I like to make things, I've always thought sights were cool. I've wanted a Lyman 35 sight, but the prices that they go for are often more than I've paid for a lot of the rifles I own. But a couple of years ago, I found a couple of parts groupings on ebay. They must have come from someone that worked at Lyman, some of the parts weren't finished. But in one of the parts grouping was a base for a Lyman 35 sight. These bases fit over the bolt stop and require no drilling of the receiver, though they do require some removal of wood just below the bolt stop. Anyway, using the parts that I had and making my own parts. Here is what I have



I designed a different slide that allows the sight to be mounted on scoped rifle without having to remove the slide, by elevating the slide the bolt stop can still be manipulated.



I, also, made some bases and slides, these are quite a bit simpler than the Lyman 35 base and resemble the Lyman 36 sights.

That is cool. I want a Lyman 35 but they just cost too much. I paid dearly for a Lyman 36 for an M-S carbine a few years ago.

PhysDoc,
Good Show.
Mike

Yeee Hawwww
Well done
Thank you for sharing
Mike

I feel the same way, the parts collection that I got had a lot of parts for Lyman 36 sights. I was able to use some of the parts and make whatever additional parts I needed to make sights for a couple of project rifles.



The top action is a 1904 Verguiero action, it combines features of both Mauser and Mannlicher rifles. The bottom action is a Greek Mannlicher action.



Both actions have a split rear bridge and require the aperture to pivot as the action is worked.

Below are closeups of each sight, neither are quite complete, but are close.

That is some great work. I might try making a sight from parts. I've gotta wait until the shop is done at the new place. You have inspired me.

Thanks for the compliment, if you let me know what you are working on, I will look and see if I have any parts that might help you.

When I am making things, I think of the wise words of my Uncle Pete.
He said "if you are going to make one of something, make five, chances are that besides the one you want, you might screw one up, have a friend that wants one, would like to sell one, and want one to keep as a model in case you do thing again."

PhysDoc,
I can see I would like your Uncle Pete, you "done good" listening to him.
Mike

Thanks PhysDoc. I'll let you know.

Thanks Mike,

I am sure you would, he is a good man, I am fortunate to have him as my uncle.

Getting back to sights, I had a problem that had been vexing me. I won the base of a Lyman 22 sight on ebay in a collection of parts several years ago. The Lyman 22 is the predecessor of the Lyman 36 and was made for sporters made on the 88 action. A friend has one to that is also missing some of the same parts. So I made parts for mine and his.




On the top left, you see all the parts that go into the base. On the bottom you see my completed sight. On thing that I found hardest was making what I call the stem. The final procedure was to take a 1/4 socket head bolt and drill a 1/8 hole along the axis. Then I made a holder, that is shown in the upper right. It is a piece of 3/4" round stock, first drilled through with a 1/4 clearance drill, then a 5/16" slot was milled along a portion of the axis. When the bolt is placed in the holder, I could mill a groove in the bolt using a 5/16" ball end mill.

The parts were blued using a recipe from Clyde Bakers book "Modern Gunsmithing", heat the parts with a torch and quench them in raw linseed oil.

It feels good to have this project done.

Fred

Another good show, Fred.

Well, I've been trying to distract myself from all sorts of current issues and their ramifications. One thing that I have often failed at was flame bluing screws. I probably had the torch too hot and took them too quickly through the colors. I thought the other day that it would be nice to have fire blued slide blanks and I played around with it. The best results come from putting the slide blank on an aluminum block and heating the block with a torch, the block heats up relatively slowly and aluminum is a good thermal conductor. Once the desired color is reached, the slide blank is quenched in oil (10W-30 because I had some). Here are some pictures



A slide blank on a Lyman 35 base.



same but from a different angle, it is hard to get good pictures of this. But I think that the pictures you are seeing are reasonable representations of the actual colors.



The nice thing is that if you have a few slide blanks all polished and ready to go. Once that aluminum block is up to temperature, just put another slide blank on it. The above picture shows two super long Lyman 48 slide blanks and two Lyman 35 blanks.

Here is a recent update,