The right side of the blade on my 28-2's sight slide is bent slightly forward. After reading about the hassles involved in removing and replacing the slide, I wonder if I might be able to straighten the blade of the slide without removing it?

Am I going to get away with tapping lightly on the blade with a brass drift punch, or is this going to risk damage to other parts of the sight? Or is the sight slide hardened and likely to snap off when I persuade it with drift and hammer?

Thanks.

more than likely it will snap off, but replacing the blade is not that hard, I have done it many times.

You can get a new replacement blade, and a new screw and nut from S&W for around $14. (plain or w/o)

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Ret. LE, FA Instr, S&W Armorer

If you try this get someone to hold a brass hammer against the rear of the sight to back it up. Then you can tap the blade to the rear with a small hammer and brass drift.

Before you start hammering on your Model 28s rear sight, bear in mind that it is unique to only this model and that replacements are both scarce and expensive.
Murphy's Law always seems to come into play in situations like this.
If it were mine, I'd gladly pony up $14 for a replacement blade set.
I have replaced a number of them and its not a hard job.
Larry Potterfield even shows you how to do the job properly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_sDPh18Z08

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-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

TAROMAN is correct.
The hollow cylinder that contains the windage screw and blade is very fragile. It could easily be broken/fractured when trying to bend the blade back into shape.
The job to change the blade is extremely easy. I'm not a gunsmith but I can do a changeout in less than 15 minutes.

Thanks so much for the valuable responses. I will forget the proposed straightening operation, order out new parts and proceed from there.

If the blade is not bent too much I have used a very small pair of vise grips with electrical tape on the jaws and bent the blade back before without it breaking.