ltwguns.com

Is there a school of thought or some sort of standard rule for the best rearsight notch depth?

In my quest to cure the shooting blind, i.e. moi, it seems to me that if my already widened rear notch was twice as deep it would also increase speed of front sight acquisition and potential accuracy for precision shots for us farsighted guys? (insert smiley on knees praying here)

_________________
God Bless
45Fundi

Everyone's vision is different, but here are my thoughts, which work for me. A notch depth of about .125" is about as deep as I want in most cases. If you cut it much deeper, you'll begin to see the top of the slide in the sight picture when used with all but the tallest front sights. A front blade width around .100"-.110" is usually narrow enough to bring the blade back into focus for most folks with aging vision. Go too narrow and your accuracy is likely to suffer for shooting good groups. My eyes prefer to narrow the front sight with a standard .125" wide rear, more than to widen the rear to .140"-.150" with a .125" wide front. The effect of how much light you see in the sight picture is similar in both cases, but at distance (20+ yards) the narrower front blade conceals less of the target, making it easier to aim at smaller targets. Be sure to try fiber optic, but use the smallest rod size offered. You just want the F/O dot to be a reference point to find the front sight with, not an aiming device in itself. Hope this helps!

_________________
shop.HarrisonCustom.com
www.HarrisonCustom.com

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

Ditto what John says. I've been fighting with failing vision, almost since I started shooting seriously, about ten years ago. There is a lot of talk about widening rear notches, but I rarely see references to deepening them; the deep notch is one of the primary advantages of the Heinie rear sight, compared to most others. It makes the front sight look like a post, rather than a box, and it makes sighting both quicker and more precise. A lot of competition shooters are using front sights as narrow as .090", but I agree that .100", with a small fiber, matched to a .125" x .125" rear notch, is about as good as it gets. It's possible that the ratio is what's really important, but a narrow front and narrow rear obscures your field of view more than necessary, and the wide front/wide rear makes for less precision on small or distant targets.