I have an 1873 model Trapdoor "Springfield" carbine, but between the barrel-mounted open rear sight and my 63 year old eyesight, it's all I can do to keep the shots on the paper at 50 yards! I needed a peep sight, similar to this one , of the sort seen on Tom Selleck's Sharps rifle in the movie "Quigley Down Under".
Such items are a bit too expensive for me to justify purchasing (I've been out to the range only 3 times in the past two years), and I decided to try building one of wood. I've a bit of scrap rosewood left over from making a set of Irish Uilleann Pipes, so I made up a crude sketch and went at it.
Here is the end result:
I went through experiments with 3 base pieces, and the final version is shown on the carbine; it has a curved underside lined with .010 brass, and brass bushings for the mounting screws. Here is a closer view, with a screw backed out to show the bushing:
This base also got an unintended cut out from the curvature, because I forgot what setup I had used on the first two bases before shaping on the router table and my curve pattern had popped out of place while shaping (when I remembered the setup, I made a posed photo of it for future reference).
The first version had a flat base, but mounting to the carbine would have been problematic:
The eye disk is mounted to a threaded brass rod which forms the sight tube, which screws into a brass front sliding piece and allows elevation adjustment by loosening and tightening the disk.
This is the first project which got extensive photo documentation on the construction; there are 25 pix on this particular project, posted to my galleries.
John
Such items are a bit too expensive for me to justify purchasing (I've been out to the range only 3 times in the past two years), and I decided to try building one of wood. I've a bit of scrap rosewood left over from making a set of Irish Uilleann Pipes, so I made up a crude sketch and went at it.
Here is the end result:
I went through experiments with 3 base pieces, and the final version is shown on the carbine; it has a curved underside lined with .010 brass, and brass bushings for the mounting screws. Here is a closer view, with a screw backed out to show the bushing:
This base also got an unintended cut out from the curvature, because I forgot what setup I had used on the first two bases before shaping on the router table and my curve pattern had popped out of place while shaping (when I remembered the setup, I made a posed photo of it for future reference).
The first version had a flat base, but mounting to the carbine would have been problematic:
The eye disk is mounted to a threaded brass rod which forms the sight tube, which screws into a brass front sliding piece and allows elevation adjustment by loosening and tightening the disk.
This is the first project which got extensive photo documentation on the construction; there are 25 pix on this particular project, posted to my galleries.
John
