Got a buddy who’s trying to swap out his Rock’s rear sights for some Trijicon night sights. He’s been to a few gunsmiths with no success; one even suggested “grinding them off”.
He’s tried a less-expensive Amazon sight pusher to no avail. Still at the point of trying to get the factory sights off.
$64,000 question - are these pressed in directionally (meaning “on from the right, off to the right” and vice versa) or is there something blatantly obvious he’s missing?
Maybe heat the slide a bit before trying to push the rear sight out?
I have the cheaper NCStar sight pusher that I have had pretty good luck with. I wanted a MGW pusher but didn’t want to spend the money at the time. I haven’t messed with my 1911 sights or Springfield left that for the gunsmith! The glocks were easy, SIG’s not too bad, the S&W shield 9 and S&W EZ were tough but got through it. I would put some break free CLP around dovetail to let some of it make its way under the sight and let it sit for a few hours that seemed to help me…
Thanks for the quick reply. My buddy pinned the topic, hopefully he sees.
Kinda jealous. I’m holding off on my Rock purchase because I want to get a Jakl in .300 BO first. Kinda have a weird fantasy about a JAKL in 5.7 as well, but some things are best left in the imagination. But that all is behind the multiple retro builds I have in the pipeline.
I used a Wheeler, if he has a small soldering iron and hold it on the underside of the slide for a couple minutes it will break down the locktite. Then they’ll push out.
I used the little one pictured. I do have a couple of rather large ones in the garage that were for doing an authentic repair/restoration on the battery boxes for antique aircraft. I wonder if anybody still does that kinda stuff.
I have a different sight pusher coming from WireGear. It just crazy that no matter whats been used, it wont budge at all, as if it has a set screw but these sights dont have any.
I tried a sight pusher as well with absolutely no movement. I then set up my slide in my Vice as shown in the Dawson Precision Sight Changing Videos ( with pieces of aluminum sheet between the sides of the Vice and the slide ) and used the Dawson Precision nylon tipped punch to remove the old rear sight and the Dawson Precision Aluminum Punch with some masking tape over the tip to push the new sight into place as their Glock sight replacement videos show. It worked perfectly. After removing the PSA rear sight I saw no evidence that any locktite had been used.
My slide was the separate optics ready right after they became available since the complete optics ready Rock was out of stock when I ordered and I needed to order a non optics ready Rock to avoid the WA high capacity magazine ban.
Fortunately I got my Rock with taller sights but I doubt I’ll be able to tweak them for any windage issue.
Unfortunately my buddy has the shorter sights on his but wants to run a red dot too. I have the MGW Glock sight tool that I tried to use without success. The slide won’t fit on the Glock mount but I tried blocking the slide against the inside of the tool. Nope. Too tight to work. Got out the hammer and punch. I tried Kroil. I tried heat. Nope.
I starting shopping for a sight tool and every one of the sub $100 ones had concerning bad reviews. As this was for a one time use, I was about to tell my buddy he’ll need to take it to a gunsmith. I told him the only thing else that I might be able to do would be to sacrifice that rear sight to the dremel tool. I regretted the offer immediately LOL but agreed to undergo that task.
Well rested. No coffee that morning. I put the slide in the vise with a lot of duct tape surrounding the sight and carefully used a cut off wheel on the dremel to slowly cut the sight in half. I didn’t have to go all the way through before I could knock the sight out.
There was no loctite or anything else holding the sight. I have no idea how they got that sight in!
Now the tedious task of using a small triangular hand file to remove metal, a little bit at a time, from the sight in order to put that new sight in. Probably 20 attempts later I could finally get the sight in. Tight enough to not move unless we need to tweak it a bit for windage.
So my recommendation? Get the Rock with the tall sights already if you’re gonna use a Red Dot!! And yes, he’s a very good friend.
Be advised that depending on which Red Dot you install you may need to replace the PSA tall front sight on the RK1 ( mine was .330 tall ) with a shorter front sight to get it to co witness. I needed a .215 tall sight or the red dot was centered inside the rear sight notch towards the bottom with a Holosun 507Kx2 ( the 407K will almost certainly be the same ). Ameriglo does have a .215 front sight available ( item # GLS215 ). Dawson Precision has a .220 tall fiber optic front sight for Glocks if you prefer. Luckily, you only need a Glock front sight tool ( a 3/16 hex nut driver ) to swap them.
PS, you have to be very careful in filing down the rear sight so as to make sure you don’t inadvertently change the 60 degree dovetail angle on the rear sight base. Dawson Precision does sell a one sided triangular file with a 60 degree angle for this purpose.
