tang sight for Stevens Favorite

[alemonkey]

My lovely wife just bought me a Stevens Favorite for Christmas (one of the new ones, not a vintage one). I'd like to put a tang sight on it but I'm not sure which one. Marble makes one specifically for it, but it's a little pricey. I've heard the Lyman #2 for the Marlin Rifles works well also, but it's not adjustable for windage.

My primary concern is that the sight has repeatable settings. Our local club is setting up a .22 side match to go along with our monthly bpcr silhouette shoot, so it would be nice to be able to change settings as needed for the different ranges involved. From looking at pictures of the Marble sight it kind of looks to me like elevation is adjusted by screwing the aperture up or down. Without any type of reference mark that might be kind of hard to stay consistent.

 

[Dienekes]

The Marbles' that I am familiar with are adjusted for elevation by turning the knurled sleeve, and that is all. If you were to determine the threads per inch count on the stem it turns on and the sight radius, in theory you could determine the amount of change for the point of impact for one turn, half a turn, a quarter turn, etc. I did that on one on a early 1894 Winchester and made a small index mark on the sleeve so I could determine the amount of movement more accurately.

I suspect that Lyman or someone else has perhaps come up with a windage-adjustable model but you would have to contact them to know for sure.

A guy named Tom Axtell makes very precise elevation and windage-adjustable tang sights for old-style single shot rifles, but they are very expensive...

 

[alemonkey]

Ok, I guess my Google-Fu was weak earlier. I just found this on the Marble's sight:

Windage adjustment has 66 clicks=.260”
Elevation adjustment has 85 click=.335”
Each click is about 1/4” of adjustment at 100 yards

If they're click-adjustable that should be fairly repeatable. At least good enough for my purposes anyway.

I can't wait to get this little guy out to the range. SWMBO is making me wait until Christmas to open the box though I'll have to get a picture next to my Sharps - kind of a Big Brother/Little Brother thing.

 

[flashhole]

When you get it assembled, please post a picture of the Favorite sporting the new sight. I (actually my wife) picked up a Favorite over the summer. It is a suprisingly accurate little gun. I'm able to hit the 3" swivel target on a regular basis from about 30 yards with the factory sights. Years ago I put a peep sight on my Bejamin Sheraton 20 cal pellet gun. I can see where the Favorite could benefit with a similar setup.

 

[alemonkey]

I'll definitely post pics. The more I think of it, I can see some serious potential to turn this little gun into something really nice. I'm seriously thinking of refinishing this thing to give it more of an antique look. The wood stands proud to the metal so it could use some reshaping, and a nice hand rubbed oil finish while I'm at it. The sides of the action have some machining marks, so it could use some polishing to smooth it up. Then I'm thinking maybe strip the remaining blueing off and brown all of the metal.

 

[alemonkey]

Just a quick update, took the Stevens to the range yesterday. I just shot at the 25 yard line, and shot offhand or with my elbows braced on the bench - no sandbags or anything serious. Even so, I can tell this little rifle has some very good accuracy potential. My first three shots had two holes touching and the third about an inch away. The flier was my fault. I set up some spinner targets and could pretty much hit them at will every time offhand.

The biggest problem are the sights. The rear notch is pretty wide so they're not real precise, and my eyes had a hard time focusing on them. I think with a tang sight this thing will really shine.