Sight Adjustments - Is there something wrong here

[Daryl]

Well, you re closer than I am Molly.  That notch would be no-go for me. Too small and fine.

[Molly]

No doubt it is a small slot but it is centered.  I have a photo to post later. 

[Daryl]

I would suggest then, the barrel was bent after the witness marks were punched - or - the witness marks were punched and gun never sighted in.
Taylor "got in a rifle" to sell for a fellow, long time ago. When he/we tested it, we found it was WAY out, even at 25 yards. When Taylor asked the fellow
about it, he acknowledged the lack of zeroing but said, he had never did get it sighted in. As it was a modern "repro" it even had screw adjustable sights.

[elkhart]

Any news on your gun, did you get it fixed?

I'm having a similar problem on a rifle I just built, wondering if/how you solved it.

[Austin]

Relax! Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Front sight is over the same opposite, my old deer rifle….. shoots perfect!🤷

[Daryl]

Relax! Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Front sight is over the same opposite, my old deer rifle….. shoots perfect!🤷

That's quite a bit of windage to the left, but of course, the longer the barrel, the more sight drifting must be done.

[SciAggie]

I have a 42" Green Mountain barrel in a .45 Poor Boy flintlock that has sight adjustments like the post above, except the other way. Rear sight WAY to the right - front sight WAY to the left.
I shot this 5 shot group the other day at 25 yards from the bench. They are not always this good, lol. I was checking to see if I was missing the whole target with follow up shots - I never shoot that well.
The point being the barrel shoots well enough.

[GrizG]

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about this kind of problem as I've personally known of several cases. He worked as a barrel straightener when he got out of gunsmithing school and spent decades afterwards building flintlocks... He commented that sometimes guys inadvertently bend barrels while doing the inletting. Barrels are soft.  Anyone doing what Wallace Gusler did in the movie (i.e., squeezing the barrel into the stock with a vice to transfer soot) is at risk of this. In those cases it may make sense to bend the barrel to correct the problem. This rather than cope with sights that are way out of kilter and that may take your cheek off the stock to obtain good sight alignment and sight picture.

[Daryl]

I have a 42" Green Mountain barrel in a .45 Poor Boy flintlock that has sight adjustments like the post above, except the other way. Rear sight WAY to the right - front sight WAY to the left.
I shot this 5 shot group the other day at 25 yards from the bench. They are not always this good, lol. I was checking to see if I was missing the whole target with follow up shots - I never shoot that well.
The point being the barrel shoots well enough.

The accuracy is spot-on-perfect, the precision is horrid. I should be bending that barrel back to where it should be. As-is, it is a miss or gut shot on a deer at 100yards - or maybe even 50yds. depending on the wobble.

[SciAggie]

I'm aware of the difference beween precision and accuracy. After some adjustment I got it where I wanted it to shoot. I guess I was pointing out that a potentially bent barrel can shoot well enough - sorry for not being clear. This is more typical grouping for me with this rifle.

[alacran]

I'm aware of the difference beween precision and accuracy. After some adjustment I got it where I wanted it to shoot. I guess I was pointing out that a potentially bent barrel can shoot well enough - sorry for not being clear. This is more typical grouping for me with this rifle.

I'm glad that you posted the last target. It shows that sighting errors can deceive you into thinking a barrel is not straight and true.
There are circumstances that call for a barrel to be bent. But in my opinion that should be a last resort, and not the first option.

[Molly]

I had lost track of this post and did not see a question on the status.  So, here is the scoop.
It was returned to the builder after careful consideration and a strong recommendation from several fellow shooters.  The builder "aligned" the sights back to their original positions and as far as I know that's all.  Did not test fire it and did not comment about finding any problems.  Did not address the matter of being bent and did not indicate that it was even assessed for a bent barrel.

So, I took it out and did my own test.  Same load and about the same distance, about 30 yards.  Point of aim was dead on center of the 2 inch spot. The target pictured shows the results.

