Finding the Right Front Sight

I went to the shooting range with my 1918 CG m/96, a bag of front sight blades, a small hammer, a punch and a Kornskruv m/43 G. An excellent thread on swedish front sight adjusters at gunboards made me break out this cooler-than-cool item.

My goal was to find the right front sight to put the point of aim slightly below the black area of the target, with the bullets (hopefully) striking bulls eye. I believe this method is the way to go, I have improved my pistol score a LOT with this strategy. The light conditions were far from perfect this evening, but I got some nice groupings anyway. Next time I´ll blacken the sights as it makes a lot of difference for the sight picture.

I started out with the "0" blade already on the rifle, I believe it must have been around 6 mm high. Shots were placed too low, and I went with a slightly lower "-1" and ended up with a "-0,5" that was still a little bit lower. The numbers on the blades is confusing, to say the least. The m/96 and the m/38 has different widths at the top of the blades and have different number scales - a "-0,5" does not mean the same height for the two models. I think I have read an explanation somewhere, a link will be posted if I find it again.

If you buy sight blades, ask for the height instead of the numbers.

A Number of Different Front Sight Blades

The Swedish Mauser rifles were sighted in for 300 meter use, and the average sight blades used were quite low. I have a number of different blades, as seen in the picture.

Some of my blades are super high +3, +2,5, + 2 and one or two items are super low, the numbers slips my mind right now. The high ones would probably work at 100 meters.

These new-old-stock blades are hard to come by today. If you are looking for a high blade for 100 meter shooting, check brownells for a high blade you can file down to fit your requirements.