Sight Alterations

When you are a collector accumulator of fine firearms, you begin to collect accumulate the tools to adjust the sights.

My first one is for a Mini-14.  This tool adjusts both the windage and elevation at the rear sight.

It's been over 20 years since I've owned a Mini-14.  Owning a sight tool for one is an act of cynicism, the zero wanders so much on the vintage guns I was dealing with.  But it shows your dedication to zeroing it for the current trip to the range!

Next is the Royal Army's multi-tool for the L1A1 rifle.

It has a tool to remove the handguard screw, a spanner for removing the gas-tube nut and/or adjusting the gas setting and one for adjusting the sights.

The forked end is for straddling the front sight blade and rotating it.  The screwdriver end serves to both turn the front sight locking screw and to adjust the rear sight windage screws.

Like the Mini, it's been years since I owned an L1A1, but this tool has so many useful applications on a normal FAL, that I hung onto it.


Now is the classic M16A1 sight tool!  I saw exactly one of these one time during OSUT when we went out to qualify with the M16A1's.  I did not see another until I was long out of the Army and getting into assembling ARs from parts.

Five prongs for the front sight.

Five prongs for the rear sight.

Otherwise you're using a cartridge to push down spring detents and desperately trying to find leverage.

The M16A2 uses a different number of prongs on its front sight.

The rear sight doesn't need a tool at all, so the other end of an AR Front Sight Tool almost always has a five prong end for an A1 front sight.

A normal, metric, FAL can have any one of a couple front sights.  This one matches Jasmine.

I guess they assume you can find a little screwdriver for the rear sight.  I used my Swiss Army Knife.

The AK/SKS c-clamp tool.  This one is supposed to be able to turn the front sight up and down and to push the front sight base left and right.

You're supposed to be able to slip this forked end over the front sight and turn it to adjust elevation.  I have yet to buy a c-clamp that did not need to be opened up slightly.  This is my third one, the PSAK-47 killed its two predecessors.

The Palmetto AKM sight also led me to get this cute little AK multi-tool.  It too needed opened up, and it too bears the scars of the stuck sight.

The Palmetto guns went back to South Carolina before it arrived, but Arsenal makes the ultimate AK front sight elevation tool (I hope).  This fit a Yugo M70 and a Russian SKS without modification, putting it head and shoulders over all other AK tools so far.

There will be an update when the Yugo SKS tool arrives.

Update:

Amazon does not have a smaller box...

Also shown with ALL the packing materials the tool shipped with.

Pretty much the same tool as for a non-Yugo AK/SKS...

But the wider fork is why you need to get one if you have a Yugoslavian PAP M59/66A1.