DIY Fiber optic sights

I have several EDCs that over time have collected dust in the stock sights. I was thinking of drilling out the stock sights and slipping fiber optic rods in their place. I don’t have the cash hanging around to buy new front and rear sights on all my handguns. Has anyone ever done this? Any thoughts? I’m a professional fabricator so doing it (with proper tools and expertise) would be easy. Just curious if anyone has done this. Thanks

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What sights are you using now? If you have fiber optic now, there is nothing to do, just replacing fiber rod.
Making fiber optic from regular sights doesn’t make any sense, because the fiber won’t catch enough light.

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I don’t see that it would be impossible with the correct tools. My eyes have problems with the standard white dot sights common from the factory. What I do is clean out the front sight dot, take a toothpick and drop a dot of fluorescent paint in the front dot, and black out the rears with the same method. $3 in paint fixes all your sights, and the fluorescent paint works better in lower light than the white dots IMO.

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I was thinking I would drill through the factory sights to allow light to hit the forward side and illuminate them.

I thought of glow in the dark paint. Except it would also get dusty and have to be cleaned a lot. I have a “Dirty Job” as a fabricator so dust and dirt are everyday. I was thinking fiber rods would stay visible. And I already have them.
Thanks

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I would machine through the top as well to create a window for the rod to gather light.if you just drill straight through, I don’t think the rod would be as visible due to the limited area exposed to light.

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I don’t know how much light will come into the fiber from just the front. I would conduct an experiment before removing the sight and drilling. Get a small segment of the fiber, wrap it in tape or something else to stop light from coming in the sides. Then see if enough light is coming in to justify the effort you’re proposing.

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@Matt_W, Dude I respect anybody that takes doing things into their own hands, especially when they have the tools and the talent to do it :+1:

I’ve never done what you are thinking about, but if you don’t get enough light from just a front and rear exposure, you might be able to “hog out” some material to allow some side light exposure as well. Good luck and let us know how it works out - I think it will work out good.

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I was trying to find nice explanation how sights fiber rod works, but I’ve found only this one from TruGlo:

A_20200803_03

The forward fiber’s end will need really bright source of light (fe lighter) to bring nice bright light to the other end. Otherwise it will show just color, not bright dot.
Sight’s fiber rod is constructed to absorb ambient or sun light longways. That’s the reason FO sight has upper opening. Some manufacturers went even farther adding “mirror like” material below fiber rod to reflect light back to fiber (from the bottom).

Anyway, you can always try to drill the hole for fiber rod, but I think without the upper cut you won’t get expected results.

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I think you should try to fab up your own sight. A small block of material and some light pipe will tell you more than anything. I would suggest Acrylic rod material. This material can be polished to a finish. I don’t think I would cut out windows in the sight mount, in fact most optics have the O.D. of the lens coated black to increase the light intensity through the pipe.
The bottom line is: experiment the materials are cheap and you will learn alot from it as well as being able to say “Imade it”.

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To reference straight hole vs hole with side exposure. I covered the side of my hiviz so only the front and rear of the sight is exposed to gather light. Exhibit A:

Then, I removed the tape covering the side and top windows. Exhibit B:

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Case Closed ! :clap: :handshake:

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Awesome! Thanks everybody. Y’all have been incredible in your responses. I’m proud to have a community that can appreciate and help others. I’ll show pics once I’ve made my mods. This will be a fun experiment. Thanks

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Way to do it @Levi2 very simple.

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Here’s the HiViz on my Ruger revolver. You can see the slots.

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