Has anyone painted their white dot sights with glow in the dark paint? If so, what did you use and how did it work out? It's got to be a great savings over buying sights if it works.

Never as good as tritium. Still needs to be recharged by ambient light, and phosphorus sights always suck.

I never tried it, seems like it won't hold up or be bright enough. I just swapped for night sights.

you can get a decent front night sight for $50. Go for it!

__________________
Loving retirement!

Meprolight are the best. But I may go for trijicon bright & tough for my shield 45.

I have a set of Trijicon and like them alot. Never tried the Meprolight's to compare

How much do they cost?

Do your self a favor and pick this up (about $50). I put these front sites on all of my carry guns (shield45, Shield9, Glock30) so I always have a consistent site picture. They are very bright in daylight with the orange paint and it makes it easy to place front sight on target, and they glow bright at night. I don"t even bother changing my rear sights anymore since the front is the one you focus on anyway.

Ameriglo Front Tritium Night Sight For S&W M&P/Shield Green With Orange Square Outline .230 Height .140 Width SW-212-OR-Q | 23% OFF 4.9 Star Rating Best Rated w/ Free Shipping

I bought Ameriglo Pro I-dots for two of my pistols. I have a Fisher sight pusher tool, works great.
Way better than painting the sights. Don't do it.

__________________
Got Apex?

Meprolight are the best night sights, and they float at around 100 on eBay. I haven't concluded my research yet, blade height, width, etc., but meprolight is all I use. True to factory, without decreasing sight radius. Meprolight provides the tritium for almost every manufacturer, they really are the best. Clean and tight.

I did the opposite, blacked out my rear sight with a sharpie until i got tritium sights.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

I have a Makarov pistol that has a tiny, non replaceable front sight. I have some Glow in the Dark label material. You can get it a hardware store. Used a leather punch to get the dot. A bit of epoxy into place. Definately makes it more visible.

I love my TruGlo TFX pro. Tritium and fiber optics in one.

A bottle of "white out" puts a very bright white coating on the front blade of my 547 and works really well to pick up the front sight, even in low light.



I prefer Tritium night sights and greatly favor "Big Dots" for a carry gun. Combat accuracy is all I'm after and this set-up works the best for me:



Shown above on my 3914 DAO but I also have them on my carry 547 as well as the Black Pearl a choice made by the man who created it, the Master Chief, aka BMCM.

digiroc

Call me crazy, but I am a FIRM believer that night sights are wasted money (unless you shoot low-light IDPA or otherwise). I for one, just black out my rear dots and put orange paint on the front dot. Should the situation arise that you need to pull your gun and fire on an assailant, I've been told by several people involved in actual shootings, that the sights are pretty much pointless. Adrenaline is too severe to overcome. YMMV

I've used/had night sights for over 25 years and the only time I've found them useful was in IDPA low-light courses.. in at least one case the range was so dark .... my thought at the time was could I really make a good target ID "shoot or no shoot" ????

Given my 60+ eyes and my civilian concealed carry needs I'm finding fiber optics much more useful overall...... the front sight is fuzzy at best without my (SSP) shooting glasses

I got some of the paint-on stuff and applied it to a front sight. It wasn't ideal; and unless you know you're going into a situation where you need glow-in-the-dark sights, the sights are likely not glowing when you need them. I seem to recall I tried the experiment in conjunction with a fiber optic, and went back to tritium.

Realistically, tritium is better because it is visible in low light conditions where one can see the target (threat) without a light but still dark enough that the front sight is not clearly visible. I'm currently using Trijicon HDs. Although the big orange dot will glow if charged, one will likely not have time to make it glow either. The big orange dot is better for my eyes to pick up during the day. If using a white light, hand held or weapons mounted, the tritium' should (or other glow in the dark media) are negated.

