Bought a .45 cal TC Hawken barrel early last year. It has a K prefix so I assume it is a kit barrel. I mounted it on a gun today and started to remove the rear sight. The sight has no screws showing and there is solder in the screw holes. So I guess the assembler just sweat soldered the sight baseto the barrel? Does anybody know if the kit barrels came with screw holes drilled or a dovetail slot cut already or if that was up to the maker to do? I would like to know what I am likely to find under this sight before I take the torch to it. The barrel is not going to be much use to me with the standard sight. But I could sell it on ebay if I do not mess it up, I guess.
How is rear sight attached to this barrel?
- Thread starter Bill M.
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pics?
Screw holes, just like the factory assembled guns.
bubba.50
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Screw holes. Without pix can't say for sure what's up with your barrel so, it's possible some ham-handed "gunsmith" sweated the sight to the barrel but, on factory assembled sights you have to disassemble the sight to see the screws.
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They all had screw holes from the factory. i've sweated replacement sights, mostly fire sights, on those guns.
Old Hawkeye
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PICS! If there are no screws showing, what screw holes are full of solder????? PICS are worth a 1000 words. You have to drive the hinge pin out & remove the elevator part from the sight to access the mounting screws.
Heat the sight body up to melt the solder, then get a Hawken sight, cut a dovetail, and you are back in business. The original set-up had screws (which are beneath the moving arm of the original sight, if you haven't found them yet).
Thanks. I had taken the sight apart expecting to find the mounting screws, What I found is the screw holes in the sight do not have screws in them but do have what looks like solder half way filling them. Was wondering if the assembler just soldered the sight over the existing screw holes or if there are not any. I am gonna think on it until tonight or tomorrow and then unsolder it. Not sure how to get solder out of a screw hole. I will prrobably change out the front sight and shoot this one with a peep. But will have to do something about the blueing and screw holes where the existing sight is now.
bubba.50
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Once you get the sight & solder off, if the screw holes are filled you'll kinda have to smooth everything up as much as you can, refinish the barrel & just live with it. Or you can have them re-drilled & tapped a slightly larger size, put screws in them, and file flush then refinish the barrel. TC used 6 x 48 sight screws so, 8 x 40's would probably work.
tip the barrel upside down, heat where the sight is and let gravity do the rest.
Nit Wit
kansas_volunteer
45 Cal.
I wouldn't take any of the advice above about filling the screw holes until I've tried this. File the solder in the holes flush with the barrel, drill the solder out using the correct pilot drill, then tap using the correct tap. Compared to steel solder is soft. It out to clean out easily. I'd drill with an old fashioned egg beater hand drill. You'd have much more control than with an electric drill. You can drill steel with an egg beater drill, but you should be able to tell by feel when you've hit bottom of the screw holes.
user 34300
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Put on safety glasses. Melt the solder. Blow across the hole with compressed air. The solder will mostly come out. Refresh the threads with the correct tap.
you want to remove the rear sight?? i believe you have to drive out the split pin in the front of the sight and the screws are under the top piece. be careful as there is a small spring under the top half. this is all if you have the original t/c sight on there . and no one drilled and filled extra holes
If it’s a TC Hawken, 2 screws held the base of the sight to the barrel. They were hidden underneath the rear sight that had an elevation screw. To remove, you unscrewed the elevation screw and the rear sight lifted up with a small coil spring under it. Then the 2 screws that held the base to the barrel were visible.
Just too be clear. I drove out the pin. I took the sight leaf and springs out. There are no screws holding the sight. It sees to be soldered down. I was wondering if the kit barrels came pre drilled. My understanding now is that they do have the holes. My thinking is along the lines of those who suggested maybe the screw holes are misaligned or cross threaded or have a broken screw or something. Right now other things that need my attention have come up so I put the barrel back in the storage cabinet and will address the issue when I have time. Maybe this fall. I was going to use the holes to temp mount a scope to test the barrel. My old eyes do not work good for the thin blade and deep v sight and I wanted to take the sighting element out of finding out if the barrel shoots well. I have a cobbled up scope mount that uses the standard TC sight holes to mount just solid enough for testing. I would not carry it in the field or hunt with it but it works well enough at the range.
ohio ramrod
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If the holes are filled with solder it probably has striped out holes or broken screws in the holes. The only way to tell for sure is to melt the solder out as suggested in earlier posts. New holes could be drilled and tapped slightly forward of the origional , and the origonal holes would be covered by the sight . here is my solution to replacing the sights with a fixed sight using the origional holes .
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I assembled a TC Hawken kit back in the mid seventies. At that time they came pre-drilled and tapped.
