I have a few questions about front sight inserts.  I put a Shaver front sight on my rifle with the level.  It came with a bunch of different inserts.  I was shooting yesterday and did so-so.  Which insert do you prefer?  Do you change inserts for different range targets?  How do I "level" the level in my front sight?  I can tell when the bubble says it is level the rifle is canted.   
The group I shoot with is just an informal group of guys.   The range is not an official range.  We are just shooting for hits on steel.  The targets are different sizes.  We shoot 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 yards.  We just started shooting at this range and are slowly getting things the way we want.  Eventually would like to get things set up regulation size and want to one day include animal targets.  Any advice appreciated.

If your front sight dovetail wasn’t cut straight across, it could perhaps be filed and/or shimmed straight.  You’d need to level the gun barrel in a milling or drill press vise with a machinist’s level, front-to-back and side-to-side, and then check the sight bubble as you shim or relieve the dovetail.

Or you could just hold the rifle with the bubble in the center.  The cant will be the same for all your shots.  Some high power shots deliberately cant their rifles to keep their necks straight or something.  Well above my shooting ability, though; hopefully somebody else here can give better advice on this.

You can buy a little caddy that holds and dispenses all your sight inserts.  Supposedly the ace shots are constantly switching them around in the course of matches, depending on the light, target size, shape and distance, etc, but I don’t see much of that happening at our matches.  All you can do for starters is try the inserts against the targets you shoot at and see if any of them is noticeably easier to hit with.

I pick the smallest aperture and leave it on mine; haven’t even taken the other inserts off the card in some cases. The smallest aperture seems to do the best for me, although I might like an even smaller aperture sometimes.  The Turkey silhouette in particular seems to have a lot of excess room to fly around in.

The reason for the bubble in the front sight is so that you can hold the REAR sight VERTICAL.   Shim the rear sight so that it is vertical when the  bubble is in the middle.  Easily done.   Cut some shims from a beer can.

CHRIS

rgchristensen wrote on May 16^th, 2022 at 12:00pm:


Silly me, I squared the rear sight with the world.  Put a level on the rifle flat and shimmed the staff to match that.  Guess I better do it the other way.   

Experiment with different sizes until there is a brighter spot in the center.  When you are aiming the bull will appear sharper and darker when it is in the center.  Light conditions affect this so you may need to change inserts.