Sight Adjustment Basics

hey Hickok 45 here today we're setting our sights on a basics issue that I think hopefully will be helpful because I know it's confusing to a lot of people it's the issue of sight adjusting sight alignment and all that sort of thing we're not going to get too complicated we're gonna focus primarily on how to adjust your sights to get them hitting where you want get them looking where you want the sights to look so you can take the sight picture you want and all that sort of thing well first of all let me clarify because I know you hear me say in videos quite often that I'm trying to figure out where to hold you know with this ammo or this gun a new gun different gun and I'm figuring out you know I may be shooting low and so then I adjust and then I kind of range in on them and I start hitting the targets be advised know that I'm actually looking at the sights the same way all the time okay with one exception when I'm shooting at 230 yards which is crazy bizarre shooting right but most shooting even at 80 yards even at 70 whatever and right here close I'm looking at the sights the same way I'm taking the same sight picture I'm seeing them the exact same way every time so I'm not holding them really differently when I talk about that all I'm doing is trying to figure out where to hold my sight alignment so let me let me talk to your show you a wonderful piece of artwork I did here just before the video I was going to do it on the video John advised I do it before probably a good idea because I'm not much of an artist okay this is your sight and this is what you're looking at there's your front sight you post sticking up there and of course you're you want ideally little space between that you're seeing between the front sight and the rear sight here if I can't see what that is you get the rear sight and then that pose sticking up if it were 3d you know it's on down on the end of the barrel that's the front sight down the end of the barrel okay this is in the back so you want that level generally speaking okay you got that's what I do I think most people do I mean I guess there might be some people that maybe they'd like it to protrude up we're just a hair or something I don't know or they realize they need to and they don't want to adjust their sight so they get used to doing that I don't know most people you want to level up the front sight the top of it with the top edge of the rear sight okay so that's what you're looking at that's what you should generally be looking at when you look down the sights okay now in this gun you've got that red ball if they're where you're seeing but still the front sight is level you're filling up the gap that's all you're doing you're filling up that groove evenly when you're looking down that sight all right and then then it's a matter of where you hold it where you hold that sight picture that is your sight picture but where you hold it is another matter isn't it okay you might have four or five guns yourself and you already know this if you do probably but one with one of those guns if you're shooting at say a turkey over there you might have to hold that sight picture I'm talking about on the bottom of the turkey and you know that the other gun shoots lower so you have to hold on the neck of that turkey in order to hit it or something okay but we're generally taking the same sight picture okay so that's what you're looking at now what I wanted to do mainly in this video I want to clarify that I think some new shooters especially aren't aren't sure what we're talking about when we say we're to hold and all that and we literally mean we're we're to hold we're to hold that sight picture but we keep the same sight picture the other things a little bit confusing for people it's kind like daylight savings times or something or moving clocks around you get your head brain twisted around it's happened to me with all the shooting I've had experience I've had you start we saw in the video with the XD M's you know I adjusted one on the wrong way at first there wasn't thinking but what you're doing the way I think about it you might think about it differently if you're experienced you just remember it's shooting blow your raise your rear side you don't have to think about it much but sometimes I get my head turned around and the way I think about it it's kind of conceptually what you want to do is figure out where the gun is shooting again taking the sight picture I just talked about so if I'm holding on whatever the gong or this paper target whatever it is I've got a good hold there I take several shots I got my sights align perfectly as I just Illustrated like a boom boom I put three or four shots on there it's not gonna do in a second then I I see where they get okay that tells me something but I've got to hold my slice in exactly the same place another tip if you're trying to sighting a gun and you hold right in the middle and you think you pull the trigger and shoots over the hall let me hold let me hold further to the right then it shoots over I endure hi y'all get into that you take several shots trying to hold it the most the best psych victory hand holding very still really nice trigger break and you do that several times so you know you got some good shots off and you know where the bullets are going and in relationship to where the sights are okay so what I'm gonna do here is take a few shots but what you do conceptually is you try to move the sights to where they are pointed to where the bullets hitting that makes sense if you think about that let's say I'm holding on that weather reg particle and I'm holding right in the middle and the the hits are all over on the right edge that pointy edge over there well they're all in the same place nice beautiful group then I just need to do something to my sights to get them pointed over there okay so I would probably need to move my rear sight to the left and then my gun would be aimed where those hits were okay so that's what I'm trying to do now I'm not going to do the left/right adjustment today but hopefully my elevation adjustment will kind of show you what we're talking about alright so I took the nine-millimeter 5.25 and I thought this one's mine so I'd mess up my own sites I screwed the sights the rear sights all the way down they're all way down so we're gonna take a