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Old January 29, 2011, 08:33 PM   #9
Jim March
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Join Date: February 14, 1999
Location: Pittsburg, CA, USA
Posts: 7,417
Well...heh. I'll be honest, that's a wee bit of a crapshoot.

OK...what you really want is for windage to be dead on. If it's off just a hair, you have an easy fix available: file the inside of the rear sight channel in one direction or the other. If it's worse than that, it'll have to either go back to Ruger or have a local gunsmith turn the barrel a bit to line things up.

On elevation, it's going to be set "somewhat high" in case you're running extra-heavy loads. In a 357 variant, it should be close with bullet weights in the 158 to 170/180gr range. You're supposed to try different bullet weights, see where it's zeroed to from the factory and if you want to run lighter loads, you'll probably have to file the front sight a bit. This is a normal part of the SA process.

Heavier bullets need a taller front sight. It doesn't seem to matter much what SPEED the bullets are moving at. A 158gr load will print to about the same elevation whether it's a 38Spl or full-house 357 load.

I keep my sights on my 357 dialed to about 140gr or so, which means it's workable from 125gr through the 158gr range. Mine was dead-on for windage from the get-go. I've seriously (no, *wildly*) upgraded my sights to a bizarre degree, but that's because of what I wanted, not what the gun absolutely needed due to defects.

Upshot: serious windage issues are a pain, and with the NewVaqs we're seeing fewer of these. Light windage issues not as annoying. The front sight is supposed to be too tall in case you want to run heavy loads, and then you dial it in to whatever you need.

One option for fixing major windage issues is to remove the front sight completely and have a dovetail cut for this sight, which you can get several of and shave for different bullet weights and front sight heights:

http://www.gunblast.com/Freedom_NewSight.htm
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