I have a second Ballard rifle which I felt could benefit from a better tang sight, so decided to make a second sight. I am posting some photos here so people can see more easily, the type of milling cutter I speculated on in my previous post. I started by making a pattern of the top of the receiver where the sight was to go and mostly filed a cutter to match that shape, on the lathe, I put a notch in the center of the cutter in order to have a reference to the center of the curve. That left a ridge in the sight base, which was easily filed away. The cutter is made from drill rod and the teeth cut in with a Dremel tool and finished with a small file, heated red hot, quenched in water and temper drawn to brown. The sight base is a piece of 5/8 scrap metal and soft soldered to a piece of angle bar to expose the future bottom of the sight base. The fit to the receiver is not perfect in part because the curvature of the top of the receiver changes along its length, but the base is probably more uniform than I could get with a file, and I can still clean up the fit with a file
cheers mooncoon
cheers mooncoon
