Removing old style Glock front sight??

[Sebastian the Ibis]

I have an old trade in G3 glock 22. The front sight is the old press in variety as opposed to the new style with a screw.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to how to get this out aside from brute force with a punch and hammer?

Please help. My New Years resolution was to get all my old guns configured the way I want them before getting anything new, and my wife is holding me to it.

 

[entropy]

??? Haven't worked on a Gen 3 Glock, but the Gen 1's had a hex headed bolt holding the sight on, so did my Gen 2 G21. ???

 

[Fine Figure of a Man]

??? Haven't worked on a Gen 3 Glock, but the Gen 1's had a hex headed bolt holding the sight on, so did my Gen 2 G21. ???

My Gen 2 G22 and Gen 3 G36 have hex head bolts also.

 

[[email protected]]

It just knocks out. No need for brute force to get it out though. either punch it out from the rear, or use pliers with a little twisting action to pull it out.

 

[mgmorden]

Yeah my gen 2 had a screw on front sight too. I've never heard of any other Glock front sight attachment type.

 

[Sebastian the Ibis]

Glock 22 G3 on the left
Glock 19 G3 on the right

The 22 came with dead factory night sights. The press in was probably part of some custom order or something way back when.

 

[Sebastian the Ibis]

Well, brute force worked. It took a bit more than I would have expected. A couple of nails bent without budging it. I had to wedge the slide in a vice between some blocks of wood and wail away with an awl and a framing hammer. The awl is now bent, and the point is ruined but I got the front sight out.

Upon closer inspection is seems like it was epoxied in, as well as riveted. I had to file some hardened gunk out of the hole once I got the sight out.

 

[Wisco]

Was your sight plastic or metal?

All the adhesive makes for a tough job!

I just bought an early Gen3 for a project and it had a plastic front. It came out with such little twist from light pliers it was creepy...

 

[L-2]

Older Glocks from Gen1, Gen2, and perhaps some Gen3 models had two other methods of front sight attachment, besides screw/bolt on.
One method was staking and an Armorer could buy the tool shown in the attached photo. This tool would flare out the base of the front sight once that front sight was inserted into the front-sight-hole in the slide.

The other method was for a sight designed to have a small, polymer pin inserted from the bottom, also resulting in flaring out the front sight base. This pinning method negated the need for the staking tool and gave some degree of being able to re-use the front sight (if the pin wasn't lost).

(Sorry, no pics of the different front sights, but are likely available during a search which I'll attempt once I spot typing.)

The staked-on front sights may have come in polymer or metal. Coming from the factory, night sights were typically metal, but also staked on. Aftermarket sights, whether by Glock or other brands, typically come with screws/bolts as they do now.

Here's a pic on found doing a search. As it's not my photo, I'll just post the link:
http://i38.tinypic.com/zly92u.jpg

A staked on front sight could be removed by punching out from the bottom; or taking pliers, protecting the top of the slide, and twisting off the front sight. A staked-on front sight wasn't intended to be reused, but with the staking tool, a person might get by with reusing a front sight which had already been used once.

 

[Sebastian the Ibis]

I guess mine had the staked in version. It really did not want to come out.

 

[FL-NC]

That was a crappy staked in Trijicon. We had some "new" (unfired and mothballed) G17's where I worked at we put into service about 3-4 years ago with the same setup. Those staked in sights WILL go AWOL. We eventually just snatched them all out with pliers and replaced them with the trij screw in fronts.

 

[JohnKSa]

The key to removing the staked in sights is to use a very small punch that allows the sides of hollow crimping area to collapse in around the punch. If you use a punch that fits the hole on the underside of the sight tightly then it becomes very difficult to remove it since there's no place for the metal to go and it has to be physically swaged down to fit between the sides of the hole in the slide and the punch.

They should come out pretty easily even if they were installed with a little dab of some kind of adhesive in addition to being staked.

Those staked in sights WILL go AWOL.

If they are installed and staked properly they should stay in place very well.

 

[Omaha-BeenGlockin]

I used to use just a pair of pliers------grab that sucker and rip it out.