First shot was slightly low but about 3 inches off center.  So the thing is shooting exactly as it did originally.  I next positioned a small spot about 3 inches to the right and slightly low.  The point of aim was at that spot.  There were no adjustments to the sights.  The results were much improved.  There are 5 hits on the spot.  One not so good but of the others, two rounds hit essentially the same hole.

Personally I do not consider this situation as acceptable and a fresh made rifle should not need sights repositioned to this degree to shoot accurately.  I'll not get into the difference of "accuracy" and "precision".  Suffice it to say I expect the round to land where I am aiming without radical extremely visible sight adjustment.

[Daryl]

Obviously, the rifle shoots to the right with centred sights. Reasons for this have been given, except as well, the 'cutting' of the crown can also
cause this. If the "cut" crown is even all the way around, same height and depth, then this is not the problem.  The hole in the bore, the last few
inches determines the direction of travel of the ball or bullet. If the barrel is straight, no bends, then hole inside must not be exactly in the middle
of the bore the full length of the barrel. Everything works in concert with each other and all must be right for the ball to travel true when the sights
are perfectly centered. This is quite normal with a lot of today's barrels. If "out" is it usually only an inch or so.
I have seen only one barrel that was really bad and that was a .50 cal GM barrel that was bent. This was replaced with a new barrel, and with sights
perfectly centered, so was it's shooting. Bent barrels do happen. It doesn't take much of a bend to land the ball off centre 3 to 4" at 30yards.
Good shooting, btw.

[alacran]

I had lost track of this post and did not see a question on the status.  So, here is the scoop.
It was returned to the builder after careful consideration and a strong recommendation from several fellow shooters.  The builder "aligned" the sights back to their original positions and as far as I know that's all.  Did not test fire it and did not comment about finding any problems.  Did not address the matter of being bent and did not indicate that it was even assessed for a bent barrel.

So, I took it out and did my own test.  Same load and about the same distance, about 30 yards.  Point of aim was dead on center of the 2 inch spot. The target pictured shows the results.

First shot was slightly low but about 3 inches off center.  So the thing is shooting exactly as it did originally.  I next positioned a small spot about 3 inches to the right and slightly low.  The point of aim was at that spot.  There were no adjustments to the sights.  The results were much improved.  There are 5 hits on the spot.  One not so good but of the others, two rounds hit essentially the same hole.

Personally I do not consider this situation as acceptable and a fresh made rifle should not need sights repositioned to this degree to shoot accurately.  I'll not get into the difference of "accuracy" and "precision".  Suffice it to say I expect the round to land where I am aiming without radical extremely visible sight adjustment.

I looked through my copies of RCA 1& 2 to see how many rear sights Shumway had pictured. I only came up with 7. The good thing is that all of those the photos were taken directly looking down. The point is that of the seven only one appears to be centered on the barrel flat. One in particular #44, by Oerter shows witness marks like yours. Like yours the witness marks are not in alignment. Also, it is much worse than on your first post. Unfortunately, he shows no front sights photographed directly from above on any rifles in the book.
Most modern rifles now a days are scoped. But at the beginning of the modern rifle age, rifles had iron sights. Even with modern machinery the sights had to be drifted to sight them in. Williams , Redfield and others made a fortune selling adjustable sights. Drifting sights is a pain.
The only reason the witness marks on the rear sight on your barrel is so you can tell how much you have drifted them, just like in the Oerter rifle.
Why don't you try adjusting only the rear sight to make your correction. I feel that the builder thinks that it is within acceptable tolerance. I certainly seem to think so.

[Daryl]

In retrospect,  3" at 30yards is only 2" at 20yards, and is not THAT bad. On the other hand, it wouldn't take much of a thump to "fix" it.

[Molly]

Well, if it's 2 @20, 3@30 then it's 4@40, 5@50 on out to 10@100.  None of our rifles is off that bad.  Just my opinion but I think the builder did not evaluate it and if he did then I take a different view of it.  BUT, knowing where it shoots allows one to make adjustment to the point of aim.  Of course you just need to be sure of the target distance and adjust accordingly.  We have contemps made by some top builders and several made by an obscure local builder.  None are off like this.

MAS