Miroku '73 sight misadventures

[OD#3]

So I wasn't too pleased with the standard buckhorn sights that came with my Miroku 1873, and I quickly ordered a Marbles tang sights for it.  I have tang sights on some of my other lever actions, and I usually like them, but the addition of the Marbles adjustable tang sight was surprisingly irritating on the '73 short rifle.  Tang sights are nice, but the large knurled windage adjustment knob just felt like it was in the way, and there wasn't enough elevation adjustment to reach out to 300 yards.  It was a tackdriver at 100 yards with the tang sight, but that was as far as I could realistically go.  Meanwhile, I had been meaning to do something about the rear sight on my Browning 1886.  I had installed a Marbles tang sight on it years ago.  And unlike on the Miroku '73, the addition of the tang was a real improvement, but I had never removed the ladder sight, and it was interfering with the sight picture.  I took it off and installed a filler into the dovetail slot, and that was about the time that I became fed up with the tang sight on the Miroku '73.  In one of those "aha" moments, I thought "Hey, why not just ditch the tang sight on my Miroku '73 and stick the ladder sight from my 1886 onto the Miroku '73?" 

Well, I sighted in the Miroku '73 today with the 1886 ladder sight installed.  It is an improvement in overall handiness, and the sight picture is an improvement upon the standard buckhorn this rifle came with, but I found to my disappointment that the rifle shoots extremely low with the ladder folded down.  I'm talking 8 inches low at 15 yards.  I have to raise the ladder to hit center at 15 yards, so the rifle now requires me to raise the ladder for all ranges.  On the plus side, there is more than enough elevation adjustment for extreme ranges, and I had fun ringing steel today at 300 yards.  This was especially exciting, because I was shooting some of my BP reloads using 35 grains Olde Eynsford FFF under a 250 grain PRS Big Lube bullet.  Those PRS bullets aren't supposed to shoot well at long ranges, but they did very well for me today at 300 yards.  I just wish that the 1886 ladder sight was a better fit for the Miroku '73's rather tall front sight.  Perhaps I'll have to replace the front sight some day with something shorter. 

Meanwhile, I now have a Marbles adjustable tang sight for the Miroku '73 that I don't need anymore.  I'll probably put it up for sale in the classified section soon, but PM me if you need it, and we can work out a deal that saves a Miroku '73 owner some money.

[Ranch 13]

I changed that stupid towering way to tall bead front sight , for a blade front. Filed that down to get center hits with a 6 o'clock hold, at 100 meters, with  the buckhorn in the middle notch on the elevator.

[Malamute]

  I just wish that the 1886 ladder sight was a better fit for the Miroku '73's rather tall front sight.  Perhaps I'll have to replace the front sight some day with something shorter.

I changed that stupid towering way to tall bead front sight , for a blade front. Filed that down to get center hits with a 6 o'clock hold, at 100 meters, with  the buckhorn in the middle notch on the elevator.

Im with 13, the oddly tall, aftermarket type front sight is a large part of the problem, and one of the simplest to replace. With little lose, you may fry filing it down to sight in as described. Ive filed the bead off several Winchester front sights leaving a decent blade.

I don't know if anyone is making decent repro front sights. The original rifles had lower blades than the current Miroku 73s.

Looking at old information about Winchester sights including Madis' book, the original way the rifle rear sights were intended to be sighted was with it sighted to 50 yds for the lowest notch, and add 50 yards for each step up. Looking at older sights, theres a tiny screw in the rear face of the rear sight that allows you to move the sighting notch up or down to achieve a zero. I think that method has been lost over time and the elevator being used to achieve a rough zero wherever it happened to land on the elevator notches and no other purpose. Ive adjusted a couple by that method but haven't been shooting enough to check where it ends up at 300 yards.

Some good info on original sights.

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ANeZrhcLo01xbW4&cid=C9488A1410A7C413&id=C9488A1410A7C413%21283&parId=root&o=OneUp

Unfortunately, the Miroku sights always sit sort of high off the barrel, quite in contrast to the original sights. The sharp buckhorn ears don't do much to endear them to anyone carrying them either.

[Ranch 13]

Buffalo Arms, Dixie Gunworks and Track of the Wolf most likely all have a good blade replacement front. But the filing  would work on that brass bead OEM thing.

[Don Kenna]

I have both the Miroku/Winchester '73 short rifle and the 24-inch barreled rifle in .44/40.  (Don't ask me how this happened.)  While I never intended to keep the factory sights on either rifle, I did fire them both with my standard black powder handloads  before changing the sights out.  I also found the factory front sight to be far too high.

As the rifles are already drilled and tapped for tang rear sights, I put such on both.  On the short rifle, I installed the Montana Vintage Arms (MVA) reproduction of the Marble's "Combination" tang sight and the MVA reproduction of the Beach combination front sight.  This sight combination has worked out well for the short rifle.

Things got a bit more complicated with the full-length rifle.  I wanted that rifle to be configured for lever-action match shooting, so I installed an MVA Beach combination front sight and an MVA Vernier tang sight base.  (I believe the Miroku/Browning/Winchester mounting holes are all the same in spacing for all their lever action and single-shot rifles.  In any case, MVA immediately provided the correct base.)  I happened to have a disused MVA #133 sight staff on hand--their most basic Vernier sight--which has no screw elevation adjustment, and no windage adjustment at all.  While this arrangement might work well for some applications, it didn't work out at all for my purposes.  Precision adjustment of the rear sight under match conditions proved hopeless.  I had to "graduate" to an MVA #130 tang sight staff, which has both screw elevation and windage adjustments.  The new staff fit the already-installed MVA tang base, of course.  That sight combination proved much better, and I recently turned in a couple of pretty creditable scores (for me) at two lever-action rifle matches.  There was still some room for improvement, however, as my aging eyes were having difficulty seeing the MVA Beach sight's standard front pinhead.  I therefore just replaced the Beach sight on this rifle with a Baldwin front globe sight, to which I am accustomed on my single-shot rifles.  That combination ought to work out better for me, personally, but better eyes could probably do just fine with the Beach front sight.

On both rifles, I chose to fill the empty barrel sight dovetail with current production Marble's Number 95 folding sights.  These are inexpensive, and they do work.  The Marble's Number 95 originally appeared in 1905, so the sight would be more or less historically correct on a Winchester '73.  To me, at least, it always seemed to make more sense to fill the empty barrel dovetail with an auxiliary sight rather than a plain dovetail filler.

Some general information and advice:  The front sight dovetail for both my rifles is .393-inch.  I'm not at all a gunsmith, but I found a Brownell's fine-toothed dovetail slot file to be a very wise investment, especially after watching a well-meaning but ham-fisted gunsmith bash the forend wood on one of my rifles with a steel hammer while trying to drive in a barrel sight.  In any case, I found the front and barrel sight dovetails on both rifles to be slightly burred.  Using the dovetail file judiciously, I removed just enough metal from the dovetail slots' interior surfaces to take off most of the blue to make the burrs disappear.  Doing the same to the bottoms of the MVA Beach and Marble's #95 sights' bases resulted in a perfect fit.

And, yes, I have gone to using black powder in both .44/40 rifles and revolvers.  The use of Accurate Arms bullet moulds of the "big lube" configuration was the key to sustained accuracy.  Doubtless, "Dick Dastardly's"  "big lube" bullets would work equally well.  But that is another matter, and has been well covered in the past by "44WCF."

Hold Center,

Don Kenna                    

[Ranch 13]

Don Kenna with 2 44-40 rifles??? Nah couldn't of happened...