I had mentioned awhile ago about how we used to go about setting sight heights in the 80's. On the new models we would mill off the front sight and drill a blind hole into the slide and press a pin into the hole. Usually I shot the guns at 25 yrds. for point of impact at point of aim from a sandbag rest. The ammo used was the most common Rem,Fed and Win. For 9mm-115gr., .45-230gr. and 40 cal. 180 unless a different ammo was specified by a particular agency. Anyway I would shoot a couple of rounds and start to file away on the front sight pin. I would continue to do that until the point of impact was at point of aim. We had a special micrometer that would slide into the bore and measure the sight height from the centerline of the bore to the top of the pin. This procedure was done using 3-5 guns to get an average because of all the variables in automatics. Once I had a ballpark on the sight height I would shoot 3 ten shot groups.
During XM-9 testing (the 9mm contract for the gov. sidearm) we would lock the gun into a ransom rest and use a surveyors transit to get perfect sight alignment with the target. This was ONLY done to meet the standard the government required. Using this method is not practical when setting sight heights because as you can imagine that the recoil characteristics of shooting a gun from a ransom rest is greatly different than hand held, as much as 2-4 inches at 25yds. On adjustable sight guns I would bottom the rear sight and elevate it to the mean. I hope this info was helpful.
Bob St.George
Chief Armorer Instr.
S&W Armorer School (ret.)
establishing sight hights in the 80's
Linear Mode