I never had night sights until this past Feb. We have 5 ranges in my local area and all are pretty dark in the shootimg lane (where the shooter stands).
I bought a set of Ameriglo Pro I-dots online and paid a LGS $25 to install them. Whole deal cost me about $100. I think it was well worth it. Night sights are much easier to pick up in low light.
The TFX would be ideal, but I don't get to shoot outdoors much.

__________________
Got Apex?

Sorry for the grainy, but low light situation. That's an AirSoft target I'm aiming at, couch plinker.

I just tried it out on my 547. I painted it right over the White Out I had put on the front blade. I also painted the rear cut-out for the front blade to center onto. It made a "Smiley Face" at point of aim.

When activated with my hi-lumin Streamlight the luminosity is quite bright, and only very slowly dies out Very usable for at least 12~15 minutes. It took ~8 min to come down to the level of my freshest Tritiums

Obviously requiring activation, just a quick flash from a high lumin tactical flashlight, and you're good to go for at least 15 minutes.

digiroc

I like my night sights for FINDING my gun in the dark. I can wake up in the middle of the night and see it

One of my HK's has factory installed glow in the dark sights. I'm not a big fan of them and they will be getting replaced with a tritium set before long.

As a civilian I can't dream up a realistic scenario where They would be practical to use.

Besides a weapon at my bedside I also have a flashlight of some kind, usually my streamlight. When things go "Bump" in the dark it's in hand with my handgun for target identification.

It's trivial to sweep the sights with it and for the next 15 minutes I've got night sights that are brighter than my Trigicon equipped guns.

Of course being a belt and suspenders kind of guy I've also got a set of Hogue laser grips on the 547:



The glow in the dark sights are a way of target acquisition without giving away my position with the laser. Most of my carry guns have Trigicons (I prefer Big Dots) and as NewtoGuns points out, the Trigicons allow me to see the gun and it's orientation in darkness, which is a big plus.

But not every gun allows night sights to be installed, my 547 is far to valuable as a collectors item to have it modified to accept Trigicons, so painted on glow in the dark sights are my best option for this particular weapon.

digiroc

I keeping hearing that excuse for not using sights in a gun fight.

Let's look at why that's actually a lame excuse:

1) It is true that on average law enforcement hit percentages are around 20% - and a big factor in this is a failure to use their sights in real world shoots.

That failure is partly because law enforcement officers are usually not recreational shooters and are not really what we'd call gun people.

As an example, one study comparing police officers to novice shooters found that LEO recruits that had competed a formal training program shot with 87%, 38% and 14% accuracy at 1-3 yards, 6-16 yards and 20-25 yards respectively on a head and torso sized target. In comparison, police recruits identified as novice shooters who had only handled a firearm once or twice in their life demonstrated percentages of 75%, 28% and 6% at the same ranges. Those differences in accuracy are all that a formal training program achieves - under ideal range conditions.

One of the more interesting findings was that the novice shooters demonstrated a much higher percentage of head shots at 1-3 yards. That's something to think about when you consider that 65% of LEOs who are shot, are shot at 10 yards or less. The study's finding that novices go for head shots at close range supports data on LEO gunshot fatalities that indicates 3 out of 5 slain officers are shot in the head. More to the point, it also means that the 12% "improvement" in accuracy at 1-3 yards and much of the 10% improvement at 6-15 yards demonstrated by LEOs who have completed a formal training program is just a product of learning to shoot center of mass.

In the real world under stress, people will devolve to their lowest level of mastered training, and for the "expert" officers above, that will still mean pointing the pistol in the general direction of the target and spraying rounds. At 1-3 yards that might be enough, but at 10-15 yards, they'll be skipping rounds all over the neighborhood and police accuracy statistics support that conclusion.

2) Better training does make a difference.

Baltimore County PD for example demonstrated a 64% hit rate in real world day light shootings and 45% in low light conditions. That's much better than the 18% national average over all.

3) Officers can literally afford to miss, while an armed citizen cannot.

If you are an LEO and you shoot civilian, either as collateral damage or as a mistake of fact shooting, the department gets sued, but if your shoot is ruled a good shoot, you're not going to be held criminally or civilly liable.