few shots and then we're gonna move the sights just to show you the difference all right let's put some ammunition in here and I'm gonna hold on I've got some paper for this so if easier for all of us to see I do this on steel quite often as you know you can see your hits usually and I've got that to illustrate something maybe okay sites are all the way down I'm shooting 115 grain ammunition here and let's see what happens I'm gonna I don't get on the bench very much but I want to make sure sometimes I think I shoot worse when I try to erase one impact I know I do so I'm gonna try to get I'm gonna hold right on that top dot so I can be somewhere close to it now again if I see that I'm shooting low I don't care I'm just gonna try to hold on that dot it doesn't matter where they're going I will take a few shots with that hold hopefully I can shoot benchrest I never do this okay that tells you it's shooting a little bit low isn't it I mean for ideally at that distance I would really not want it's shooting below point of aim it's not much but it's shooting a little bit below point of aim now the guns if you just unloaded it so what do I need to do with my sights as I said before I need to get my sights aimed at where that's hitting so that means I need to raise my rear sight does that make sense let me put this ruler on it I don't know if this will help illustrate that kind of exaggerated what I'm talking about so if you imagine the line of the bullet I need to change it so I'm going to lay that on right on the sights so if I raise the rear sight then I'm gonna be aimed lower right you see my line of sight it's going to be lower I'll do it exaggerated if I raise the rear sight all the way up there I'd be aiming down there but I just need to raise it a little bit so that I'm aiming right where those hits are okay know if that makes me sensitive but let's do that so let's take the screwdriver here I can find it there it is I'm gonna raise this thing I'm not sure how many turns like it actually raised this rear side I've not experimented with it I'm gonna go up 3 full turns there's 1 2 3 at some point they actually come out of there I lost some Smith & Wesson sights that way when time for its piece out of it ok so you see I raise that quite a bit now if you think about that now that sights up higher my sight picture if I'm looking I'm siding on that same dot the I ought to be actually putting bullets a little higher well we'll see let's take some shots ok alright I raised the rear sight so that should raise the point of impact we'll see if it does because I'm gonna only same sight picture on the dot exact as before I'm aiming at the dot not the holes nothing else Wow okay see what that did that brought the point of impact up I'm taking the exact same sight picture and I'm just putting that side picture on the exact same Early's trying to the exact same dot now let's put it down a little bit that was up three turns on go down a few turns might be about right if you're trying to get hit right on I don't know we'll see all right so we've got some that are just a little bit love when the site was all the way down and then three turns up a little too high probably hopefully we can differentiate the hits here aim exactly the same size picture yeah okay so those are just above the dot a little bit so you see the the impact no pun intended the difference that moving the sights around hit again if it's if it's shooting low on me say it's shooting dramatically low I think it's easier to grasp it's I'm shooting it the tombstone down there and it's hitting in the dirt man and I need to have my sight saying where the where the bullets are hitting that's slightly I've come way up here so it kind of I'll be looking down into the dirt with my sights okay now that doesn't mean I'm gonna shoot into the dirt - next time once I remove those slice does it because I'm gonna be focusing on the tombstone it actually brings the bullets up all right hopefully I didn't just further confuse you same with again with windage you know if I'm shooting us exaggerated I'm shooting at the tombstone but it's hitting that tree over there man I need to get the sights aligned with the hole without moving the gun I need to have my sights pointed over there then I'm trying to hit this so I do that I move this side over here so then okay I've cited it at that tree good then I need to move it all over I'm cited on the phone stone you know if that makes any sense so basically wherever you're sure the guns hitting you're holding a really steady getting a good sight picture the same sight picture on the target then you look at where the bullets are going and then you want to keep the same hold on the gun and not move the gun but get the sights aligned with wherever those holes are okay that's probably a better way to say it you want to get the site's aligned where the holes are without moving the gun okay and then it all takes care of itself because then you'll just automatically move the gun whether it needs to be where it will need to be moved but you won't have to think about it because all you're doing is aligning the sights alright so I don't know hopefully I didn't confuse you but that's the way I think about it of course I think about things differently sometimes but it works for me and because you want your sights on you want to have a consistent sight picture because it's hard enough as we all know to hit what we're aiming at with a handgun if you're just starting out you really know how hard it is so you don't want to have problems with your sights before I would shoot a match background shooting a lot of matches if I didn't know anything else I would just come out here on a little piece of paper or something I'll just of this really cute precision shot to get some confidence in my sights okay they're hitting exactly where they're supposed to all right it's nothing else I wanted to know that and be sure that does it I know it's me it's operator error if I'm having trouble with anything you know in the match or whatever I'm doing so anyway low information about sight alignment I hope that helped life is good

Channel: hickok45

Views: 1,890,187

Rating: 4.9008393 out of 5

Keywords: Springfield, XDm, 5.25, 9mm, semiautomatic, pistol, sight, adjustment

Id: OoRhzqnRmK8

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2011