A Home Made Lollypop Peep Sight

I have a .32 CVA Squirrel rifle that has only one fault. It has a factory sight that is big and clunky. It's adjustable, which is handy, but is really oversize for this trim little gun.

In addition, my old peepers don't do well with that style sight. So I decided to replace it with a lollypop.

Here's how it went.















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It looks good but I was just wondering if a 1/2" hole into the barrel is safe. Wouldn't it normally be mounted on the tang?

Terrible idea to drill in to the breech plug. Hope that is a solid area. IF it had a deep anti chamber you have have made an unsafe rifle.

Be not concerned guys. There's plenty of meat there. The drum on these CVAs were intalled to go across the bore. Then a hole was drilled through the wall of the drum's shank with a long bit down the barrel to open a hole between the bore and the chanber of the drum.

I've attempted to illustrate this setup in the pictures below.\

Good work! It seems like you have taken the proper precautions to do this safely. How does it shoot with the new sight? My hat is off to you for doing something yourself instead of paying for somebody else's product. :hatsoff:

Haven't shot it with the new sight yet. And haven't shot paper beyond 25 yards because the original sight was useless for my eyes beyond that.

My best five-shot 25 yard group with it's best load was just under an inch - with four shots grouped at 3/8" and one outlier. I tried seven different load/patch combinations. By far the best was 20 grains GOEX FFFg, .018 pillow tick patch, Liquid Wrench Lube.

Hi,
Fine job! Well done!
Can't complain about the cost.
Thank you for showing.
Fred

Would the Safety Issue be the same on other Manufactures rifles?? as far as the drilling in the barrel?? That is some smooth set up,going to build one for my rifles,most likely mount it on the tang..Built a Ghost sight for a single barrel 16 gauge shotgun once, to better my score on Dove,,didn't help much,,they are fast!!!!!!!!

Nice tutorial, I await your target results. :thumbsup:

Vomir le Chien said:

Would the Safety Issue be the same on other Manufactures rifles?? as far as the drilling in the barrel??

Click to expand...

I guess that would depend on the gun le Chien. Below is a picture of a plug I had laying around which I think came off of a TC barrel. I've marked it to show the actual configuration of the chambered breech.

Before drilling into the breech plug of any gun, I would insert a 1/8" x 36" wood dowel down the barrel to the bottom of the chamber, and mark the distance from the muzzle to the bottom of the chamber. Then you could lay the dowel on top of the barrel to see how much meat there is between the back of the chamber and the back of the plug.

I think so long as you have about 3/16" of metal (average barrel thickness) between the chamber and hole for the sight you would be OK.

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A FINAL IMPROVEMENT!

Unless I'm totally missing something......how is the windage adjustment made? Front sight or "guesstimation"? ....Fred

You're not missing anything flehto. Windage is adjusted by drifting the front sight.

That is a gem dandy sight and real craftsmanship. If I had a barrel like yours with enough room at the breach end to drill and tap like you did, I think I just might have to have one. But, alas, my barrels do not have enough room at the rear to safely do what you have done. I suppose it might be possible to put one on one of my rifles providing there is enough barrel thickness to allow for drilling and tapping without drilling into the breach plug. :hmm:

Flehto, regarding windage adjustment. This gun shoots to point of aim with both the front and rear sights well centered over the centerline of the bore. So I wasn't much concerned about the need for windage adjustment.

However, there is a way to make a sight something like this that does allow for windage adjustment. Instead of the round "lollypop" on top of the sight shaft, it has a rectangle with a rectuangular cutout for mounting the aperture. Here's my crude attempt to illustrate how one like that looks.

Billnpatti, you can mount it on the tang, but because of the slope of the tang it's a bit more difficult to drill the hole in the tang so that the sight post is perfectly vertical and ninety degrees square to the flat of the barrel.

Good idea, but I would replace the brass screw with a stainless steel part for strength. A #6 brass screw is easily bent with just a small bump.

I cannot see any safety issue. What would the danger be having a screw into to the plug? Back towards the rear. The only problem I can see is if you needed to pull the plug, you might have to re-sight the gun after putting it all back, or at least check it. I made a non-adjustable and silver brazed in place on the forward tang, just shy of the breech to avoid having to do that. I have since added the cupped head of a brass tack to it, to shade it better.

Good call on going to a tougher material than a # 6 brass screw. You might want to add some brass blackener to it too. Shiny sights are tough to use at some times.

i have the very same rifle, and the same eyesight issues with those stock sights. i think i`m going to do this. maybe it will improve my rodent head shots, and should better the boy`s grouping(his rifle). what do you do with the mounting holes from the old sight?