That is most definitely not what happens when an armed citizen has a mistake of fact shooting or hits a by stander. The court does not give an armed citizen the great deal of latitude it extends to an LEO after a MOF shooting and the odds are good you'll be charged. Similarly, you'll be sued in civil court.

As an armed citizen you own the liability of each and every bullet you fire from the time it leaves the barrel until it comes to a full and complete stop. Accuracy needs to matter to you. If it does not, you need to leave your hand gun in its holster, or better yet, leave it home.

4) Some people perform better than others under extreme stress.

Most folks who have been shot at will tell you that time seems to slow down. Where the differences lie in what different people are able to do with that greater perceived time. There's no way to really know how you'll react until you've been there, but again better training helps. Things that you've done so often that they are ingrained in your reflexive muscle memory will still be largely intact.

If you've practiced drawing, bringing the pistol into your line of sight and ensuring the front sight is on target long enough and often enough you'll still do that under extreme stress. You probably will not check sight alignment beyond whether the front sight is on the spot you want to bleed but again, repetition is your friend. Over thousands of rounds your hand knows exactly how the muscles have to be to align the front and rear sights, and it'll do that even if you're not looking.

----

In short, way too many people hear that officers seldom report using their sights in a gun fight and then mistakenly conclude sights are of no use in a gun fight, because they don't understand the training and experiential limitations that result in officers seldom using their sights.

Personally, I view night sights as virtually essential on a concealed carry handgun. I am no longer an LEO and I no longer go into dark and scary places looking for bad guys with guns. And even then, I waited for backup. As an armed citizen I have zero reason to go poking into dark and scary laces for guys with guns - and I still call for back up - in the form of the local police department.

As an armed citizen ai do not carry a bat belt full of every day carry gear, and only infrequently do I carry a tactical light. More to the point, if I'm out and about and I need a tactical light, I've screwed up badly and should not be where ever I am. If I have a light on me it's in anticipation of normal need a flash light purposes.

If I encountered a self defense situation (outside the home) there would not be time to employ the light anyway, since those events happen very quickly.

That is where night sights add value. When you are confronted with a imminent threat out in the real world it happens fast, and you need to be able to draw and fire in the limited time available. Night sights will enable you to still put the front sight on target, and that gives a well trained shooter a distinct advantage.

If you want to give up that advantage, or if you're not trained well enough to have that advantage, then that's 100% on you.

It might be easier to conceptualize what I am saying this way:

The front sight is the bike and the rear sight ears are the training wheels.

The learning occurs much the same way. For example, I learned to ride a bike on training wheels - which help you keep the bike aligned over the main wheels, until you develop the reflexes to keep the bike balanced without thinking about it.

But that's just the start of the process. For example, shortly after I was riding a bike with out training wheels, I had a dog run out in front of me and I steered right into the back of a car - mostly because I was still spending bandwidth on balancing the bike and forgot the brakes.

Once I became truly proficient, those kinds of things just didn't happen any more - I could ride the bike without thinking and I had more bandwidth available for executive decision making processes.

The same is true for LEO firearms training. All a formal training course will do is take the training wheels off, and when things go south you've going to have officers defaulting to an inadequate level of mastered training - with no use of sights and a very high percentage of missed shots.

And because they don't use the sights, doesn't mean a well trained shooter won't use the sight, and it certainly doesn't mean a well trained shooter can't use the sight.

In fact, a well trained shooter will probably be looking for that front sight as part of that ingrained process of delivering the shot - unless that shooter is totally panicked.

With proper preparation, training and pre-cognition of a wide range of scenarios and responses, fear is more likely to be something that gets put off until later. When you're in the moment, and you know what you need to do, there's no room for fear. That comes later, when the adrenaline is wearing off and you start thinking about what could have happened. That's when your knees will shake.

A few years ago I read a study of LE that had a successful outcome (went home that night) in a shootout. About 80% reported that the last thing they remembered seeing was their front sight.