a sling stud is just the right size for an aperture, or you can drill it a wee bit bigger (I did).
Please excuse the pics, photo bucket won't let me crop them and I cannot upload all the ones I wanted to use.
The first step is to put the stud in a drill and use the file to take the height of the shoulder down. Otherwise your peep will be too high.
The stud after filing down shoulder
Next step was to run a die up the shaft to give it threads all the way up. Then cut it to length and clean up threads again. I also ground the face of the stud flat and then drilled into the peep a wee bit with a large diameter drill bit, just to give it that concave opening that you see on a lot of peep sights.
Here is is mounted on the rear sight leaf (whats left of the leaf after I butchered it) You can't see it here but I ground the top and bottom of the sight leaf to make it a flat surface. Normally it sits at a bit of an angle to the barrel, but I want the peep hole to be mounted parallel to the bore.
The only issue I have is that with the nut on the bottom of the leaf the lowest that the leaf will sit is at the 300 yard mark on the ramp. The good thing is that I can just adjust the front sight to zero it for 100 yards. Or I may just grind the nut thinner so that it sits lower.
This was a fun and rewarding project. I also plan on turning down the front sight in my drill to make it a thinner "target post". When I shoulder the gun and look through this sight it looks tenfold better than the original notch. I am eager to hopefully get out and shoot it this week. If everything works well and is sitting where I want it, it will be permanently bedded/ glued in place with devcon. Should be just as durable as the original, and its even less "snaggy". I need to pick up some cold blueing to get on there too.
