Fixer can you send the info about the tang sights to me?
Well there's not much to tell bud - it goes on the metal tang of your gun as you can see from the pics above. The rossi's we have need a second hole drilled - very cheap from any decent gunsmith. You buy the sight and it comes with a 'post' - that's the little upright thing that holds the peep hole. The posts come in 3 lengths, short medium and long. Short is for 0 - 200 yards, medium is for 200 - something like 600, and long is for some insane distance i can't remember.
You can swap out posts very easily and still retain zero when you put them back.
The sight folds down towards the stock so that it doesn't hit anything when you put it away. Then flip it right back up for use when you take the gun out.
At the top of the post is a small threaded hole. You screw in 'peeps' to it - the peeps have holes in them for you to look thru (like a small ghost ring). The smaller the hole, the greater the accuracy but the harder it is to acquire the target. So - you sight in with the smallest peep, then switch to a larger one for hunting or animal defense. Or just screw the peep out and use the round threaded hole like a ghost ring.
Because it sits so far back and isnt' mounted to the barrel, it's quite easy to get the lower sight picture you want with the small post. It solves the problem two ways - lowering the sight and moving it back.
The marble arms IMPROVED tang (not the original, but the improved) has 1/4 inch clicks for windange and you turn the center post for elevation. It is very precise, as much as a rifle scope. This allows extreme precision, probably better than you'll be able to shoot with the ranch hand.
This (and systems like it) was what was used in the old cowboy days for long range precision shooting, and it WORKS. It is a very effective system and still in use today by many cowboy action shooters for long range precision matches.
Like i said, it folds back to lay against the stock so it's out of the way when packed or in the gun safe. You just 'flick' it foward to use it.
I was hoping for a non-gun-smith solution, but i think over all this will be the best choice and it's still in keeping with the old-school look and feel of the ranch hand. I will likely get a fibre optic front sight to go with it, just because i'm thinking of using the gun for hunting and low-light bear defense situations. But i suspect this will work with the factory supplied post.
You will have to remove the rear barrel sight of course. You can get a plug to go in it's place so the barrel looks normal.
That's about all there is to it. It mounts on the metal tang using the existing hole and one new one drilled by a gunsmith - it comes with longer screws to go in to hold it in place. It's a very fast install, and probably very cheap from your local smith. They sell for about 125 bucks. a little pricier that some options but i'll spend it to get fully adjustable 1/4 click optics that will provide for effective accuracy. I still believe with the right single point sling and good optics the gun should shoot out to 100 yards with very good accuracy.
