Pistol Bore Sights

[taeldragon]

Well, bought a Sight Mark bore sight for my Glock chambered in .40 S&W. Mightily disappointed.

It fits in the chamber just fine but there seems to be a fair amount of play. Enough play that when everything is all closed up, the ejector pushes on the back of the laser housing and the resulting dot is off to the right. I haven't done any kind of bench rest measurements but its pretty obvious when looking through the factory sights.

Anyone have a reliable system they use if their pistol?

 

[jjohnwm]

I have an inexpensive laser (I think it's also a Sightmark, but not sure) that attaches magnetically to the muzzle. No intrusion into the bore, no extra spuds or inserts to buy, works well so far. I had concerns regarding the possibility that the muzzle on some inexpensive guns might not be cut perfectly square to the bore, but if this worries you it's easy to put the gun onto a solid rest and then rotate the laser, observing the dot to check for movement. So far I've seen this on one gun only (Norinco .22) after checking something like 70 guns...quite surprising.

The magnet doesn't hold well on some stainless alloys, but I've yet to find a barrel to which it won't adhere well enough to use. I bought this thing out of curiosity, but it has proven to be very practical and useful. Aside from boresighting to save ammo, it's excellent when swapping scopes on a gun. Adjust the dot to the sighted-in scope, leave it on while you swap scopes, and then adjust the new scope to the dot. It works much better than any of the old grid-style Leupold types I've used in the past. I'm more than satisfied with it.

 

[BCRider]

Using a bore sighter on a handgun is way overkill. Just load it and shoot a few rounds. If you're able to group at 3 to 4 inches at 20 to 25 yards the center of the group will soon tell you if your sights need a tweak or two. And if shooting from a wrist rest you should not have much trouble at all getting a nice round 3 inch group out of 10 shots.

Or shoot at 12'ish yards and go for around 1 to 1.5 inch groups. Again the group's center will soon tell you where to nudge the sights.

Besides, with ANY handgun recoil plays a big part in sighting in. There's going to be at least a little kick in the gun before the bullet leaves the muzzle. And that results in some rise from the original point of aim. There's typically SOME allowance for this on semi auto guns. And on revolvers it's even more and very easily seen. If you were to use a bore sighting laser in a revolver you'd need to set the laser to hit the paper a good 5 to 6 inches low at 25 yards so when the gun is shot the bullet would leave when the bore is actually lined up with the bullseye.

 

[ryan]

I don't see a need for a bore sighter for anything. Start close with a big target, end at a further distance. Pretty simple really.