posted this on Handgun hunting too..

I have a friend that wants Iron sights that are extra large. BIG. Can't find anything online.

Does anyone know of anything out there for extra large pistol sights?

Please don't reply and tell me about how great a scope, dot, or reflex sight is, I've been through that with him already.... he's even considering custom made but they would be ridiculously expensive.

Any leads or suggestions appreciated.

Take a look at XS Sight Systems. They have the Big Dot sights for firearms.

Nothing wrong with Big front sight. The center of big is still the same size as the center of small. The Eye and brain can resolve it if they can "see" it. XS makes a big round sight, and making a front sight big if it is removable from the handgun is not really that hard. epoxy and stain works to create about any shape or size. If it is a dovetailed sight, and all metal, then weld or braze in the old way to build up and file to suit. Let us know the actual handgun he wants to fix and I would bet there is help available.

" BIG "? how much is that in inches ?
Standard Patridge sights on a handgun are 1/8" square front and 1/8" square notch rear.
There is a limit to the width in that the eye has a problem with getting the light equal on both sides. That is the bands of light between the front and rear sights on each side.Too wide and the eye has to go back and forth to get the two bands of light equal.

The other possibility is height. I helped one pistol shooter and solved his problem by making the sights considerably higher than standard.Then he did well.

quote:

I have a friend that has some vision issues... He refuses to use a scope or DOT sight. He wants Iron and refuses to wear glasses or contacts.

Tell him to face reality and get corrective lens. Use a scope or dot sight or both lens and a scope or dot

i think you will find that the fiber optics will help. put one color on the front sight and a different color on the rear

Shucks, my old decrepit eyes don't allow for iron sight use but I got around it with a simple expedient. I wear contacts to correct my vision which makes for sharp target definition but fuzzy sights. I simply wear a pair of $10 drug store reading glasses, 1.25x, and everything is fine. Sights are focused and the targets (including deer and squirrels in the woods) are sufficiently defined too. At least try it before spending money on other expedients.

Maybe make some try sights out of aluminum can material and blackened with sharpie marker?

Red dot sights may not work anyway. I have an astigmatism. The red dot looks like tilted red figure 8 without glasses. With glasses it is fine.

BTW one can never have the sights and target both focused with good eyes or glasses. It is impossible.

On the other hand pin hole glasses will make an amazingly sharp sight/ target view. Normal glasses will not.

I think he will find nothing works. They make glasses these days, buy some.

As Scota4570 suggests, a small aperture sharpens our picture of the target, but that the whole idea is kinda wrong.

There is a moral question when we seek sights of any sort to make up for abnormalities in eyesight, because we have a duty of care to innocent bystanders.

Too many hunters want high-powered scopes to compensate for their dodgy eyesight, forgetting that all magnification blots out a linear field roughly equivalent to the scope's FoV multiplied by the magnification. Extrapolate that to area blotted out and we could be NOT looking at thousands of square feet of country in which another person might be standing, vulnerable to ricochet.

Larger sights will not fix eyeball lens inflexibility. If you can't focus on 3 ranges more or less simultaneously the size doesn't matter. Jerry meclec uses holo sights because he can't use iron sights anymore. He states exactly this. If the best shot on the planet can admit that....

http://spluch.blogspot.com/200...pinhole-glasses.html

"They" make lots of ridiculous claims for pin hole glasses. The one thing they do is increase the focal length to infinity with something called the pin hole effect.

For trial use put a small hole in a piece of black electrical tape and put it on some glasses.

That said you do not need the front/rear sight and the target in focus. Just the front sight.

Good luck

These are on my cary pistol

I was thinking of an aperture receiver sight, Scota, though small ones aren't really meant for hunting.

An aperture sight needs to be close to the eye. The small hole causes the pinhole effect. A larger ghost ring type peep sight will center the front sight with no conscious effort.....on a rifle. For a handgun it is useless. The slide would wack your face, first shot.

A regular partridge set up is the way to go on a handgun.

If he thinks he needs a peep sight on a handgun, get some kind of scope.

Truthfully, for handgun sports like IDPA, I don't really use the sights. I would not loose many points if you took them off. I look over the top, point, and watch the bullet impacts. I have to fight being too accurate. I tend to end up most accurate shooter in the match. I struggle to shoot blazing fast enough to win. I normally place in the top five though. A practical conventional handgun is not a precision weapon that requires fancy sights. It requires practice. Money spent on ammo is a better bet than trick sights or accessories.

Sorry, I was thinking the question was general, not just confined to handguns. However, I doubt a partridge would help much, unless it called the shots